Archive for March 20th, 2009

Why did Nero fiddle when Rome was burning ?

March 20, 2009

Some questions to ponder over the weekend …

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Why did Nero fiddle when Rome was burning ?

Obvious answer: Because there was no TV in 64 A.D., so appearing on the Tonight Show wasn’t an option.

Call me ‘old school’, but I would have rather seen the President huddled all day with his economic advisers …

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Do people who don’t pay takes have a right to be outraged ?

I cringe when I hear “everybody has a right to be outraged … those are your tax dollars going to the AIG execs”.

Now (post-stimulus), less than half of voting age Americans pay income taxes.  In other words, less than half have any skin in the game.

I guess those folks (who don’t pay income taxes) are outraged because taxpayer money going to AIG bonuses potentially drains the pool of freebies that they’re lining up to get.

Geez

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Why doesn’t Ed Liddy resign ?

This guy was pulled from retirement by the Treasury Dept to step in to the AIG CEO slot.  His comp package: a whopping buck a year.  Then, he has moron Congressmen denigrate him in public.

If I were he, I’d tell them to stuff it … let Barney Frank run the place if he’s so smart

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What about Wells Fargo, Northern Trust, and JP Morgan Chase execs ?

Press reports say that those banks took TARP money only because the Treasury Dept pressured them to do so — so that badly run banks wouldn’t suffer the indignity of being so easy to pinpoint.

OK, so those execs are running good businesses and, in reasonable people’s opinions, deserve performance bonuses.  Now, they get the bonuses taxed at 90%

And, TARP says they can’t just repay the TARP funds out of earnings, they have to replace it with fresh capital.

Prediction: you’ll hear a lot about this over the weekend.

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Who’s next ?

As I pointed out yesterday, once a precedent is set to impose retroactive confiscatory taxes on people just because they are politically toxic … there’ll be no stopping the train. 

Imagine a $2 per gallon Federal tax on gasoline retroactive to January 1 … why not?

And, some folks got rattled by the Patriot Act.  This is one to worry about.

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Posted in Financial Crisis, Obama Administration, Taxes | 2 Comments »

Outliers’ KFS … Spend your time off wisely

March 20, 2009

This is one of several posts extracting some key points from the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, Little Brown, 2008

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Gladwell’s Observation

Generally, people conclude that U.S. schools fail miserably.  That’s probably true, but Gladwell found an interesting twist. 

Some Baltimore elementary schools gave students a battery of standardized tests in September to set a baseline and June — to measure accumulative school year achievement.

The general conclusion: roughly equal progression (from different baselines) for all students — regardless of their family’s income level.

The twist: researchers looked at changes from the June scores to the September scores — to measure retention or development during the summer vacation period.

What they found: at best, low income kids scored the same in Sept as they did in June — suggested limited development during the summer.  In general, higher income kids scored higher in September than they did in June — suggesting that their summer activities (reading, camps, classes, family trips, etc.) were constructively developmental.

Bottom line: students from lower income families would do better with a longer school year or more structured summer activities

Takeaway: Don’t waste your time off … think of it as valuable development time.

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Posted in Book Summaries, Success Factors | 1 Comment »