Tag Archives: markets

Government Controls

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s the latest version of the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to expand government control over our economy, this time using Medicare drug pricing as their venue. This example also is the latest inclusion in the Progressive-Democratic Party’s reconciliation bill.

The Health and Human Services Secretary will “negotiate” 10 to 20 of the drugs that Medicare spends most on, starting in 2025. Drug makers will get socked with a 95% excise tax on gross sales if they don’t agree to the government’s price.

This is a textbook example of the fascism version of socialism. Companies are free to produce and sell whatever they want, so long as it fits within Government requirements directing what is produced, the volume of production, and the prices to be charged.

Yet, Biden can’t make the trucks run on time.

A Risk and a Solution

Posted on by
Reply

Japan’s Softbank Group has reported a significant loss driven by the technology company crackdown the People’s Republic of China government has inflicted on PRC tech-oriented companies and Softbank’s heavy investments in those companies.

Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s CEO, now is saying

Our China risk is not so huge. It is within our control[.]

And

It is a time of severe trials for China’s high-tech stocks. We are right in the middle of a storm.

And, as paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal,

[T]here is only so much more damage turmoil in China can do.

Here’s a thought: Softbank could eliminate the risk altogether and prevent any further damage by divesting itself of all PRC-oriented holdings and no longer investing at all in PRC companies, whether tech or ditch digging or anything in between.

All Those Rich Fat Cats

Posted on by
Reply

Easy come, easy go. Especially for those ill-sympathized-with rich fat cats. The rest of us….

All that money we saved on our Independence Day celebrations—every one of those 16 cents (and what did we get? Another day older)—is gone, and we’re deeper in debt.

We’re also going to pay a whole lot more for our Thanksgiving Day celebrations.

Nearly every component of the traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, from the disposable aluminum turkey roasting pan to the coffee and pie, will cost more this year, according to agricultural economists, farmers and grocery executives.

Meat and poultry are up over 10% since last year. Raw aluminum is up 80% over the last 16 months; guess how much that roasting pay, made of processed aluminum, is going to cost us.

It’s OK, though. ‘Least all those rich fat cats who made their 16 cents with their superiorly astute purchasing skills for their Independence Day celebrations gonna pay their fair share for the upcoming most expensive Thanksgiving Day celebration inflation can produce.

However, no worries; it’s all good. I have it on good authority that we just need to lower our expectations and quit whining.

Fantasy World

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate now want to tax unrealized gains in order to raise money. WSJ‘s Editors are being generous when they call the move a mirage.

Unrealized capital gains are gains in the value of an asset that are thought to have accrued between the time of acquisition and the present time, but that haven’t been “realized,” the asset hasn’t actually been sold and a profit actually collected. That’s just one aspect of the concept of unrealized gain, though.

Another aspect is especially critical: who makes the assessment of value increase? For instance,

A tax court this year ruled that the late entertainer Michael Jackson’s “likeness and image” were worth about $157 million less than the IRS claimed.

That’s Government making the assessment of the present value of an asset before the asset has been sold and not the free market making an empirical assessment based on the actual sale price. This time, Government was caught out and reversed. But under the Progressive-Democrats’ latest tax scheme? Asset owners might not be so lucky.

Progressive-Democrats are living in fantasy land in terms of what average Americans want from our economy and for ourselves.

Now the Progressive-Democrats want the IRS to move into fantasy land with them. Unrealized gains are just that—they don’t exist, they’re purely fantasy.

Separately,

The IRS will have to hire many more auditors [to make such assessments]….

Of course it will. It’s part of the Progressive-Democrats’ Build Government Bigger plan.

Facebook Employees and Virtue-Signaling

Posted on by
Reply

Here are a couple of examples, from a batch of leaked Facebook internal emails.

Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer asked employees to “hang in there” as the company figured out its response. “We have been ‘hanging in there’ for years,” one person replied. “We must demand more action from our leaders. At this point, faith alone is not sufficient.” [Emphasis added]

And

“All due respect, but haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?” another staffer responded. “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”

And

“I’m tired of platitudes; I want action items,” another staffer wrote.

And

[Y]et another staffer wrote[,] “History will not judge us kindly.”

And yet, none of these Precious Ones, along with so many of their cronies, cared enough about these failures and their claimed inability to do anything about them to resign rather than continue to go along with them.

All of these Precious Ones, along with so many of their cronies, plainly care more about their paychecks than they do about their integrity or their morality.

As the New York Post put it in a related piece summarizing The Atlantic article,

Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with growth has overridden ethical concerns and allowed hate speech and incitements to violence to spread unchecked….

That’s Facebook, from top to bottom, for all the…whining: management’s demand for growth above ethics and employees’ demand for paychecks above ethics.