Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

SEC Dishonesty

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I’ve written before about the SEC’s internal administrative judge stacked deck system.

Judge Brenda Murray explained to [eight] brokers that the commissioners who run the SEC and approve all the civil charges filed by the agency don’t want its judges second-guessing them.

“So for me to say I am wiping it out,” Ms Murray said at the [motion to dismiss] hearing last year, “it looks like I am saying to these presidential appointee commissioners, I am reversing you. And they don’t like that.”

It doesn’t get any more blatant than that.

And yet, there’s this:

In another glimpse inside the SEC’s court, [Judge Cameron] Elliot told the defendants during settlement discussions on a case they should be aware he had never ruled against the agency’s enforcement division, said a person who was there. The judge said the defendants might therefore want to do a deal with the agency rather than fight their case at a hearing before him[.]

No extortion here. Mm, mm.

Whether this is dishonesty or rank cowardice isn’t material here. What is material is that these performances by SEC administrative judges are, by themselves, reason to do away with the SEC’s administrative judge system altogether and refer cases the SEC brings to Federal—or State—courts, where the defendants can get an actual fair trial.

These sham performances also should prompt a Congressional review of all administrative judge systems, Federal government wide, with a requirement that each entity having such a system prove it needs it and that the Federal and State court systems cannot handle the cases.

Moving in the Right Direction

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For 13 years the countries of Southeast Asia have tried building a framework with China to resolve their territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

That plan has been eclipsed in part, officials at high-level talks in Malaysia this weekend acknowledged, in favor of a blunter strategy for dealing with China: strengthening alliances between countries anxious about Beijing’s increasingly assertive behavior.

This also runs counter to the People’s Republic of China’s strongly stated and often repeated preference for dealing with each of the South China Sea nations in strictly bilateral talks—one-on-one talks that the PRC could easily dominate.

Events like Vietnam and the Republic of the Philippines moving outside ASEAN to deal directly with each other and with other interested parties are intended to give those with disputes with the PRC’s sea grab a more powerful position from which to answer the PRC’s aggressions.

These budding arrangements also surround the signing of a new US-ASEAN strategic partnership, an arrangement that is intended to guide interactions between the two over the next five years and to

deepen the relationship as well as priority areas for cooperation not just between the two sides, but also on regional, global and transnational issues.

Whatever that means.

It’s good that the South China Sea nations are beginning to band together in order to better address the PRC’s acquisitiveness. That their moves don’t involve the US, despite President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” is…instructive.

Trust is a Two-Way Street

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Of necessity, trust must flow both ways. If one does not trust another, the other cannot rely on the one even to behave in a predictable manner toward that other, much less be trustworthy in turn.

The IRS has begun pushing 501(c)(3) nonprofits—the sort of nonprofits that the IRS has been caught targeting punitively conservative versions of—to give up the social security numbers of their donors.

Under the proposed rule, the IRS would create an optional filing for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Those participating would, as part of their yearly report, turn over the Social Security numbers of any donors who give $250 or more to a charity in a given year.

The IRS’ claimed rationale for this is to simplify the ability of donors to claim the deductions on their tax returns by allowing the IRS to “verify” donors’ claims on their returns.

No. Since the IRS cannot be trusted by American taxpayers, it’s in no position to worry about the trustworthiness of an American taxpayer. There is no legitimate rationale for this “voluntary” reporting.

Further, for those who think this “optional” form of reporting will remain voluntary, I may know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe in which you might also be interested.

Inversions

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Corporate inversions occur when a business in a high tax country gets bought out by a company in a low tax country and the bought-out company moves its own headquarters to the buyer’s country. This is occurring increasingly with American companies laboring under US’ usurious corporate tax code.

The Treasury Department—the Obama administration—demurs from these, and it has written, and it is writing more, rules to interfere with such moves. For instance,

The government still is working on tighter rules for a corporate tax-avoidance technique known as earnings-stripping and could release them in the coming months.

And this one:

One aspect of the rules, which limit companies’ ability to transfer foreign operations to a new foreign parent company, will apply to future transactions by all companies that completed inversions since Sept 22, 2014….

Such moves are things that a Progressive, Democratic Party-dominated government would love, but they’re anathema to liberty—interfering with the private decisions of American business owners as they do—and to a free market, which at the core of liberty.

The correct move, although it would restrict the personal power of government officials and their cronies and lobbyists, is to lower the corporate tax rates to globally competitive levels so that inversions of American companies become unattractive and so that other countries’ businessmen want to come here. With the job opportunities for Americans such additional businesses would represent.

American Companies Beholden to Foreign Governments?

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Now it appears that the Obama administration is taking yet another step to make us look like Europe: he’s negotiating an agreement that could end up requiring American companies, domiciled in America and operating in America, to report to European Union authorities.

Recall the European Court of Justice’s ruling last month that European citizens’ personal data that winds up being stored in the US as a result of various business deals is too exposed and the 15-yr-old, successful data-transfer Safe Harbor agreement between the US and the EU. This is the arrangement that’s being renegotiated, and potentially included in the new agreement is this:

American businesses could be required to report requests by US intelligence services for the data of European users under a trans-Atlantic data-transfer pact now being negotiated, according to the European Union’s justice commissioner.

Worse, it seems to be one-sided: EU companies in the US aren’t being required under this new deal to make similar reports to US authorities.

Hmm….