In not unsurprising news, the Supercommittee will shortly announce that they have failed to reach an agreement to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit over ten years. The New York Times reports on why the twelve-member group became deadlocked:
In the end the two sides could not agree on a mix of tax increases and spending cuts and — perhaps above all — on the fate of the tax cuts originally signed by President George W. Bush, which are now scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.
The New York Times recently ran a story about CEO Larry Page’s efforts to reform Google. As a first step, he fired his secretary because she was scheduling too many meetings for him. Page understood that many meetings lack focus and fail to achieve any meaningful objective—using up time that he could have spent doing actual work. This wasted time is no small beans for American businesses: meetings take up approximately 35% of the workday (pdf) for middle managers, and up to 60% of the day (pdf) for top executives.
What can organizations and their employees do to mitigate the burden of unproductive meetings? Continue reading
Financial results in large banks have been inflated in the third quarter due to an accounting rule called “debt value adjustment” (DVA). DVA states that banks are allowed to mark their debt to market. In other words, if their debt decreases in price on the market, this is interpreted as a decrease in liabilities and is reported as profit. In the third quarter, this rule created £10 billion in profits in the biggest U.K. banks and $12 billion in profits in the biggest U.S. banks.
In the past week, the news about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac focused on the $13 million in bonuses paid to the top executives. But a much more significant story has received much less publicity: the bipartisan resistance to the lowering of the mortgage limits for Fannie and Freddie.
In October, President Obama unveiled part of his plan to try to help the ailing housing market. Specifically, he is expanding access and reducing barriers to his 2009 HARP program that allowed homeowners to refinance their mortgages at lower rates. However, takeup was minimal because underwater loans were not able to participate, and because upfront fees were high.
In September, I wrote in the Washington Post about the difficulties of achieving corporate tax reform—specifically, how you could not realistically reduce the rate from 35% to 25% on a revenue neutral basis. The Joint Committee on Taxation recently released a report that confirms my analysis.
A few days ago, I wrote about Rick Perry’s unviable tax plan. In the same policy document (PDF, see page 14), he outlines his beliefs about Social Security. A few months ago, Perry was calling Social Security unconstitutional and a Ponzi scheme, but now he seems to want to preserve it. Rick Perry’s statements about Social Security have moderated, but his proposal remains very far to the right.
In mid-September, Rick Perry led Herman Cain, 32% to 4% (according to RealClearPolitics.com). Soon after, Cain unveiled his outlandish 9-9-9 plan that changed the game: today, Perry trails Cain, 11% to 25%.
But Rick Perry will not go quietly. To try to counter Cain’s momentum, Perry saw Cain’s bet and raised him with his own radical tax plan.