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RESPONSE TO THE ILLEGAL "SUPER COMMITTEE"
MARCH for JOBS NOT CUTS
Wednesday, November 23 at 4:00 PM
ZUCOTTI PARK
MARCH for JOBS NOT CUTS
Wednesday, November 23 at 4:00 PM
ZUCOTTI PARK
Faced with high unemployment, skyrocketing food prices, a shrinking safety net, no end to foreclosures and corrupt, impotent political leaders who ignore them, the unemployed and underemployed are organizing nation wide. Demands for a publicly funded jobs program and increased support for the jobless will be made in New York, Detroit, LA, Philladelphia, Baltimore, Rhode Island and Boston on WEDNESDAY, NOV. 23, with additional locations to be added.
The New York demonstration against the "Super Committee" cuts will take place on Wednesday, 4 PM at Zucotti Park.
This date marks the deadline for the Congressional “Super Committee” to reach a deal on the deficit. All reports indicate they have failed, the result being massive, mandatory cuts to the already inadaquete support for struggling families. This short-term deficit was created by unfunded wars and give-a-ways to freeloading banks. Now, to clean up their mess, even more of the burden is being placed on the backs of the 99%, with no serious effort at job creation. These facts are proof positive of how broken the current economic and political system is, and why the streets are the only place for the unemployed to fight for justice. “Hope” is gone, replaced with A LOT of justified anger.
One example that explains this anger is the “Big Bank Bond Scam”; legalized corruption that wastes tax dollars and forces us into perpetual debt servitude. In 2011 alone, the Federal government will pay nearly $400 Billion in debt service to the banks - interest payments that are triple tax-free, meaning the banks do not pay any city, state or federal taxes on this easy profit.
In New York City, out of a 2011 budget of $63 billion, the city will pay $7 Billion in bond interest to the already bloated and bailed out banks. On the NY State level, there are over 1000 various “authorities” similarly addicted to debt servitude.
The MTA is a good example. In 2011, the MTA will pay $2.5 Billion to the banks for debt service on bonds, more triple tax-free profit for the banks. $9.5 Billion per year in tax-free profit to the banks from New York City and just one state authority. Include 1000 more, the federal payments and every other state and city, and the pattern is clear: like a crafty drug dealer, banks keep lending us money to pay them, increasing their tax-free profits every year.
It would cost about $8 billion to create 200,000 jobs at $40,000 per year with health benefits. The money is already there. When politicians use our public dollars to keep us in perpetual debt servitude- tax-free for their friends, dealers banks, no less - before creating good jobs, providing health care or a solid education for our children, no one should be surprised to find us angry as hell and taking to the streets.
The money is there - The Banks got their share – Stop debt service – BE FAIR OR BEWARE!
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Cannon here. Unlike that fake "Occupy Building 7" sub-movement, the folks behind Occupy 4 Jobs are real -- real names, real contact numbers, a real address. I agree with their stance wholeheartedly. If we allow the teabaggers to be the only ones mounting "street heat" in response to the supercommittee debacle, then the right will run the show.
7 comments:
In 2011 alone, the Federal government will pay nearly $400 Billion in debt service to the banks - interest payments that are triple tax-free, meaning the banks do not pay any city, state or federal taxes on this easy profit.
I'm not clear on how this part supposedly occurs. I think it doesn't.
It's true that municipal bonds' interest payments are free of federal income tax to their recipients. But there are no federal bonds with that treatment.
Interest from Treasury bonds is subject to federal income tax, while exempt from state and local income taxation.
Both of these tax exemptions (muni-bonds' interest free from federal taxation, and Treasury bonds' interest from state and local taxation) are long-standing tax treatments, decades long. I don't think either is a scam or ripoff, but if they are, the details are a little different from what is portrayed in the above paragraph.
XI
To second this thought; although a "bank" may well have participated in the original issuing of the bonds, and they certainly received a fee for that (usually up front), the actual bond holders are likely going to be all sorts of people and institutions, maybe even including banks.
The municipality or whoever originally issued the bonds got that amount of money in the past, to build bridges, or stadia, or whatever. You can validly argue that not all such bonds were well used, but they are still a legitimate obligation.
syborg
Dont be silly.
US Treasury bonds, and other Federal Agencies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac etc issue bonds. Banks buy a very large proportion of these bonds. They get the money to buy these bonds from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve lends at 0.15%-0.25% And 10 year Federal bonds currently pay 2%.
Bonds held by market makers (banks) are not taxed at source. Indeed regardless of market making tax is applied to net revenue - ie revenue after costs. Profit. So they dont really get taxed. You wouldnt either if you set up a company to hold your bonds.
Does that help?
Harry
Harry-- er, no, that doesn't help me understand at all.
I bet that if you look at the balance sheet of a large bank, it would very well show interest income from holdings of Treasury bonds on their taxable income side of things. If they have enough off-setting losses, of course, it may be that the corporate income tax paid on these things is nothing. But they'd have shown a greater loss without this income, if I understand it correctly.
It's true that a primary dealer in US Treasuries may buy bonds that they then sell to clients at some handling fee markup, and thus never receive interest from them. But that's for a different reason.
XI
Forgive me but I am pretty sure that isnt right. Primary dealers dont pay tax on coupons. If they did their business would be untenable. The borrow at the repo rate to hold bonds. There is no tax on repo transactions. They receive coupons on USTs. If there was tax they would not be able to hold large inventories. The interest out would be larger than the interest in (in normal times).
But this is very google-able. So I shall try and find some time to google it.
But why not ask a different question. Why borrow huge amounts of money only to lend it via the Fed Reserve back to banks so they can buy the bonds? What is really going on with this transaction?
I would strongly recommend you look up some pieces on Modern Monetary Theory. Its not uncontroversial, but it proponents suggest that some of our monetary fetishes are without basis, and have been without basis since 1974.
Harry
I have no idea what any of you posters are going on about....and I don't give a flip about the "taxes" part. What I want to know is where are OUR quarter-percent loans?
Where are ANY loans?
We shouldn't be lending these banksters essentially free money that they then sock away instead of keeping the money flowing.
I'm getting out of my house, thanks to someone who doesn't need to rely on a bank loan to buy it. And taking my money and buying from an owner-holds-the mortgage. Fuck the banks.
"The money is there - The Banks got their share – Stop debt service – BE FAIR OR BEWARE!"
Great, but demand that personal debts are written off too.
One way to present this might be as follows:
- the banks are holding the country to ransom, right?
- so the government should let them go bust, rather than bail them out, right?
- so that would leave the government holding their assets, right?
- which are mainly debt, right?
- and a major part of which, not counting the 'funny' money owed by one bank to another, is money owed by ordinary people, right?
- so do you want the government to continue to collect the interest payments that people currently owe to the fucking banker crooks?
- if so, what's the point of demanding that the government stops bailing out the banks?
- shouldn't we demand that the government stops acting as enforcer for the banks?
The argument over evolutionary reform or revolution isn't always especially relevant. Amazingly, that indicates our strength. There's a lot of agreement that 'capitalism' (whatever people mean by that term) can't go on, and even if it could, it shouldn't. This is the first time since around 1968, and before then, the 1920s and 1930s, that this has been so.
But we're weak. What indicates our weakness is false consciousness. How to start using language that isn't defined using advertising and brand? I don't find it difficult at all, but then I haven't watched TV for 20 years or read a newspaper for 5. What's difficult is to influence other people to get a handle on the extent to which the culture is manipulated; on the basic idea of the 'pseudo'. To 'make shame more shameful still by making it public', as Marx put it.
Colour revolution and fascist bloodbath could easily go hand-in-hand. Colour revolution is fake. So is Twitter and Facebook revolution. Everyone likes Gill Scott-Heron's poem about the revolution not being televised. Well the revolution won't be tweeted either. It won't be online. It won't be on your phone.
What we should agree on is that at least a massive part of the financial system should be allowed to crack up and disappear. We need this to happen. Increasingly urgently. Things are going to look a hell of a lot different in 2-3 years time.
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