The ABCD Four
The world's four largest grain traders, responsible for the vast majority of global corn, soya, and wheat trading and processing, have been accused of large-scale tax evasion in a landmark series of cases being brought against them by the Argentinian government. With the global food system and who controls it under intense scrutiny because of record prices, the legal battle with the "ABCD four," as they are known, has taken on heightened significance. Ricardo Echegaray, director of Argentina's revenue and customs service, Afip, has given a detailed account of the charges his department is bringing against ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus. "These companies have gone into criminality," Echegaray said. "2008 was when agricultural commodities prices spiked and was the best year for them in prices, yet we could see that the companies with the biggest sales showed very little profit in this country." Echegaray said he had evidence from his detailed inquiry that all four traders had submitted false declarations of sales and routed profits through tax havens or their headquarters, in contravention of Argentinian tax law. He also alleged they had on occasion used phantom firms to buy grain. He further alleged that they had inflated costs in Argentina to reduce taxable profits or claim tax credits there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/01/argentina-accuses-grain-traders-tax-evasion/print
Plutocratic hocus-pocus
Too much inequality kills the work ethic
Capitalism relies on inequality. Pay disparities steer resources to where they would be most productively employed. Inequality spurs economic growth by providing incentives for people to accumulate human capital and become more productive. It pulls the best and brightest into the most lucrative lines of work, where the most profitable companies hire them. Yet the increasingly outsize rewards accruing to the nation’s elite threaten to gum up this incentive mechanism. If only a very lucky few can aspire to a big reward, most workers are likely to conclude that it is not worth the effort to try. The odds are not on their side. Inequality has been found to turn people off. Ultimately, the question is this: How much inequality is necessary?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26excerpt.html
"Obama is a shadowboxer"
Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet, not a fighter.
Tom Buffenbarger, President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, 19 Feb 2008http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/12/08/we-are-all-tom-buffenbarger-now.aspx
The Great Tax Con Job
A very small niche of America's uber-wealthy have pulled off what may well be the biggest con job in the history of our republic, and they did it in a startlingly brief 30 or so years. True, they spent over three billion dollars to make it happen, but the reward to them was in the hundreds of billions -- and will continue to be. This money was spent to convince Americans that up is down and black is white. The uber-rich are spending hundreds of millions to make sure words like "burden" are associated with the word "tax," and to convince average working people that they should throw out of office any politicians who are willing to raise taxes on the rich. "No new taxes" is a mantra that is meaningful to the very rich, but largely irrelevant to average working people. The math is really pretty simple. When the uber-rich are heavily taxed, economies prosper and wages for working people steadily rise. When taxes are cut for the rich, working people suffer and economies turn into casinos.
Consensus We Can Believe In
In his latest effort to find common ground with Republicans in Congress, President Barack Obama said today that he was willing to agree that he is a Muslim, Borowitz Report reports from Washington. Differences over his religious orientation have been a sore point between the President and his Republican foes for the past two years, but in agreeing that he is a Muslim Mr Obama is sending a clear signal that he is trying to find consensus. "The American people do not want to see us fighting in Washington," Mr Obama told reporters at the White House. "They want to see us working together to improve their lives, and Allah willing, we will." http://www.borowitzreport.com/2010/12/07/in-latest-compromise-with-gop-obama-agrees-he-is-a-muslim/
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