Geithner says GOP wrong, ending tax cuts for wealthy won't hurt small business

[SecularMotion]

Source: Washington Post

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner pushed back hard Wednesday against GOP criticism that allowing tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans could harm small businesses.

Senate Republicans held a news conference Wednesday afternoon with a trio of small-business owners to blast the Obama administration's plan to allow Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to expire at the end of the year, while extending only those that apply to middle-class families. They argued that more than half of all small-business income would be hit by the increase, potentially imperiling businesses that employ as many as 30 million workers.

"The impact of all this taxation, regulation and, yes, litigation as well, has a deterrent effect on what we all would like to do, and that is to create jobs," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Hours later, in a speech at the Center for American Progress, Geithner called the GOP effort "a political argument masquerading as substance." He said letting the top-level tax cuts expire would affect fewer than 3 percent of small businesses, leaving the vast majority untouched. He also suggested that Republicans are using a misleading definition of "small business." According to the GOP's definition, Geithner said, a small business could include partners in a major law firm and directors of a large financial company.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080407188.html

[Turbineguy]

1. GOP wrong

full stop.

[theoldman]

2. Let me repeat this one more time.

Ending the tax cuts only affects the business owner's take home pay. It does not effect the business expense. Workers do not have to be laid off unless business drops off. This has nothing to do with federal taxes.

[Beavker]

5. I wish I knew more about the Tax code (at all)

especially for businesses. Same meme has been going on since before the election: The tax increase on those making $250,000 or more was going to kill small business.

I just can't see how it would effect the business. It's a company. If the owner or any one working for that company takes home $250k, then they will pay more taxes, tough shit. I couldn't see, or fathom, how it would effect the profit of a business, and if it did, then it shouldn't.

If you are self employed, and your business (you) claim $250k of income after business expenses and the inevitable half assed write offs, then that is what you made. If you don't want to pay more, hire someone else and pay them 50k so you only make 200k.

It's just straight personal greed from those that made out when the economy was good, but don't want to help the needy (their customers) when times are tough.

[David Zephyr]

8. The increase is for individuals earning more than $170K and families over $250K

The tax cuts for the rich need to be allowed to expire.

The GOP will work very hard to scare successful small business owners and professionals, like doctors, who just skate up to the $170K realm.

If I could wave a wand, I would set the individual at $250K and the family at $350K because then it would really pigeon-hole the debate into a clearer focus of what "rich" is. The $170K figure creates a net that takes in moderately successful people along with those who simply have it made.

That said, the cuts for the upper incomes need to expire and the inheritance taxes should be limited to $1 Million per person with the rest taxed at 50%.

[truckin]

6. You are correct and it is important that people understand this.

[flyarm]

3. I won't say Geithner is right or wrong, but nothing that guy says will I ever believe..ever!

I have posted this many times On Du and elsewhere..
Geithner is Kissingers Guy..I don't believe on damn thing this person says..not a thing!


Shortly after taking office..Obama asked Henry Kissinger..knick name.."The Butcher of Cambodia"..to represent his administration in Talks with Russia..

lets look as some serious connections here of Geithner , Kissinger and Obama...shall we..( edit to add: much of this i have posted many times in the past.)


TIMOTHY GEITHNER

Biography

Early life and education
Geithner was born in Brooklyn, New York.<2> He spent most of his childhood living outside the United States, including present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, India and Thailand, where he completed high school at International School Bangkok.<3> He then attended Dartmouth College, graduating with a B.A. in government and Asian studies in 1983.<4> He earned an M.A. in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1985.<4><5> He has studied Chinese<4> and Japanese.<6>

Geithner's paternal grandfather, Paul Herman Geithner (1902–1972), emigrated with his parents from the German town of Zeulenroda to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1908.<7> His father, Peter F. Geithner, is the director of the Asia program at the Ford Foundation in New York.

During the early 1980s, Peter Geithner oversaw the Ford Foundation's microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by S. Ann Dunham-Soetoro, President Barack Obama's mother, and they met in person at least once.<8>

Timothy Geithner's mother, Deborah Moore Geithner, is a pianist and piano teacher in Larchmont, New York where his parents currently reside. Geithner's maternal grandfather, Charles F. Moore, was an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served as a vice president of Ford Motor Company.

Early career

After completing his studies,

Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, D.C., for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988.

He went on to serve as an attaché at the US Embassy in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996-1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).<5>

He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.<5> Summers was his mentor,<10><11> but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.<11><12><13>



In 2002 he left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department.<14> He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department (2001-2003) at the International Monetary Fund.<5>


In October 2003, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.<15> His salary in 2007 was $398,200.<16> Once at the New York Fed, he became Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee component. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty.<17>


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Timmy's dad :


Peter F. Geithner, is the director of the Asia program at the Ford Foundation in New York. During the early 1980s,

Peter Geithner oversaw the Ford Foundation's microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by

S. Ann Dunham-Soetoro,

President Barack Obama's mother, and they met in person at least once



Geithner's maternal grandfather, Charles F. Moore, was an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served as a vice president of Ford Motor Company.

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now this should alarm every true democrat on these boards!!!!!!!


and From an April post of mine here at DU: and please, don't believe me ...click the link..it was in the CFR publication!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Remarks by National Security Adviser Jones at 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy

Published February 8, 2009




Speaker: James L. Jones


U.S. National Security Adviser Jones ( edit to add: new advisor hired by Obama!!!!) gave these remarks at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on

February 8, 2009.





"Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.




Source: http://www.cfr.org/publication/18515/remar ... ...

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Report: AIG bailout money behind banks' recent profitability

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009 /...

snip:
The financial blog Zero Hedge has posted an "exclusive" that claims that according to an insider's account, AIG (yes, that AIG) "was responsible for the banks' January and February profitability."


Saying it is "rarely speechless," ZH offered "a moment of silence for the phenomenal scam that continues unabated in the financial markets, and now has the full oversight and blessing of the U.S. government, which in turns keeps on duping U.S. taxpayers into believing everything is good."


ZH says the insider perspective came in an email from "a correlation desk trader." Unless you're a finance whiz (and who is these days?!) you might get lost in the explanation of how AIG supposedly engineered this feat of profitability. But ZH tries to explain the "mumbo jumbo" in "layman's terms":


AIG, knowing it would need to ask for much more capital from the Treasury imminently, decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money losing to the U.S. taxpayers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this, for lack of a better word, fraudulent scam.


In simple terms think of it as an auto dealer, which knows that U.S. taxpayers will provide for an infinite amount of money to fund its ongoing sales of horrendous vehicles (think Pontiac Azteks): the company decides to sell all the cars currently in contract, to lessors at far below the amortized market value, thereby generating huge profits for these lessors, as these turn around and sell the cars at a major profit, funded exclusively by U.S. taxpayers (readers should feel free to provide more gripping allegories).

[defendandprotect]

4. We should end both Bush --and Reagan -- tax cuts for the rich . . .

and we should end the trade agreements -- immediately!!

[Sadie5]

7. How about AMT

Will we still owe that? I thought I saw on DU a story about Obama looking into the trade agreements, especially CAFTA.

[David Zephyr]

9. K&R.

Democrats will need to be careful how they present this to the public because the GOP will make it look like everyone is going to lose their tax cuts...as they always do.

[Stumbler]

10. Yep. The Dems better frame the issue right for once.

[TomCADem]

11. Only 2 Percent Of Small Businesses Would Be Affected! The Wealthiest 2 Percent!

The GOP is once again showing its elitist colors.