12.5.09
I wrote in my Monday thoughts two months about about how you may “Pay Twice” for the bailouts. I wanted to give you a link to sign a petition to tell Congress “no thanks.” Here’s a link to one of the petitions:
A Summary for Those Who Aren’t Familiar
HR 1068, “Let Wall Street Pay for the Wall Street Bailouts Act of 2009,” is a House proposal by Rep. Peter DeFazio of California (a place where fiscal mismanagement makes the US Congress’ behavior look prudent). He wants “Wall Street” to pay to prevent a future financial collapse. Fair enough – I mean his thinking is right out of Venezuela but ok I’ll buy the populist rhetoric for now.
However, here’s how he wants to do it – by taxing stock & bond trades and other financial transactions. Does this affect you? Of course it does – if you have a brokerage account – NEW TAX On YOU; if you have a 401(k), 403(b), etc, the funds in your plan will pay taxes to buy and sell stocks/bonds, etc in your funds – NEW TAX ON YOU. If you have an annuity, the insurance company offering the annuity will pay taxes on bonds, etc that it buys for its portfolio and those taxes will take away from you – A NEW TAX ON YOU.
So you can see, this isn’t really Wall Street paying for the bailouts, it’s YOU AGAIN! Your taxes paid for AIG, Government Motors (GM), Goldman (Government Sachs), etc – and your savings paid for it too – part of the reason the dollar has dropped 15% this year vs other currencies are because of the Federal Reserve bailouts – so your net worth lost 15% of real purchasing power due to the Fed. Now they want you to pay again – but this time – DIRECTLY.
I ask that you call your rep/Senator and tell them you don’t want to support HR 1068. If you don’t want to be all negative, tell them to support HR 1207, to Audit the Fed, and do not water that down by mixing it in with the bigger Financial Services Regulatory legislation.
Thanks,
Chris Grande
