TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, (from William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming (1919)) Sometime in the late 1980s bank executives discovered that their institutions should be “high performance…
Despite the obvious hypocrisy of their assertions, some prominent bankers continue to act as if the world owes them a living. A while ago Philip Stephens of the Financial Times, echoing the views of the non-nonsense French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, sharply criticized bank CEOs, who were demanding that they be relieved of regulation, for…
I have been away so have only now been able to read this spectacular piece by Philip Stephens of the Financial Times. For those unlucky enough not to have a subscription to this splendid daily, I could not resist pushing the limits of fair use with a few quotes. It is time to make Britain’s…
Last week I posted about the massive tax breaks enjoyed by hedge funds managers, among others. This morning David Weidner puts more numbers around this outrageous tax subsidy for some of the richest people on earth: For example, the top 25 highest-paid fund managers made an average of $570 million in 2006. They received a…
Today NPR ran a story about a bill before the Senate that would close a controversial tax loophole. Investment fund managers, ranging from hedge funds to real estate funds, can structure their income–”carried interest income”–to be paid at the long term capital gains rate of 15%, instead of the top income tax rate of 35%.…
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