Politics

Private Equity Gets a Lower Tax Rate. Why?

December 19, 2011 Business

Reading a New York Times Story on Mitt Romney’s continued receipt of income from Bain Capital, a company he left in early 1999, I was reminded of the special tax deal that hedge fund and private equity operators get. Tax treatment of hedge fund and private equity compensation has been another point of political contention. […]

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Albany County Budget Vetoes Would Increase (Not Decrease) Property Taxes

December 13, 2011 Budget

Albany County Executive Michael Breslin, with just a couple weeks to go before his 16 year tenure ends, has issued a series of unusual budget vetoes. These may be his most significant budget vetoes ever and they certainly are within the past half-dozen years, but there’s a twist. They would lead to increased property taxes […]

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Mitt Romney is a Cluster Bomb

November 28, 2011 Finance

Like cluster bombs, Mitt Romney is indifferent to indiscriminate “collateral damage.” I’ve been doing some research on private equity firms and the more I see, the more I suspect that they’re just another version of the rapacious financial practices of the last couple decades. They may be better disguised than “collateralized debt obligations” and other […]

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Somewhere Between Scylla and Charybdis

October 12, 2011 Budget

Recently I had lunch and caught up with an old friend and colleague, one who’s been central to the wars over health coverage. We’re equally distressed about, not only the state of the economy, but the state of political discourse and decision making. We’ve been concerned for quite some time, but this past summer’s debt […]

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