

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis: The Bailout - andreyf
http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/a-visual-guide-to-the-financial-crisisthe-bailout/

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byrneseyeview
I was hoping for something interesting, but it's just a graphically prettied-
up version of something that could have been thrown together in 2006. Or 1996.
Or 1826.

* The rich didn't get that way 'manipulating capital markets'. The biggest investors in hedge funds tend to be pension funds and college endowments, both of which provide big benefits mostly to the middle class.

* The 'unregulated bubble economy' is a funny phrase for an economy fueled by mortgages. Either mortgages are more regulated than, say, stocks, or I didn't hear about: a law making dividends completely tax free; a law making capital gains tax-free if you worked for the company in question; two giant federal agencies that bought hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stocks, and wrote put options on many more, with the express purpose of inflating their price; a strong lobbying effort to get broader stock ownership, including getting members of low-income, low-credit minorities to speculate in dodgy stocks. The mortgage market looks really weird if you imagine its rules being applied to any other market.

* It's funny to compared taxes for 'the wealthy' and 'the working' -- the rich people I know work a whole lot harder than the poor ones. And since capital gains and dividends are paid out of profits taxed at the corporate level, even reducing the capital gains tax to zero would put the rich at about the same level as everyone else; as it is, income earned by a corporation you own part of is taxed more highly than income you earn directly.

* The headline about two thirds of corporations paying no taxes was highly inaccurate. It referred to a study claiming that during a multi-year period, at least two thirds of corporations paid no taxes in at least one year. In other words, if you surveyed ten people about their eating habits and found that five of them skipped breakfast once a week, this headline's standard of proof would allow you to argue that half of them were starving.

I don't want to cover the rest, but those were the most egregious points.

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jmtame
The very bottom should show a massive meteor on a crash course with Earth.

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ardell
Why no mention of Rep. Gohmert's proposal to make Jan and Feb 2009 a tax
holiday? IMO it's a brilliant way to allow the free market to choose the
winners and losers instead of putting that decision in the hands of the
government.

(more about Gohmert's proposal:
[http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=953...](http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=95307&catid=8))

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swombat
Flag this trash.

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timr
What does the parent comment contribute to a civil discussion?

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swombat
It contributes that this is trash and I have flagged it because it doesn't
belong on HN. It has nothing to do with hackers, we've really had enough
bailout-spam lately, and this is one of the least well thought through
(although very reddit- and digg-friendly because oh-my-god-look-it's-a-nice-
picture), and I hope never to have to rest my weary eyes on this stupid
headline again.

