Obama is trying once again to distract us with his crusade against evil oil speculators. It's so transparent it's laughable. Stansberry has a great retort to the Teleprompter in Chief's rose garden speech yesterday.
Thank goodness so many great and wise leaders are looking out for us. Where would we be without them?
Our Dear Leader, Komrade Obama, has attempted to curb rising gasoline prices by getting tough on evil oil market "speculators." Oil speculators manipulate the market, driving up the price of crude oil and gasoline, taking their ill-gotten profits, and making life hard for America's middle and lower classes… right?
Wrong. Oil speculators do the same thing in the oil market that all speculators do in every other commodity market. They take risks commodity producers can't afford to take by guaranteeing a price to the producer. If you sell futures to hedge your price, I (the speculator) buy, or "go long." If they fall, you don't lose money producing the commodity. I lose money betting on the price. If prices go up, I win and you get paid the set price.
If you wish to curb speculation, by definition, you wish to make commodities more expensive. It's amazing how politicians are always claiming to do the opposite of what they're really doing… and that the vast, thundering herd never seems to get it.
Of course, as anyone whose memory can reach back all of 12 months or so can tell you, gasoline prices go up every spring. They're practically required by law to rise… Every May 1, upstream suppliers must begin storing "summer blend" gasoline to comply with the Clean Air Act of 1990. Gas stations must start selling them by June 1. Summer blends cost more to produce, so they cost more at the pump, too. Every April, refineries must spend money switching over to summer blends, and then spend more by adding costly additives to gas to comply with the law.
As usual, the reason gas isn't cheaper is mostly on the government's interference in the market, NOT the supplier's alleged greed. Greed makes manufacturers push costs down, not up.
Summer blends are alleged to create less pollution and greenhouse gases, even though any high school chemistry student can tell the difference is negligible. What summer blends really do is make gasoline cost $0.01-$0.20 more, depending on location. If Komrade Obama really wanted lower gasoline prices, the first thing he'd do is repeal summer blending requirements. But he doesn't really want anything to cost less. He wants everything to cost more, so he can run to the rescue of you and me, the benighted masses.
The truth about gasoline prices is as complicated as the price of any other commodity. Inputs are unfathomably varied and complex. For example, in addition to summer blend requirements, people drive more in the summer, as they take long-distance car trips for vacations. Also, the weather interferes more with the supply, since hurricanes generally don't happen in the winter. And finally, refineries like to wait until summer to do maintenance. Shutdowns only add to supply concerns.
So what Komrade Obama should really do is repeal the summer blend requirements, force people to drive less, and stop the weather from existing. Given all the promises he made before winning the election, these three should be no problem. I mean, everybody talks about the weather, but it takes a man like our Dear Leader to step in and do something about it. Or maybe he should force refineries to do maintenance in the winter. That's how you fix things, right? You just force people to do everything the "right" way. It's a good thing we have a great, wise leader like Komrade Obama. Otherwise, we'd be driving around, polluting the ozone layer, and paying a lot less for gasoline.
So if Obama gets his way, those found guilty of "market manipulation" – an undefinable crime – will pay $10 million for every day they're alleged to have committed it. Obama also wants to give financial regulators more power (presumably because that's worked out so well in the past).
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I get this letter each week called By The Numbers. It usually has some interesting stats, but this week was especially good.
The US government had a $198 billion deficit in March 2012, extending its streak of consecutive monthly deficits to 42, an all-time record (source: Treasury Department).
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel believes that past pension commitments made by his city to
public sectors workers have been so severely unfunded that lacking any other plan changes (e.g., increasing retirement age, decreasing the plan’s automatic cost-of-living increases), Chicago would have to raise property taxes by +150% to pay for the existing plan benefits (source: Chicago Tribune).
***The government projected on 1/31/12 that the USA’s aggregate budget deficits over the upcoming 10 fiscal years (i 2013 2022) ld b $3 072 t illi Th Whit H j t d l t k i.e., 2013-would be 3.072 trillion. The White House projected last week that the implementation of the “Buffett Rule” (i.e., a minimum 30% tax on millionaires) would reduce the nation’s debt by $47 billion over the next 10 years, reducing the $3.072 trillion by 1.5% to $3.025 trillion (source: CBO).***
The average private college costs $38,589 for tuition, fees, room and board for the current school year (2011-12), more than a 2 ½ times increase over the $14,188 average cost from 20 years ago (1991-92 school year). If the same rate of inflation (+5.1% per year) from the last 20 years occurs over the next 20 years, an average private college will cost $104,956 for the single school year of 2031-32 (source: College Board).
To rank in the top 1/10 of 1% of all wage earners requires an adjusted gross income (AGI) level of $1.43 million. Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney reported $20.90 million of AGI for 2011 (source: IRS).
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Here is a Peter Schiff interviewed I thought you might like.
Peter Schiff April 14, 2012 Fox News – Huckabee | Euro Pacific Capital
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Taxes Prompt More Americans to Renounce Citizenship
A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship.
"'Truth, justice, and the American way' — it's not enough anymore," the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran.
Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.
Editor's Note:The IRS’ Worst Nightmare — How to Pay Zero Taxes
But not everyone's motivations are as lofty as Superman's. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons.
The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they're living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April — this year, the deadline is Tuesday — an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.
The National Taxpayer Advocate's Office, part of the IRS, released a report in December that details the difficulties of filing taxes from overseas. It cites heavy paperwork, a lack of online filing options and a dearth of local and foreign-language resources.
For those wishing to legally escape the filing requirements, the only way is to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship. Last year, IRS records show that at least 1,788 people did, and that's likely an underestimate. The IRS publishes in the Federal Register the names of those who give up their citizenship, and some who renounced say they haven't seen their name on the list yet.
The State Department said records it keeps differ from those published by the IRS. They indicate that renunciations have remained steady, at about 1,100 each year, said an official.
The decision by the IRS to publish the names is referred to by lawyers as "name and shame." That's because those who renounce are seen as willing to give up their citizenship primarily for financial reasons.
There's also an "exit tax" for the very rich who choose to leave. During the last 25 years, a number of millionaires and billionaires have renounced their citizenship. Among them: Ted Arison, the late founder of Carnival Cruises, and Michael Dingman, a former Ford Motor director.
But those of more modest means renounce, too. They say leaving America is about more than money; it's about privacy and red tape.
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