...hopelessly outgunned presidential campaign as if it was a business, not even spending more money than he had in hand. C'mon now, how laughable is that in this day and age in modern America that someone who wants to run the federal government should live within his own campaign means? Just like normal people who live on a real budget with no ability to vote themselves a pay raise and a higher debt ceiling when no one is watching C-SPAN!
When the ultimate Democratic winner, in league with the extraordinary gentleman Harry Reid and the tough-talking San Francisco grandma who's House speaker, has decided to spend a gazillion more dollars than any non-federal calculator has digits to display.
These people, for Nancy's sake, are already spending the income taxes of the unborn grandchildren of those 4,000 babies that Paul delivered. A shocking realization that may be helping to fuel the recent re-examination of Ron Paul, who never met a federal dollar that needed spending -- unless it was going back to his district near Houston.
Ron Paul came within something like 1,000 delegates of catching John McCain for the Republican nomination in St. Paul. But when he finally gave up, Paul still had about $5 million left over. He's been investing it traveling around the country to speak and helping like-minded RFR's (Republicans For Real) organize all over. And, who knows, maybe sell a few books.
But now, just as his fierce supporters fearlessly predicted all along, many in American politics are coming around to think that maybe RP's crazy ideas, for example, of auditing and controlling the Federal Reserve, are maybe not quite so crazy.
Our news colleague in Washington, Don Lee, details the sea-change in opinion in a comprehensive look at the old guy's rebirth for weekend print editions, which we're sharing here this morning as a distinguished guest post for Ticket readers around the world.
And for any surviving Ron Paulites, who won't dare leave their typically snippy comments below because that would require them acknowledging that their favorite fiction about a MSM conspiracy to ignore the old guy is fiction.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Because no federal funds are involved, Ron Paul would want you to click here for Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. Or join us over here on The Ticket's new Facebook FAN page.
Here's Lee's reported news item:
For three decades, Texas congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul's extreme brand of libertarian economics consigned him to the far fringes even among conservatives. Not a few times, his views put him on the losing end of 434-1 votes on Capitol Hill.
No longer. With the economy still struggling and political divisions deepening, Paul's ideas not only are gaining a wider audience but also are helping to shape a potentially historic battle over economic policy -- a struggle that will affect everything including jobs, growth and the nation's place in the global economy.
Already, Paul's long-derided proposal to give Congress supervisory power over the traditionally independent Federal Reserve appears to be on its way to becoming law.
His warnings on deficits and inflation are now Republican mantras.
And with this year's congressional election campaign looming, the Texas congressman's deep-seated distrust of activist government has helped fuel protests such as the tea-party movement, harden partisan divisions in Washington and stoke public fears about federal spending and the deficit.
"People are wondering what went wrong. And they're not happy with what the....
....government is offering up," said James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, offering an explanation for why seemingly wonkish arguments over interest rate policy and the money supply are spilling over onto ordinary Americans.
Some of Paul's most extreme views are still beyond the pale for most economists. Despite the eroding value of the dollar, no one expects the U.S. to return to the gold standard, as Paul advocates; most economists think that could wreck the economy.
In their less drastic forms, however, Paul's ideas are being welcomed by conservatives and viewed with foreboding by liberals. For conservatives, runaway inflation constitutes the biggest potential threat to the nation's future. Liberals worry that cutting back stimulus efforts too soon could slow or even halt the current recovery.
The debate over that question -- what the basic thrust of U.S. economic policy should be -- is likely to dominate the coming elections and Washington policymaking.
And so far, Paul and his fellow conservatives are on the offensive. President Obama and congressional Democrats are repeatedly pledging not to increase the deficit and to begin cutting back soon.
"I think we're going to be in for more revival of fiscal responsibility," said William Niskanen of the Cato Institute, who headed the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan.
Niskanen sees the Texas Republican's increasing influence as stemming from the continued economic weakness. "To this extent, Ron Paul gains voice," he said.
Paul would go a lot further in cutting back the government's role than even free-marketers like Niskanen support. If Paul had it his way, for instance, he would do away with the Fed entirely. In his bestselling book "End the Fed," he lambasted the central bank as an "immoral, unconstitutional . . . tool of tyrannical government."
Such rhetoric might once have been dismissed as extremism.
But Paul's anti-Fed message has drawn broad support because of the central bank's failure to restrain the flood of cheap money and excessive risk-taking in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
It has stirred rallies on college campuses and supportive commentaries from Wall Street pundits. More than 300 representatives in Congress have embraced Paul's ideas for reining in the Fed.
The response "is even more than I ever dreamed," Paul said in an interview, reminiscing about one evening during his 2008 White House run when University of Michigan students chanted "End the Fed" and burned dollar bills.
Paul, a skinny 74-year-old with a hangdog expression, understands that historical circumstances have thrust his ideas to the fore. "An intellectual fight is going on," he said.
Paul traces his economic views to his frugal upbringing in Pittsburgh at the tail end of the Depression. He saved pennies from delivering newspapers and helping out his father's small dairy business.
And his first economics class at Gettysburg College was an eye-opener, Paul said. When a professor explained how banks keep only a tiny part of their deposits on hand and earn money by lending out the rest, Paul discovered one of the "tricks" of the financial system.
Beyond that, Paul's ideas are grounded in the work of economic thinkers from an earlier era who focused on problems similar to those besetting the U.S. today.
In particular, Paul is a disciple of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian theorist born at the end of the 19th century who contended that government intervention in an economy would fail because free markets were better at allocating resources and fueling growth.
Having lived through Germany's devastating hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which helped pave the way for Hitler, Mises wrote long before the Great Depression that over-generous credit policies would encourage excessive borrowing, creating a boom and then a bust.
Mises' ideas became central to what is known as the Austrian School of economics, which emphasized tight controls on credit and money supply, a strategy that discouraged financial ups and downs but tended to slow growth.
By 1940, when Mises arrived in America, most Western economists had embraced the competing theories of Britain's John Maynard Keynes, who called for government to stimulate the economy by spending on infrastructure and cutting interest rates.
Obama has largely followed the Keynesian script, as President George W. Bush did when the economic crisis broke.
Paul's once-lonely espousal of the Austrian School's ideas has gotten new impetus from conservative economists and Republican political strategists.
"A lot of good ideas were shoved aside because of the Depression and the rise of the Keynesian view of the world," said George Selgin, an economics professor at the University of Georgia.
Paul contends that Austrian economics explains the most recent financial meltdown: "It says if you inflate too much, if you have no restraint on monetary authorities, you're going to bring on a crisis." Now, Paul says, administration policies are leading the country toward disaster.
Selgin and many mainstream economists agree that pumping too much money into the economy can lead to trouble, but they say Paul goes too far.
In the 1930s, say Selgin and many other economists, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the U.S. economy began pulling out of the Depression thanks to federal easing of monetary policy.
The economy tipped back into depression after the reins were tightened too soon.
"In this aspect of the monetary system, he's just blown it," Selgin said of Paul.
However, like Mises, whose portrait hangs on his Washington office wall, Paul is intransigent, and that has earned him an ardent following.
"His views are strong and hardheaded, but you've got to stand firm or you'll get blown over in this world," said Mark Skousen, editor of the newsletter Forecasts & Strategies and a former economics professor at Columbia University.
-- Don Lee
Photo: Larry Downing / Reuters; Orlin Wagner / Associated Press; Associated Press (Paul argues with Mike Huckabee in a GOP primary debate).
Facebook has dominated the headlines today with the news that it has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies at a $50 billion valuation.
In addition, the social network intends to raise another $1.5 billion through a “special purpose vehicle” that Goldman Sachs will be setting up to allow some of its clients to indirectly invest in
There have been a lot of questions about the Goldman Sachs “special purpose vehicle” since the news broke. The key questions: Why is Facebook choosing to raise more money through Goldman Sachs? Will the SEC allow this move, or will it force Facebook to start disclosing its financial results to the public? And when will Facebook finally have an IPO?
SEC regulations and the nuances of private investment are complicated subjects, so we thought we’d try to clarify some of the issues surrounding the Facebook-Goldman Sachs deal, including figuring out the likely date of the Facebook IPO.
1. Why Are Facebook and Goldman Sachs Creating a “Special Purpose Vehicle”?
There is an SEC regulation, set by The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, that requires companies with 500 or more shareholders to disclose their earnings to the SEC. The SEC then publishes this financial information, making it public knowledge.
Facebook doesn’t want that headache at all. It doesn’t want to go through the audits, create the reports, or let its competitors know the details of its earnings and expenditures. However, the social network still wants $2 billion in fresh resources, so Goldman Sachs has come up with a very clever workaround; instead of having thousands of individual investors, Goldman Sachs will represent them all and invest on their behalf.
This is essentially what most brokers do on behalf of their clients, the shareholders. Instead of making a person an investor of record in
The New York Times‘ Steven Davidoff provides a stellar overview of the SEC regulations in question, but it essentially boils down to this: Goldman Sachs is helping Facebook circumvent the system so it doesn’t have to report earnings or raise money via an IPO.
2. Will the SEC Allow It?
The SEC isn’t stupid; it knew that brokerage firms would try these types of workarounds. The New York Times dug up the SEC’s definition of a record holder, which includes a provision that says if a company creates a vessel for holding securities of record primarily to circumvent The 1934 Securities Exchange Act, then it will deem beneficial owners as record owners.
In other words, the SEC could deem that Goldman Sachs is circumventing its regulations with its “special purpose vehicle” and thus consider all of the investors within it “record owners” of Facebook. That would mean that the social network would be required to report its earnings.
We think it’s likely that the SEC will intervene. The SEC is already investigating the private secondary markets for potentially violating the same 500 shareholder regulation. It wouldn’t be much of a jump for the SEC to tell Facebook that its investment vehicle doesn’t preclude it from publicly disclosing its financial information. In fact, it’s likely to tell Facebook the opposite.
3. So, When Will Facebook IPO?
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Facebook and Goldman Sachs are setting up this “special purpose vehicle” to raise a ton of cash for the social networking company. They’re absolutely aware that the SEC will not be happy with their arrangement, and they also know that the SEC will likely step in and tell Facebook to disclose its earnings to the public due to the existence of the Goldman Sachs vehicle.
So why would Facebook go through all this trouble when the SEC is going to shoot them down anyway?
The answer is that this move buys Facebook more time to grow and prepare itself for an IPO. The SEC regulation wouldn’t take effect until May 2012 because the SEC only requires private companies to start reporting its financial information within four months after the end of its current fiscal year. So if Facebook violates the 500 shareholder rule this year, then it won’t have to start reporting its earnings until May 2012, 120 days after December 31, 2011.
That’s more than enough time for Facebook to prepare for its IPO. When the day comes that Facebook is required to release its financial information to the public, it will probably decide to just go all-in and become a public company, raising even more money in the process.
Essentially, Facebook has set the clock for its IPO to occur on May 2012 or earlier. Part of the reason we predicted no Facebook IPO in 2011 is because 2012 is the year most of our sources say the Facebook IPO is likely to occur. It all fits.
Mark your calendars and set your watches, everyone: The Facebook IPO is likely coming in 12 to 16 months.
For more Business coverage:
robert shumake
NYC Radio Station Dumps Glenn Beck Over Low - AOL <b>News</b>
A New York radio station is dumping conservative commentator Glenn Beck?s syndicated talk show because of low ratings, according to a published report.
Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots
LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,
Shakesville: Brett Favre <b>News</b>
Brett Favre News. [Trigger warning for sexual assault, which applies to both links] [Link includes descriptions of sexual assault] Associated Press: "Two massage therapists sued Brett Favre on Monday, saying they lost them their ...
robert shumake
NYC Radio Station Dumps Glenn Beck Over Low - AOL <b>News</b>
A New York radio station is dumping conservative commentator Glenn Beck?s syndicated talk show because of low ratings, according to a published report.
Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots
LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,
Shakesville: Brett Favre <b>News</b>
Brett Favre News. [Trigger warning for sexual assault, which applies to both links] [Link includes descriptions of sexual assault] Associated Press: "Two massage therapists sued Brett Favre on Monday, saying they lost them their ...
robert shumake detroit
...hopelessly outgunned presidential campaign as if it was a business, not even spending more money than he had in hand. C'mon now, how laughable is that in this day and age in modern America that someone who wants to run the federal government should live within his own campaign means? Just like normal people who live on a real budget with no ability to vote themselves a pay raise and a higher debt ceiling when no one is watching C-SPAN!
When the ultimate Democratic winner, in league with the extraordinary gentleman Harry Reid and the tough-talking San Francisco grandma who's House speaker, has decided to spend a gazillion more dollars than any non-federal calculator has digits to display.
These people, for Nancy's sake, are already spending the income taxes of the unborn grandchildren of those 4,000 babies that Paul delivered. A shocking realization that may be helping to fuel the recent re-examination of Ron Paul, who never met a federal dollar that needed spending -- unless it was going back to his district near Houston.
Ron Paul came within something like 1,000 delegates of catching John McCain for the Republican nomination in St. Paul. But when he finally gave up, Paul still had about $5 million left over. He's been investing it traveling around the country to speak and helping like-minded RFR's (Republicans For Real) organize all over. And, who knows, maybe sell a few books.
But now, just as his fierce supporters fearlessly predicted all along, many in American politics are coming around to think that maybe RP's crazy ideas, for example, of auditing and controlling the Federal Reserve, are maybe not quite so crazy.
Our news colleague in Washington, Don Lee, details the sea-change in opinion in a comprehensive look at the old guy's rebirth for weekend print editions, which we're sharing here this morning as a distinguished guest post for Ticket readers around the world.
And for any surviving Ron Paulites, who won't dare leave their typically snippy comments below because that would require them acknowledging that their favorite fiction about a MSM conspiracy to ignore the old guy is fiction.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Because no federal funds are involved, Ron Paul would want you to click here for Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. Or join us over here on The Ticket's new Facebook FAN page.
Here's Lee's reported news item:
For three decades, Texas congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul's extreme brand of libertarian economics consigned him to the far fringes even among conservatives. Not a few times, his views put him on the losing end of 434-1 votes on Capitol Hill.
No longer. With the economy still struggling and political divisions deepening, Paul's ideas not only are gaining a wider audience but also are helping to shape a potentially historic battle over economic policy -- a struggle that will affect everything including jobs, growth and the nation's place in the global economy.
Already, Paul's long-derided proposal to give Congress supervisory power over the traditionally independent Federal Reserve appears to be on its way to becoming law.
His warnings on deficits and inflation are now Republican mantras.
And with this year's congressional election campaign looming, the Texas congressman's deep-seated distrust of activist government has helped fuel protests such as the tea-party movement, harden partisan divisions in Washington and stoke public fears about federal spending and the deficit.
"People are wondering what went wrong. And they're not happy with what the....
....government is offering up," said James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, offering an explanation for why seemingly wonkish arguments over interest rate policy and the money supply are spilling over onto ordinary Americans.
Some of Paul's most extreme views are still beyond the pale for most economists. Despite the eroding value of the dollar, no one expects the U.S. to return to the gold standard, as Paul advocates; most economists think that could wreck the economy.
In their less drastic forms, however, Paul's ideas are being welcomed by conservatives and viewed with foreboding by liberals. For conservatives, runaway inflation constitutes the biggest potential threat to the nation's future. Liberals worry that cutting back stimulus efforts too soon could slow or even halt the current recovery.
The debate over that question -- what the basic thrust of U.S. economic policy should be -- is likely to dominate the coming elections and Washington policymaking.
And so far, Paul and his fellow conservatives are on the offensive. President Obama and congressional Democrats are repeatedly pledging not to increase the deficit and to begin cutting back soon.
"I think we're going to be in for more revival of fiscal responsibility," said William Niskanen of the Cato Institute, who headed the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan.
Niskanen sees the Texas Republican's increasing influence as stemming from the continued economic weakness. "To this extent, Ron Paul gains voice," he said.
Paul would go a lot further in cutting back the government's role than even free-marketers like Niskanen support. If Paul had it his way, for instance, he would do away with the Fed entirely. In his bestselling book "End the Fed," he lambasted the central bank as an "immoral, unconstitutional . . . tool of tyrannical government."
Such rhetoric might once have been dismissed as extremism.
But Paul's anti-Fed message has drawn broad support because of the central bank's failure to restrain the flood of cheap money and excessive risk-taking in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
It has stirred rallies on college campuses and supportive commentaries from Wall Street pundits. More than 300 representatives in Congress have embraced Paul's ideas for reining in the Fed.
The response "is even more than I ever dreamed," Paul said in an interview, reminiscing about one evening during his 2008 White House run when University of Michigan students chanted "End the Fed" and burned dollar bills.
Paul, a skinny 74-year-old with a hangdog expression, understands that historical circumstances have thrust his ideas to the fore. "An intellectual fight is going on," he said.
Paul traces his economic views to his frugal upbringing in Pittsburgh at the tail end of the Depression. He saved pennies from delivering newspapers and helping out his father's small dairy business.
And his first economics class at Gettysburg College was an eye-opener, Paul said. When a professor explained how banks keep only a tiny part of their deposits on hand and earn money by lending out the rest, Paul discovered one of the "tricks" of the financial system.
Beyond that, Paul's ideas are grounded in the work of economic thinkers from an earlier era who focused on problems similar to those besetting the U.S. today.
In particular, Paul is a disciple of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian theorist born at the end of the 19th century who contended that government intervention in an economy would fail because free markets were better at allocating resources and fueling growth.
Having lived through Germany's devastating hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which helped pave the way for Hitler, Mises wrote long before the Great Depression that over-generous credit policies would encourage excessive borrowing, creating a boom and then a bust.
Mises' ideas became central to what is known as the Austrian School of economics, which emphasized tight controls on credit and money supply, a strategy that discouraged financial ups and downs but tended to slow growth.
By 1940, when Mises arrived in America, most Western economists had embraced the competing theories of Britain's John Maynard Keynes, who called for government to stimulate the economy by spending on infrastructure and cutting interest rates.
Obama has largely followed the Keynesian script, as President George W. Bush did when the economic crisis broke.
Paul's once-lonely espousal of the Austrian School's ideas has gotten new impetus from conservative economists and Republican political strategists.
"A lot of good ideas were shoved aside because of the Depression and the rise of the Keynesian view of the world," said George Selgin, an economics professor at the University of Georgia.
Paul contends that Austrian economics explains the most recent financial meltdown: "It says if you inflate too much, if you have no restraint on monetary authorities, you're going to bring on a crisis." Now, Paul says, administration policies are leading the country toward disaster.
Selgin and many mainstream economists agree that pumping too much money into the economy can lead to trouble, but they say Paul goes too far.
In the 1930s, say Selgin and many other economists, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the U.S. economy began pulling out of the Depression thanks to federal easing of monetary policy.
The economy tipped back into depression after the reins were tightened too soon.
"In this aspect of the monetary system, he's just blown it," Selgin said of Paul.
However, like Mises, whose portrait hangs on his Washington office wall, Paul is intransigent, and that has earned him an ardent following.
"His views are strong and hardheaded, but you've got to stand firm or you'll get blown over in this world," said Mark Skousen, editor of the newsletter Forecasts & Strategies and a former economics professor at Columbia University.
-- Don Lee
Photo: Larry Downing / Reuters; Orlin Wagner / Associated Press; Associated Press (Paul argues with Mike Huckabee in a GOP primary debate).
Facebook has dominated the headlines today with the news that it has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies at a $50 billion valuation.
In addition, the social network intends to raise another $1.5 billion through a “special purpose vehicle” that Goldman Sachs will be setting up to allow some of its clients to indirectly invest in
There have been a lot of questions about the Goldman Sachs “special purpose vehicle” since the news broke. The key questions: Why is Facebook choosing to raise more money through Goldman Sachs? Will the SEC allow this move, or will it force Facebook to start disclosing its financial results to the public? And when will Facebook finally have an IPO?
SEC regulations and the nuances of private investment are complicated subjects, so we thought we’d try to clarify some of the issues surrounding the Facebook-Goldman Sachs deal, including figuring out the likely date of the Facebook IPO.
1. Why Are Facebook and Goldman Sachs Creating a “Special Purpose Vehicle”?
There is an SEC regulation, set by The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, that requires companies with 500 or more shareholders to disclose their earnings to the SEC. The SEC then publishes this financial information, making it public knowledge.
Facebook doesn’t want that headache at all. It doesn’t want to go through the audits, create the reports, or let its competitors know the details of its earnings and expenditures. However, the social network still wants $2 billion in fresh resources, so Goldman Sachs has come up with a very clever workaround; instead of having thousands of individual investors, Goldman Sachs will represent them all and invest on their behalf.
This is essentially what most brokers do on behalf of their clients, the shareholders. Instead of making a person an investor of record in
The New York Times‘ Steven Davidoff provides a stellar overview of the SEC regulations in question, but it essentially boils down to this: Goldman Sachs is helping Facebook circumvent the system so it doesn’t have to report earnings or raise money via an IPO.
2. Will the SEC Allow It?
The SEC isn’t stupid; it knew that brokerage firms would try these types of workarounds. The New York Times dug up the SEC’s definition of a record holder, which includes a provision that says if a company creates a vessel for holding securities of record primarily to circumvent The 1934 Securities Exchange Act, then it will deem beneficial owners as record owners.
In other words, the SEC could deem that Goldman Sachs is circumventing its regulations with its “special purpose vehicle” and thus consider all of the investors within it “record owners” of Facebook. That would mean that the social network would be required to report its earnings.
We think it’s likely that the SEC will intervene. The SEC is already investigating the private secondary markets for potentially violating the same 500 shareholder regulation. It wouldn’t be much of a jump for the SEC to tell Facebook that its investment vehicle doesn’t preclude it from publicly disclosing its financial information. In fact, it’s likely to tell Facebook the opposite.
3. So, When Will Facebook IPO?
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Facebook and Goldman Sachs are setting up this “special purpose vehicle” to raise a ton of cash for the social networking company. They’re absolutely aware that the SEC will not be happy with their arrangement, and they also know that the SEC will likely step in and tell Facebook to disclose its earnings to the public due to the existence of the Goldman Sachs vehicle.
So why would Facebook go through all this trouble when the SEC is going to shoot them down anyway?
The answer is that this move buys Facebook more time to grow and prepare itself for an IPO. The SEC regulation wouldn’t take effect until May 2012 because the SEC only requires private companies to start reporting its financial information within four months after the end of its current fiscal year. So if Facebook violates the 500 shareholder rule this year, then it won’t have to start reporting its earnings until May 2012, 120 days after December 31, 2011.
That’s more than enough time for Facebook to prepare for its IPO. When the day comes that Facebook is required to release its financial information to the public, it will probably decide to just go all-in and become a public company, raising even more money in the process.
Essentially, Facebook has set the clock for its IPO to occur on May 2012 or earlier. Part of the reason we predicted no Facebook IPO in 2011 is because 2012 is the year most of our sources say the Facebook IPO is likely to occur. It all fits.
Mark your calendars and set your watches, everyone: The Facebook IPO is likely coming in 12 to 16 months.
For more Business coverage:
robert shumake
robert shumake
NYC Radio Station Dumps Glenn Beck Over Low - AOL <b>News</b>
A New York radio station is dumping conservative commentator Glenn Beck?s syndicated talk show because of low ratings, according to a published report.
Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots
LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,
Shakesville: Brett Favre <b>News</b>
Brett Favre News. [Trigger warning for sexual assault, which applies to both links] [Link includes descriptions of sexual assault] Associated Press: "Two massage therapists sued Brett Favre on Monday, saying they lost them their ...
robert shumake
NYC Radio Station Dumps Glenn Beck Over Low - AOL <b>News</b>
A New York radio station is dumping conservative commentator Glenn Beck?s syndicated talk show because of low ratings, according to a published report.
Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots
LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,
Shakesville: Brett Favre <b>News</b>
Brett Favre News. [Trigger warning for sexual assault, which applies to both links] [Link includes descriptions of sexual assault] Associated Press: "Two massage therapists sued Brett Favre on Monday, saying they lost them their ...
robert shumake detroit
These days, money seems to slip through your fingers as easily as the sands of time. The rich know that in order to build wealth, you must be able to keep money in your pocket and have methods of continuing to increase it's value over time. Making money work for you is as simple as getting money and using it to create more money.
Essential Steps to Make Your Money Work for You
1. Control your expenses - If you don't control your expenses, your money will come in as a paycheck and disappear as an expense - leaving you living from paycheck to paycheck. This phenomenon happens regardless of your income level. As most people's income increase, so does their spending. To control your expenses, create a buying policy. For example, waiting at least 24 hours before buying anything valued more than $50 then ask yourself the follow questions, "Is this sometime that I need?" "Do I own something that can serve the same purpose?" "Can I borrow one, find one used, or make one instead of buying new?" Like the defense of professional football team, draft a superior financial defensive line to tackle unnecessary purchases before they happen.
2. Save 10% of your earnings - At 10%, you'll see that your money will grow - giving you "attitude money". What is attitude money? When you have money invested, you feel more secure and abundant, therefore, gaining a better attitude towards money and your financial situation. Okay, most people claim that they can't afford to save 10% of what you earn. Notice that people earn different salaries but are all equally as broke. This signifies that most people just spend as much as they make and don't really control what they're spending. The wealthy find ways to control their expenses and save 10%. Once you start saving 10%, I bet that you will not even notice that it's gone. Make saving this 10% easy by automatically deducting it directly from your paycheck into a wealth account. Essentially, paying yourself first.
3. Generate Passive Income - Now that you have an excess of cash flow and savings, it's time to create a passive income. Passive income is money generated from sources that require some upfront work and generate a stream of income for a long time. For example, some passive income sources are investments in stocks or bonds, real estate or property rent, writing for Associated Content, creating a blog, or designing a website that generates advertisement income. These are just a few examples. Let the miracle of compound interest start working for you by building multiple streams of passive income.
4. Increase your current salary - Nothing can increase your worth quicker than receiving a raise or promotion. If you receive a 10% raise, as quick as Clark Kent changing into superman, you become instantly 10% richer. The best way to increase your salary is to "show up" for work. Most people just punch the clock and mill their way through the day. Give your job the full eight hours of attention it deserves. Talk to your boss about your desire to increase your value (read as salary) to the company. Ask yourself what are the five most important tasks to do today that will get you noticed. Assist your boss move up the corporate ladder and like the links of a chain, you will move up too.
5. Create your own Business - Are you going to slave away making all the money for someone else. Creating a side business is a terrific way to earn more money. Start small and follow your passion. Who knows in time, it may become a full time occupation. With a fantastic business and the right mindset, it's possible to work less hours per day and make more money than you did at your regular job. Wouldn't you rather have more time in your life and make more money?
By employing, these five essential strategies to making money work for you, you will begin a snowball effect on your finances. Each day adding snowflakes until the snowball builds momentum. That's what making your money work for you is all about - overcoming the financial inertia holding wealth at arm's reach.
robert shumake
NYC Radio Station Dumps Glenn Beck Over Low - AOL <b>News</b>
A New York radio station is dumping conservative commentator Glenn Beck?s syndicated talk show because of low ratings, according to a published report.
Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots
LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,
Shakesville: Brett Favre <b>News</b>
Brett Favre News. [Trigger warning for sexual assault, which applies to both links] [Link includes descriptions of sexual assault] Associated Press: "Two massage therapists sued Brett Favre on Monday, saying they lost them their ...
robert shumake detroit
robert shumake
...hopelessly outgunned presidential campaign as if it was a business, not even spending more money than he had in hand. C'mon now, how laughable is that in this day and age in modern America that someone who wants to run the federal government should live within his own campaign means? Just like normal people who live on a real budget with no ability to vote themselves a pay raise and a higher debt ceiling when no one is watching C-SPAN!
When the ultimate Democratic winner, in league with the extraordinary gentleman Harry Reid and the tough-talking San Francisco grandma who's House speaker, has decided to spend a gazillion more dollars than any non-federal calculator has digits to display.
These people, for Nancy's sake, are already spending the income taxes of the unborn grandchildren of those 4,000 babies that Paul delivered. A shocking realization that may be helping to fuel the recent re-examination of Ron Paul, who never met a federal dollar that needed spending -- unless it was going back to his district near Houston.
Ron Paul came within something like 1,000 delegates of catching John McCain for the Republican nomination in St. Paul. But when he finally gave up, Paul still had about $5 million left over. He's been investing it traveling around the country to speak and helping like-minded RFR's (Republicans For Real) organize all over. And, who knows, maybe sell a few books.
But now, just as his fierce supporters fearlessly predicted all along, many in American politics are coming around to think that maybe RP's crazy ideas, for example, of auditing and controlling the Federal Reserve, are maybe not quite so crazy.
Our news colleague in Washington, Don Lee, details the sea-change in opinion in a comprehensive look at the old guy's rebirth for weekend print editions, which we're sharing here this morning as a distinguished guest post for Ticket readers around the world.
And for any surviving Ron Paulites, who won't dare leave their typically snippy comments below because that would require them acknowledging that their favorite fiction about a MSM conspiracy to ignore the old guy is fiction.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Here's Lee's reported news item:
For three decades, Texas congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul's extreme brand of libertarian economics consigned him to the far fringes even among conservatives. Not a few times, his views put him on the losing end of 434-1 votes on Capitol Hill.
No longer. With the economy still struggling and political divisions deepening, Paul's ideas not only are gaining a wider audience but also are helping to shape a potentially historic battle over economic policy -- a struggle that will affect everything including jobs, growth and the nation's place in the global economy.
Already, Paul's long-derided proposal to give Congress supervisory power over the traditionally independent Federal Reserve appears to be on its way to becoming law.
His warnings on deficits and inflation are now Republican mantras.
And with this year's congressional election campaign looming, the Texas congressman's deep-seated distrust of activist government has helped fuel protests such as the tea-party movement, harden partisan divisions in Washington and stoke public fears about federal spending and the deficit.
"People are wondering what went wrong. And they're not happy with what the....
....government is offering up," said James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, offering an explanation for why seemingly wonkish arguments over interest rate policy and the money supply are spilling over onto ordinary Americans.
Some of Paul's most extreme views are still beyond the pale for most economists. Despite the eroding value of the dollar, no one expects the U.S. to return to the gold standard, as Paul advocates; most economists think that could wreck the economy.
In their less drastic forms, however, Paul's ideas are being welcomed by conservatives and viewed with foreboding by liberals. For conservatives, runaway inflation constitutes the biggest potential threat to the nation's future. Liberals worry that cutting back stimulus efforts too soon could slow or even halt the current recovery.
The debate over that question -- what the basic thrust of U.S. economic policy should be -- is likely to dominate the coming elections and Washington policymaking.
And so far, Paul and his fellow conservatives are on the offensive. President Obama and congressional Democrats are repeatedly pledging not to increase the deficit and to begin cutting back soon.
"I think we're going to be in for more revival of fiscal responsibility," said William Niskanen of the Cato Institute, who headed the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan.
Niskanen sees the Texas Republican's increasing influence as stemming from the continued economic weakness. "To this extent, Ron Paul gains voice," he said.
Paul would go a lot further in cutting back the government's role than even free-marketers like Niskanen support. If Paul had it his way, for instance, he would do away with the Fed entirely. In his bestselling book "End the Fed," he lambasted the central bank as an "immoral, unconstitutional . . . tool of tyrannical government."
Such rhetoric might once have been dismissed as extremism.
But Paul's anti-Fed message has drawn broad support because of the central bank's failure to restrain the flood of cheap money and excessive risk-taking in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
It has stirred rallies on college campuses and supportive commentaries from Wall Street pundits. More than 300 representatives in Congress have embraced Paul's ideas for reining in the Fed.
The response "is even more than I ever dreamed," Paul said in an interview, reminiscing about one evening during his 2008 White House run when University of Michigan students chanted "End the Fed" and burned dollar bills.
Paul, a skinny 74-year-old with a hangdog expression, understands that historical circumstances have thrust his ideas to the fore. "An intellectual fight is going on," he said.
Paul traces his economic views to his frugal upbringing in Pittsburgh at the tail end of the Depression. He saved pennies from delivering newspapers and helping out his father's small dairy business.
And his first economics class at Gettysburg College was an eye-opener, Paul said. When a professor explained how banks keep only a tiny part of their deposits on hand and earn money by lending out the rest, Paul discovered one of the "tricks" of the financial system.
Beyond that, Paul's ideas are grounded in the work of economic thinkers from an earlier era who focused on problems similar to those besetting the U.S. today.
In particular, Paul is a disciple of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian theorist born at the end of the 19th century who contended that government intervention in an economy would fail because free markets were better at allocating resources and fueling growth.
Having lived through Germany's devastating hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which helped pave the way for Hitler, Mises wrote long before the Great Depression that over-generous credit policies would encourage excessive borrowing, creating a boom and then a bust.
Mises' ideas became central to what is known as the Austrian School of economics, which emphasized tight controls on credit and money supply, a strategy that discouraged financial ups and downs but tended to slow growth.
By 1940, when Mises arrived in America, most Western economists had embraced the competing theories of Britain's John Maynard Keynes, who called for government to stimulate the economy by spending on infrastructure and cutting interest rates.
Obama has largely followed the Keynesian script, as President George W. Bush did when the economic crisis broke.
Paul's once-lonely espousal of the Austrian School's ideas has gotten new impetus from conservative economists and Republican political strategists.
"A lot of good ideas were shoved aside because of the Depression and the rise of the Keynesian view of the world," said George Selgin, an economics professor at the University of Georgia.
Paul contends that Austrian economics explains the most recent financial meltdown: "It says if you inflate too much, if you have no restraint on monetary authorities, you're going to bring on a crisis." Now, Paul says, administration policies are leading the country toward disaster.
Selgin and many mainstream economists agree that pumping too much money into the economy can lead to trouble, but they say Paul goes too far.
In the 1930s, say Selgin and many other economists, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the U.S. economy began pulling out of the Depression thanks to federal easing of monetary policy.
The economy tipped back into depression after the reins were tightened too soon.
"In this aspect of the monetary system, he's just blown it," Selgin said of Paul.
However, like Mises, whose portrait hangs on his Washington office wall, Paul is intransigent, and that has earned him an ardent following.
"His views are strong and hardheaded, but you've got to stand firm or you'll get blown over in this world," said Mark Skousen, editor of the newsletter Forecasts & Strategies and a former economics professor at Columbia University.
-- Don Lee
Photo: Larry Downing / Reuters; Orlin Wagner / Associated Press; Associated Press (Paul argues with Mike Huckabee in a GOP primary debate).
Facebook has dominated the headlines today with the news that it has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies at a $50 billion valuation.
In addition, the social network intends to raise another $1.5 billion through a “special purpose vehicle” that Goldman Sachs will be setting up to allow some of its clients to indirectly invest in
There have been a lot of questions about the Goldman Sachs “special purpose vehicle” since the news broke. The key questions: Why is Facebook choosing to raise more money through Goldman Sachs? Will the SEC allow this move, or will it force Facebook to start disclosing its financial results to the public? And when will Facebook finally have an IPO?
SEC regulations and the nuances of private investment are complicated subjects, so we thought we’d try to clarify some of the issues surrounding the Facebook-Goldman Sachs deal, including figuring out the likely date of the Facebook IPO.
1. Why Are Facebook and Goldman Sachs Creating a “Special Purpose Vehicle”?
There is an SEC regulation, set by The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, that requires companies with 500 or more shareholders to disclose their earnings to the SEC. The SEC then publishes this financial information, making it public knowledge.
Facebook doesn’t want that headache at all. It doesn’t want to go through the audits, create the reports, or let its competitors know the details of its earnings and expenditures. However, the social network still wants $2 billion in fresh resources, so Goldman Sachs has come up with a very clever workaround; instead of having thousands of individual investors, Goldman Sachs will represent them all and invest on their behalf.
This is essentially what most brokers do on behalf of their clients, the shareholders. Instead of making a person an investor of record in
The New York Times‘ Steven Davidoff provides a stellar overview of the SEC regulations in question, but it essentially boils down to this: Goldman Sachs is helping Facebook circumvent the system so it doesn’t have to report earnings or raise money via an IPO.
2. Will the SEC Allow It?
The SEC isn’t stupid; it knew that brokerage firms would try these types of workarounds. The New York Times dug up the SEC’s definition of a record holder, which includes a provision that says if a company creates a vessel for holding securities of record primarily to circumvent The 1934 Securities Exchange Act, then it will deem beneficial owners as record owners.
In other words, the SEC could deem that Goldman Sachs is circumventing its regulations with its “special purpose vehicle” and thus consider all of the investors within it “record owners” of Facebook. That would mean that the social network would be required to report its earnings.
We think it’s likely that the SEC will intervene. The SEC is already investigating the private secondary markets for potentially violating the same 500 shareholder regulation. It wouldn’t be much of a jump for the SEC to tell Facebook that its investment vehicle doesn’t preclude it from publicly disclosing its financial information. In fact, it’s likely to tell Facebook the opposite.
3. So, When Will Facebook IPO?
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Facebook and Goldman Sachs are setting up this “special purpose vehicle” to raise a ton of cash for the social networking company. They’re absolutely aware that the SEC will not be happy with their arrangement, and they also know that the SEC will likely step in and tell Facebook to disclose its earnings to the public due to the existence of the Goldman Sachs vehicle.
So why would Facebook go through all this trouble when the SEC is going to shoot them down anyway?
The answer is that this move buys Facebook more time to grow and prepare itself for an IPO. The SEC regulation wouldn’t take effect until May 2012 because the SEC only requires private companies to start reporting its financial information within four months after the end of its current fiscal year. So if Facebook violates the 500 shareholder rule this year, then it won’t have to start reporting its earnings until May 2012, 120 days after December 31, 2011.
That’s more than enough time for Facebook to prepare for its IPO. When the day comes that Facebook is required to release its financial information to the public, it will probably decide to just go all-in and become a public company, raising even more money in the process.
Essentially, Facebook has set the clock for its IPO to occur on May 2012 or earlier. Part of the reason we predicted no Facebook IPO in 2011 is because 2012 is the year most of our sources say the Facebook IPO is likely to occur. It all fits.
Mark your calendars and set your watches, everyone: The Facebook IPO is likely coming in 12 to 16 months.
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