AlchemyToday

Today:

While the public clamors for an end to TARP, and while commercial banks of all sizes are trying to pay back their TARP money, the Treasury Department is now proposing to extend bailout funds to life-insurance companies, most of which are really in no danger of failing.

September 2008:

Why should a successful bank — whether large, medium, or small — give up ownership and allow pay-caps for executives?

Even the big guys like BofA and JPMorgan Chase are still solid banks. So is Goldman and Morgan Stanley. And Wells Fargo. And many others.

Bank of American Corporation (BAC)

No clue whether bailing out life insurance is a good idea or not.  Not having the slightest idea about how these things work, my preference would be to provide capital to limp where it’s cost effective and let them fail otherwise, but there’s no reason to take Kudlow at his word that these insurers aren’t hanging by a thread.

The alternative budget introduced today by Rep. Paul Ryan somewhat suspiciously presents numbers as a fraction of GDP without specifying exactly what the GOP projection for GDP is under their budget and how it is calculated.  However, one can extrapolate the calculated GDP from the figures for net receipts in terms of dollars and fraction of GDP.  The result is surprising.

Under their favored budget, House Republicans project a GDP that precisely mirrors the intentionally conservative CBO estimate for the next decade.  One would presume that given that the Republican budget posits that its large corporate income tax cuts, capital gains cuts, and income tax cuts (almost all for the rich – 84% to the richest 20% of Americans) will stimulate economic growth, that they would project some improvement.

Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation simulation that underlies the GOP budget shows that even by their accounting, the Republican plan increases the deficit relative to the current law baseline.

By the logic used to sell the GOP budget (comparing deficit as a % of GDP to Obama’s budget), this budget is worse than doing nothing.  The GOP budget increases the deficit at the expense of cutting a huge chunk of government spending with no benefit to the broader economy over the projected time period.  The only benefit would be fewer taxes for most, although the savings for the majority would be smaller than their cut in the stimulus bill and many would see a tax increase.

Tip of the hat to Ezra for noticing this, and agreed that their method of redirection back to the Internet via PDF is more than a little obfuscated, but I suppose that sort of thing doesn’t generally sound alarm bells in the minds of tax experts.

Here’s a new way of looking at the distribution of tax cuts under the new analysis (no new tables for sample tax payers, so no updates to ObamaTaxCut).

And, yes, using the 2012 estimates instead of the 2009 estimates would get rid of the top-quintile tax increase for Obama and reflect better on his plan, but I’m trying to be honest here.

53% of Americans think Barack Obama will raise their taxes, which means at least 52% of Americans don’t know anything about his tax policies. In fact, 95% of Americans will see a tax cut from Obama, and 80% of Americans will get a bigger cut than they’d get from McCain. Calculate your Obama Tax Cut at ObamaTaxCut.com!

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That’s the bottom line of a Gallup Poll released yesterday:

This is wrong.  Here are some facts about Obama’s tax plan:

• 95% of Americans will receive a tax cut
• 80% of Americans will pay more taxes under McCain than Obama
• The Bush tax cuts would expire for only the top 1% of incomes

Don’t forget to Calculate your Obama Tax Cut.

Here’s a simple tool I made to figure out whether John McCain’s right that Obama will raise your taxes. Numbers are taken directly from the Tax Policy Center’s August 25th calculations for single, married, and elderly families.

Here’s a visual summary of data compiled earlier using the same methodology from the Washington Post:

Over at The Corner, Larry Kudlow writes:

Are the Denver Dems Downing Stocks?

Are the Denver Dems downing the stock market today? The Dow is off 230 points, starting right from the get-go. So-called market analysts are blaming financials and the credit crunch as they always do. But there’s more.

…

With the Denver Dems strutting their stuff, this could be a bumpy week for stocks. Did anyone say free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity?

To which, the obvious reply is: No.

Clinton: +225%; Bush: +7%

This is not analysis, but, contra Kudlow, at least it’s not bullshit.

Update: Here is some (sort of) analysis; if Kudlow were right, which he isn’t, the DJIA would be highly correlated with the InTrade Dem08 contract (assuming some that both markets have reasonably similar opinions of the odds of having a Democrat win in November). Is this true? Here’s a chart comparing the two indexes over the past year: