Introducing the Shop Bag ultra-lightweight reusable grocery bag (1)
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darcy (2)
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TOM BIHN Bags Blog (2)
3 days, 7 hours
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What you'll notice first is that the Shop Bag has comfortable, Poron-padded handles that will never break down or lose their padding - no matter how many trips you take to the store. These padded handles prevent that awful hand-slicing experience of the traditional non-padded fabric handles, and they're also extra comfortable on your shoulder (the handles have been designed to be an ideal length that will allow most folks to wear the bag over ...
How Should We Help Underwater Home Owers ? (3)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
3 days, 11 hours
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Martin Feldstein has another plan to fix housing. It is a variation of the 30/20/10 plan I proposed earlier in the year, in that it pulls a portion of the original mortgage aside from the corpus of the existing loan. Feldstein’s solution? Replace part of the non-recourse mortgages with a new, immediately due, recourse loan: “More than 12 million homeowners now have mortgage debt that exceeds the value of their homes. These negative-equity homeowners have ...
Pirates hijack oil supertanker off east Africa (1)
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Reuters Africa (54)
4 days, 8 hours
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Pirates have seized a Saudi-owned supertanker fully laden with oil off east Africa, capturing the biggest vessel yet in a zone where Somali pirates strike almost daily and pushing world crude prices higher.
110 Banks Have Asked for $220B Under Bailout Plan (2)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
1 week
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Brace yourself: At least 110 banks have requested about $220 billion from the Treasury Department’s rescue fund, and many more are expected to have submitted applications before Friday’s deadline. The figures, from banks’ own statements and analyst reports, indicate the requests are closing in on the $250 billion the Treasury set aside from the $700 billion fund to purchase stock in banks. Analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods estimated that 62 banks have received full ...
Bailout Money Goes Rogue (2)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
1 week
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Yesterday’s Washington Post had a chilling article about the trillion dollars in bailout money. It is, lacking a better word, rogue — there is no real oversight committee or audit rules in place. The key watchdog roles remain unfilled. WaPo: In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury’s massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country’s largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope ...
Good News on Stock Options & AMT (2)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
1 week, 1 day
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If you received and exercised stock options, and had to pay taxes on the phantom income, I have got some good news for you: Buried in the $700b TARP Bailout is this AMT tax amendment: “Their tax nightmare was created by a provision of the Internal Revenue Code called the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT. These tech workers had been granted what’s called an incentive stock option. Under the AMT, these are taxed at the ...
China’s Stimulus Plan Is No Such Thing (5)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
1 week, 3 days
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Paraphrasing Nixon, have the Chinese become Keynesians now, too? I don’t believe so. China’s proposed $586 billion dollar stimulus plan sure generated a lot of excitement this past weekend. It was amusing to watch the SPX futures tick up on this supposed new program. Especially when we compare it with the $170 billion in tax rebates this summer — The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 — which was only 1% of GDP of the US, ...
AIG: The Looting Continues (Banana Republic Watch) (5)
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Yves Smith (223)
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The Big Picture (2335)
1 week, 4 days
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The Wall Street Journal reports, as was rumored on Friday, that AIG appears on the verge of approving a considerably enlarged and sweetened rescue package from the government. We were less than happy with the idea when it first surfaced (see our rant “The Black Hole Gets Bigger: AIG Back for Yet Another Bailout“). Let us review the basics: 1. AIG came desperate to the US government for a rescue, and a whopper at that. ...
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Francine Hardaway said:
How do we get a new Administration in there before the old one gives away every dime the government has or can itself borrow? This is dreadful.
WAPO: Treasury Illegally Repeals Tax Law (3)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
1 week, 4 days
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Front page article in the Washington Post today, calling attention to a highly questionable aspect of the $750 billion bailout plan: A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks. We learn from WaPo that the Treasury Department slipped through a $140 billion tax windfall to US banks — in theory repealing 1986 legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan. The likely illegal change was aggressively lobbied for by banking officials, who sought to take advantage ...
Tax Facts (9)
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Barry Ritholtz (697)
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The Big Picture (2335)
2 weeks
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Some fascinating tax data from Vincent Farrell of Soleil Securities: Top 1% If you are lucky or hard-working enough to have earned $364,657 in 2006, the last year for which data is fully available, you are in the top 1% of earners. That group earned 22% of all income and paid 40.4% of all taxes levied on individuals. The top 1% paid almost as much as the lower 95%! The percent of taxes paid by ...
Bumping Into Geniuses (1)
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Dmitry Davydov (45)
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Best Free Documentaries (22)
2 weeks, 2 days
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Link of the day - Backstage Passes and Backstabbing BastardsAuthor Danny Goldberg visits Google's San Francisco, CA, office to discuss his book "Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business". This event took place October 7, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.Danny Goldberg has been a hugely influential figure in the world of rock and roll. He did PR for Led Zeppelin; he managed the career of Nirvana; he ran ...
New Live Mesh videos up today (2)
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jsbenjamin (3)
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MSDN Blogs (406)
3 weeks
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While you're waiting for the beta update to complete, The beta update is complete, but still: why not entertain yourself with the latest and greatest Live Mesh video content? Posted fresh today: Ori Amiga's amazing Live MeshMobile (pronounced, Ori asks us to tell you, like 'BatMobile' :) demonstration: Ori Amiga: MeshMobile Noah Edelstein gives a tour of the new Mac client:First Look: Live Mesh Client for Mac If you're interested in more details on the ...
