SCREW UP, GET A CHECK!!!

1/16/09

As I discussed in my 1/7/09 post, “BUT IT’S GOOD YOU’RE MAKING IT SNOW, ANTHONY, IT’S REAL GOOD. AND TOMORROW—TOMORROW’S GONNA BE A REAL GOOD DAY!”, the Obama stimulus plan will not work primarily because these “take money out of one pocket, pass it through the government, which takes its normal astronomical tribute, and put it in another pocket” schemes rarely provide any but evanescent, if that, relief. That’s the good news. The bad news is that one of the details of the plan will put yet another nail in the coffin of the free enterprise that made this country great.

A substantial chunk ($100 billion? $200 billion? Who knows?) of the money will go toward allowing companies with tax losses to receive tax refunds for profitable years as far back as 2003; normally, losses can be carried back only two years. This abomination before God and man, reportedly included in the package to mollify those rock-ribbed free marketeers in the GOP (or at least that is what the Democrats are telling us, and the Republicans have certainly not made much effort to deflect “credit” for this particular government handout) amounts to handing out money to losers, the very antithesis of capitalism. The more you lose, the more you get. The more you fail, the wetter the federal smooch.

The only tiny jot or tittle of this subsidization of failure that makes even remote sense is the exclusion of the true wards of the state, those companies, including the big banks who are the main instigators and abettors of the utter destruction and socialization (at least on the way down) of our financial system, and the auto companies, now arms of the (Egads!) U.S. Congress, are forbidden from carrying back their losses more than the normal two years. Predictably, these bureaus are now whining about their dismal fate. Mr. Scott Talbot, senior vice-president of Financial Services Roundtable, screeches:

“To exclude TARP recipients (from the tax loss carry back boondoggle) is to ignore a large segment of the economy.” Sniff.

Does Mr. Talbot have a dictionary? “Ignore”? Please, ignore me to the tune of $350 billion, on the way to $700 billion, the next time you are deciding who to permit to escape your notice. But I digress.

This tax loss carry back scam is further repudiation of those starry-eyed dreamers, and those beneficiaries of our currently rigged system who know better, who make the utterly risible argument that we operate in a free market, capitalistic system.