rickyp wrote:You can. But what are they actually planning on doing. Don`t you want to know what the specifics of the plan are.
Without the actual specifics you know nothing. All yuou go on is the faith that the plan won`y hurt you that much....
I`m guessing that the people actually financing Romneys election have a far better idea of what to expect from `tax reform`then the rank and file voter...or party memebr for that matter. And I`ll bet they benefit greatly.

Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said he would eliminate or limit for high-earners the mortgage interest deduction for second homes, and likely would do the same for the state income tax deduction and state property tax deduction.

freeman2 wrote:"Oh no, Romney is going to take away our interest deduction for all of our homes except one. That is class warfare!"

rickyp wrote:ray

. I never said SARBOX was unnecessary and had no positive effect. If you got that impression, why don't you read more slowly so that your impression is based on my actual words instead of what you think I'm saying (based on your own biases).

heres what you said.
rickyp

If you present the arguement that "This specific regulation" hampers the way our industry can do business.... " The we look at that specific regulation and decide.

ray

I play Sarbanes Oxley. I know of actual people who work for actual companies who tell me that the mountains of paperwork required are obscene and generally worthless. Accountants refer to SARBOX as their full employment act. Your turn.

No matter how slowly I read this I read tha the work involved in doing SO compliance is generaly worthless. (I am quoting directly) so please tell me how I can infer anything differentky from your very specific description of SO as generally worthless.
You keep squirming away from assertions like this as you are challenged.... But the beauty of this forum is that I can always quote your original assertion.

Some regulation is good and necessary. Much of it is wasteful and unnecessary. We don't have sunset laws; we don't adequately measure the cost of regulation; and the people who tout the benefits often have an agenda of their own (to justify what they do). Not always, but often.

In 1929, the music stopped, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. It took eight years from the start of the boom to the bust. Subsequent investigations revealed the extent of the fraud that preceded the crash. In 1933, Congress passed Glass-Steagall in response to the abuses. Banks would be allowed to take deposits and make loans. Brokers would be allowed to underwrite and sell securities. But no firm could do both due to conflicts of interest and risks to insured deposits. From 1933 to 1999, there were very few large bank failures and no financial panics comparable to the Panic of 2008. The law worked exactly as intended.

In 1999, Democrats led by President Bill Clinton and Republicans led by Sen. Phil Gramm joined forces to repeal Glass-Steagall at the behest of the big banks. What happened over the next eight years was an almost exact replay of the Roaring Twenties. Once again, banks originated fraudulent loans and once again they sold them to their customers in the form of securities. The bubble peaked in 2007 and collapsed in 2008. The hard-earned knowledge of 1933 had been lost in the arrogance of 1999

rickyp wrote:I'm always surprised that republicans and Conservatives havn't gone after Bill Clinton as the lynch pin culprit in the failure of the financial crisis. It was, after all he, lobbied constantly by Phil Gramm, who ended Glass ...

Before the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, commercial banks were “selling stocks and bonds, providing advice on mergers and acquisitions, concocting new fangled financial products[,] and trading.” The result was to turn banks into financial supermarkets. Banks were underwriting and distributing loans and bonds, providing mezzanine financing to companies, engaging in foreign exchange trading in the interbank currency market, advising customers on mergers and acquisitions, and offering complex financial instruments.138 Banks were acting as agents in private placements, sponsoring closed-end investment funds and offering deposit accounts with returns that were tied to stock market performance.139 Other bank and bank affiliate activities included euro dollar dealings, trust investments, automatic investment services, dividend investment services, dealing in swaps and other OTC derivatives and providing research services.140
...
Over $1 trillion of asset-backed securities involving family mortgages were outstanding in 1991. NationsBank (now Bank of America) securitized $1.4 billion of commercial real estate mortgages in 1996 and $800 million in other mortgages.
From this analysis, it appears that GLBA was not a factor in commercial banks underwriting CMOS or their successor, the CDO.
...

The solution for this counterparty risk problem was solved by the Clinton administration when CRA regulations were amended in 1995 to allow CRA-based subprime loans to be securitized.255 Securitization provided the banks with a way to move subprime loans off their balance sheets, and it allowed “lenders to shift mortgage credit risk and interest rate risk to investors who have greater risk tolerance.”256
...
The CRA required, and thereby legitimatized, subprime lending by institutions that had previously shied away from such risky loans. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress in October 2008: “’It’s instructive to go back to the early stages of the subprime market, which has essentially emerged out of the CRA.’”
After being forced into the market by the federal government, banks found this business to their liking.Yet, this is another unfortunate legacy of the CRA. Former Senator Phil Gramm noted: “It was not just that CRA and federal housing policy pressured lenders to make risky loans—but that they gave lenders the excuse and regulatory cover” to enter what was
appearing to be a lucrative business in which risks could be managed through securitizations. The proof is in the pudding. Subprime lenders were initially an industry unto themselves because large banks avoided such lending, until the CRA pushed them into it. There were only ten lenders in the subprime market in 1994, but their numbers increased to fifty by 1998. By 2001, as the result of the CRA, ten of the twenty-five largest subprime lenders were banks or their affiliates.266
It seems clear from these numbers that Glass-Steagall imposed no significant barrier to commercial banks in making subprime loans....

The Glass-Steagall Act also proved to be no barrier to banks to enter the over-the-counter derivatives business. As a result of legislation passed in 1992, swaps were exempted from regulation under the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936.the swap had grown to a notional amount of some $4 trillion by the end of 1991.271 The top dealers in OTC derivatives in 1993 (six years before the repeal of Glass-Steagall) were commercial banks, including Chemical Bank, Citicorp, Bankers Trust, Société Générale, J.P. Morgan, and the Union Bank of Switzerland.272 Some seventy percent of Bankers Trust’s first quarter profits in 1994 came from derivative products. In total, commercial banks accounted for a notional amount of as much as $14 trillion in derivatives sales.

Regarding the newly-filed 2011 Tax Return:

In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income.
The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%.
The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.
The Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions.
The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.
As with the 2010 tax return, the 2011 tax return will appear as four separate documents. It includes Governor and Mrs. Romney's Form 1040 as well as three underlying Massachusetts trusts detailing the sources of their income. Those are The W. Mitt Romney Blind Trust, The Ann D. Romney Blind Trust, and The Romney Family Trust.

The investments within the trusts are managed on a blind basis by me, the trustee. I have sole responsibility for making, holding and disposing of the investments.

Regarding the PWC letter covering the Romneys’ tax filings over 20 years, from 1990 – 2009:

In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.
Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.
Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%.
Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.
Over the entire 20-year period, the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total AGI.
During the 20-year period covered by the PWC letter, Gov. and Mrs. Romney paid 100 percent of the taxes that they owed.