GDP Report Offers Investors Clear Warning

The government reported Friday that fourth quarter GDP grew 2.8%, which was well above the third quarter growth rate of 1.8%.

The two most significant issues detracting from the best quarterly GDP growth since Q2 2010 both tie into consumer spending. First, and most importantly, GDP was lifted 1.94 percentage points by a build in inventories. Some are saying that this is okay, since third quarter growth was penalized by 1.35 percentage points due to an inventory draw down, however, I see no relevance. Despite the promotional environment of the fourth quarter, the aggregate performance of retailers was poor. 

The other point that I see as significant came from the growth of the services sector in Q4, which only managed 0.2%, according to the government. Our services dominant economy cannot sustain significant economic growth without robust activity in services.

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The Wall Street Journal

Class Warfare and the Buffett Rule

Implementing a surtax on 'millionaires' would hurt just about everyone but the super rich like Warren Buffett.

The political season has barely begun, and yet we already know that class warfare will be President Obama's key issue in the 2012 general election. It's even reared its ugly head in the Republican primaries, with the candidates trying to paint front-runner Mitt Romney as a cold-hearted capitalist and Rick Santorum proposing targeted tax breaks for the "working class" manufacturing sector.

But none in the GOP can compare with the progressive intelligentsia's obsession with tax increases on the rich to raise revenues and achieve social justice. In a New York Times op-ed last August, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett famously asked Congress to "stop coddling the super-rich," complaining that his effective tax rate was half that of the other people in his office. He then instructed Washington to raise tax rates on millionaires and billionaires like him and retain the employee payroll tax cut on those "who need every break they can get."

Waving Mr. Buffett's op-ed for all to see, Mr. Obama wasted no time in proposing a surtax on millionaires called the "Buffett Rule." Putting aside all the oohing and ahhing over Mr. Buffett's selflessness, his effective tax rate on his true income would hardly budge if this "Buffett Rule" were applied. What's worse, raising the highest tax rates would most likely worsen the budget deficit and lead to a further weakening of the economy. Everyone would suffer.

Mr. Buffett stated in his op-ed that he paid $6,938,744 in total income and payroll taxes in 2010, representing 17.4% of his taxable income, which puts his taxable income just under $40 million. Although certainly a fantastic sum, $40 million actually understates Mr. Buffett's income in 2010 by more than 250-fold.

Mr. Buffett's net worth rose by $10 billion in 2010 to $47 billion, according to Forbes Magazine. That increase, an unrealized capital gain, is part of his total income by any standard definition, including the one used by the Congressional Budget Office. After also including a $1.6 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Buffett's true income in 2010 was much closer to $11.6 billion than the $40 million figure cited in his op-ed. Hence his true effective tax rate was only 6/100ths of 1% as opposed to 17.4%. And these are just the additions to his income that we know about.

The "Buffett Rule" would not tax the vast majority of his shielded income, including either his unrealized capital gains, which are currently taxed at zero percent, or charitable contributions, which are tax deductible. If the "Buffett Rule" were applied as President Obama proposes, then Mr. Buffett's federal tax bill would have been $14.4 million, rather than the $6.9 million he actually paid. As a fraction of his true income, his effective tax rate would only have risen from 6/100ths of 1% to 12/100ths of 1%.

Mr. Buffett's donation to the Gates Foundation goes to the heart of my critique of his public call for higher tax rates on the rich. Just look at the second contractual condition for his ongoing pledge to the Gates Foundation: "The foundation must continue to satisfy the legal requirements qualifying Warren's gift as charitable, exempt from gift or other taxes."

In other words, if his gift weren't tax sheltered he wouldn't give it. So much for "shared sacrifice."
Incidentally, I'm not the first to question Mr. Buffett's commitment to "shared sacrifice" in balancing the federal budget. In a 2007 CNBC interview, when asked why he shelters his money through tax-free strategies rather than writing big checks to Uncle Sam, Mr. Buffett responded: "I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government."

So Mr. Buffett thinks he and his family can put their money to better use than the government can. I guess he's really not so different from the rest of us after all.

Mr. Buffett also stated in his op-ed that in his 60 years working with investors he has yet to see anyone "shy away from a sensible investment . . . even when capital gains rates were 39.9% in 1976-77." Mr. Buffett's choice of 1976-77 is prescient because the economy in 1977 was a basket case. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment rate was 7.1%, consumer price inflation was 6.7%, and the S&P 500 dropped a whopping 17% after adjusting for inflation. Indeed, 1977 is a good illustration of the type of economy Mr. Buffett's policies would deliver.

He also said in his op-ed that "people invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off." To make his point he compares the 1980-2000 period when 40 million jobs were created to what's happened since 2000 with lower tax rates and fewer jobs created.

Surprisingly, Mr. Buffett is actually trying to cite the phenomenal growth during the Reagan-Clinton period of 1980-2000 as a result of high taxes. But the facts reveal that the 1980s and '90s should be used as Exhibit
A for why Mr. Buffett's proposals are dead wrong. Between 1980 and 2000, the top marginal income tax rate was slashed to 39.6% from 70%, and between 1977 and 1997 the capital gains tax rate was cut to 20% from 39.9%.

When it comes to raising tax revenues by raising tax rates on the rich, Mr. Buffett would again appear to be on the wrong side of the argument. Between 1921 and 1928, the top marginal income tax rate fell to 25% from 73%. During this period, tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners rose to 1.1% of GDP from 0.6% of GDP. The top income tax rate dropped to 70% from 91% after the Kennedy tax cuts began in 1964, while tax receipts from the top 1% of earners rose to 1.9% of GDP from 1.3% of GDP in the period 1960 to 1968. By the way, these periods were two of the biggest booms in U.S. history.

Guess what was the third period of boom? Since 1978, the top earned income tax rate fell to 35% from 50%, the top capital gains tax rate fell to 15% from 39.9%, and the highest dividend tax rate fell to 15% from 70%. After taking office in 1993, President Clinton virtually eliminated the capital gains tax from the sale of owner-occupied homes and cut government spending as a share of GDP by the largest amount ever.
Meanwhile, the top 1% of earners saw their tax payments climb to 3.3% of GDP in 2007 from 1.5% of GDP in 1978, while the bottom 95% saw their tax payments drop to 3.2% of GDP in 2007 from 5.4% of GDP in 1978. Why would Mr. Buffett want to reverse these numbers?

Of course, cynics and die-hard progressives might object to the above evidence on the grounds that it was driven by an explosion of income gains. But that's largely the point.

Mr. Laffer, chairman of Laffer Associates and the Laffer Center for Supply-Side Economics, is co-author, with Stephen Moore, of "Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

BLS Massaging Labor Force Participation Rate (denominator in unemployment rate)

Students in my macro classes have heard me say for years that a fundamental weakness/issue/falsehood of the BLS unemployment rate is the definition of the "labor force"---the denominator in the unemployment percentage.   Those readers who completed sixth grade know that holding a numerator while decreasing the denominator will increase a percentage rate.  It is commonly observed that journalists lack certain math competency, but perhaps one or more in the Executive Branch do.

As Tyler Durden legitimately contemplates in his blog (linked below),  how can it be that the labor force be declining as the overall non-institutionalized civilian population is increasing?   Also, of particular curiosity, the U.S. will reach 0% unemployment when the labor force participation rate hits 58.5%.   Hmmm...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/real-jobless-rate-114-realistic-labor-force-participation-rate




Top Three Central Banks Account For Up To 25% Of Developed World GDP

From Zerohedge.com


For anyone who still hasn't grasped the magnitude of the central planning intervention over the past four years, the following two charts should explain it all rather effectively. As the bottom chart shows, currently the central banks of the top three developed world entities: the Eurozone, the US and Japan have balance sheets that amount to roughly $8 trillion. This is more than double the combined total notional in 2007. More importantly, these banks assets (and by implication liabilities, as virtually none of them have any notable capital or equity) combined represent a whopping 25% of their host GDP, which just so happen are virtually all the countries that form the Developed world (with the exception of the UK). Which allows us to conclude several things. First, the rapid expansion in balance sheets was conducted primarily to monetize various assets, in the process lifting stock markets, but just as importantly, to find a natural buyer of sovereign paper (in the case of the Fed) and/or guarantee and backstop the existence of banks which could then in turn purchase sovereign debt on their own balance sheet (monetization once removed coupled with outright sterilized asset purchases as is the case of the ECB). And in this day and age of failed economic experiments when a dollar of debt buys just less than a dollar of GDP (there is a reason why the 100% debt/GDP barrier is so informative), it also means that central banks now implicitly account for up to 25% of developed world GDP!




URL:  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/top-three-central-banks-account-25-developed-world-gdp

Wars of Diminishing Returns

The United States has arrived at the moment the Romans found themselves in during the reign of Commodus, son of the general and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, the last of Rome’s “Five Good Emperors.” 


All the World's Gold

How much is the world's repository of above-the-ground gold worth?   Click here to find out.


P30Y, 20Y, 10Y, 1Y Bond Returns Exceed Stocks

Ibbotson Associates's SBBI bonds index, a broad bond measure, returned 28 percent in 2011, crushing the 2.1 percent return of the Standard & Poor's 500 (including dividends). 


The SBBI bond index has now returned 11.03 percent a year on average over the past 30 years, edging out the 10.98 percent return of stocks.  The bond index also topped stocks for the past 10 and 20 years.


Attributing factors, according to a cited USA Today / CNBC article include:
  • Distrust of stocks following a dismal decade which included double digit losses 4 times
  • Aging Americans searching for investment income
  • Historic declines in interest and inflation rates (obviously!)
However, if ever there was a time to employ the caveat, "Past results do not constitute future returns" it would be now:
  • ST rates remain near zero given accommodating Fed;
  • Continued deficit spending due to inability of federal and state elected politicians to make meaningful reductions in non discretionary spending (entitlements);
  • Longer term risk for return to higher inflation rates and weaker USD.

URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/45887150/

Grad School Math: Which Degrees Are Worth the Debt

Based on an analysis of Census data, Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce determined that the payoff from a graduate degree can vary wildly, from a 1% salary bump to a 190% wage explosion. And the degrees that deliver most bang for the education buck may surprise you.


See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/uimC15