Author Archives: lawofmarkets

The two places where you don’t try to save money are helicopter pilots and accountants

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This is lifted from a post at Powerline on Trump’s taxes.

This retired tax accountant supplies a knowledgeable perspective, as opposed to anything you might read in the co-conspirator Times:

Sure enough, this morning my feed is filled with people who don’t know shit about taxes retweeting the stupid opinions of other morons who also don’t know shit about taxes. This is just as annoying as last week when these same idiots all suddenly became Constitutional Scholars. Or the month before that when they were all experts on use of force laws and police tactics. Or the month before that when they suddenly got their epidemiology degrees from the University of Internet and turned into infectious disease experts.
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Which brings us to today, with people freaking out about how Trump allegedly didn’t pay taxes for 10 out of 15 years and how that’s UNFAIR. Assuming that the anonymous tip isn’t total bullshit—and this is the New York Times we’re talking about and they love to just make shit up—and that the information is accurate (which means that whoever leaked it committed a felony, but that’s a whole different discussion)… my answer is so?

Is it plausible that a billionaire paid no taxes for a period of several years? Yep. Totally. See all that stuff I wrote above about the complicated tax code and how it is an accountant’s sacred duty to take advantage of all the stupid laws congress has passed to save their client’s money? Pretty much that. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times again.
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I recall a similar freak out several years ago when it came out that some giant mega-corp (I think it was GE, but I don’t remember) didn’t pay any taxes due to some Obama green energy tax breaks. Only that time the freak out was coming from the right (who hate Obama) and the Bernie Bros (who hate all business). It’s the same kind of thing though. If the laws are on the books, of course companies (and individuals) are going to take advantage of those laws. THAT IS WHY CONGRESS PUT THEM THERE.

Much more at the link. I believe it was Donald Trump who once said that the two places where you don’t try to save money are helicopter pilots and accountants. That is especially true if you are a real estate developer.

How the Dems are trying to steal the election

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NYT: 18 Revelations From Trove of Trump Tax Records...
LOST MORE MONEY THAN MADE?
FINANCED EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE WITH USE OF BUSINESS EXPENSES...
'Can you believe how f*cking stupid the IRS is?'
FLASHBACK: Ripped Obama 20.5% Rate...
Said poor should have to pay to 'be part of game'...
WIRE: National Security Threat...
Biden ad compares to what workers pay...
Sells 'I paid more' stickers... 

There is not a Democrat policy proposal from one end of the election to the other, other than to make it compulsory to wear masks. The New York Times has released a set of the President’s tax returns and that is what they are turning into the central issue. So far as I can tell, there is no suggestion that there was any cheating on PDT’s taxes, only that he used various existing tax laws to minimise the amounts he paid.

These are amongst the various replies with the first where the video above comes from:

Democrats Are LYING About Trump’s Taxes, Push INSANE Theory That He’s A National Security Threat

New York Times’ Trump Tax Return ‘Bombshell’ Is A Joke

The New York Times Recycles Old Reporting To Drop ‘Bombshell’ Trump Tax Return Story

NYT Debunks Three Media Conspiracy Theories With Trump’s Tax Returns.

And there are the various attacks on Amy Coney Barrett bordering on religious bigotry, but so what? Here’s one post defending her nomination: THE HANDWRINGING TALE.

Meanwhile, the American economy is picking up in spite of every effort to spike it, especially via the Chinese virus: Unemployment is Improving Far Faster Than Projected – Unlike After the Great Recession.

And Trump has been nominated for a third Nobel Peace Prize, this nomination coming from Australia! Australian Law Profs Nominate Trump For Third Nobel Prize For ‘Trump Doctrine’.

And do not forget the old political equaliser that goes beyond the lying and the media bias, well beyond: Trump Calls On Justice Department to Investigate Ilhan Omar Over Illegal Ballot Scam. There is a new story on Democrat electoral cheating coming out every day.

The Melbourne Syndrome in pictures

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It would be much funnier if it weren’t actually true.

AND THIS FROM TODAY’S FINANCIAL REVIEW: Mask crackdown mad, health experts warn. Their headline, with this text:

Asked why he would require Victorians to wear masks when there is no health purpose, Mr Andrews dismissed the question. “That’s an esoteric debate, isn’t it? Maybe there will be a time when we have the luxury of having those sorts of debates.”

Maybe there will be a time! “Mad” is just the word.

And indeed, Andrew Bolt now specifically asks

Has Daniel Andrews gone mad?

I cannot tell if this is just hyperbolic exaggeration or is meant literally. To me, it could be either, but what if it’s literally true? I keep coming back to The Caine Mutiny and Captain Queeg. The Caine is a US battleship during the war in the Pacific. Captain Queeg is its captain who has gone insane. The leader of the mutiny is Maryk.

Maryk keeps a secret log of Queeg’s eccentric behavior…. Soon afterward, the Caine is caught in a typhoon, an ordeal that sinks three destroyers. At the height of the storm, Queeg’s paralysis of action convinces Maryk that he must relieve the captain of command to prevent the loss of the ship. Willie, as Officer of the Deck, supports the decision. Maryk turns Caine into the wind and rides out the storm.

Fundamentally incorrect government statements

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This seems very direct.

Lying is native to politics. If you did not realise it before watching the inquiry into Victorian Labor’s disastrous COVID-19 quarantine scheme, you will now. The Victorian government led by Daniel Andrews is so mired in lies that truth is a distant memory….

We heard the lie by omission, the half-truth, blame-shifting, obfuscation, red herrings, selective memory and collective amnesia. The Premier claims not to know who made the decision to hire private security staff to guard people in hotel quarantine. Labor ministers have followed suit, though most peppered their feigned ignorance with a generous serving of selective amnesia….

On August 8, the Premier told a parliamentary committee: “I think it is fundamentally incorrect to assert that there was (sic) hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow someone said no. That’s not, in my judgment, accurate.” However, Sky News and others reported that Prime Minister Scott Morrison personally wrote letters to the Victorian Premier urging him to accept the help of Australian Defence Force personnel in July as the number of COVID cases surged in Victoria. It was reported that the PM sent letters to Andrews on July 4, 6 and 11. In the final correspondence, the PM offered about 1000 defence personnel to work alongside Victoria Police to ensure the virus was contained, affected suburbs were locked down and contact tracing was undertaken….

When Defence Minister Linda Reynolds noted the Victorian government had rejected commonwealth offers of ADF help with hotel quarantine, the Premier framed it as playing politics. He supported the alternative version of events authored by Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, who said he neither sought nor was offered ADF assistance with hotel quarantine in meetings on March 27-28. However, Defence records showed that from late March the offer stood. The Victorian government authorities rejected at least half a dozen offers of assistance.

And then there is this from Maurice Neuman: Nostalgia won’t protect Snowy white elephant.

Paul Broad, the chief executive officer of Snowy Hydro, has provided a solid rebuttal (The Snowy 2.0 project will pay its way) to an open letter (On every count, Snowy 2.0 is a disaster in the making), published on this page on September 18. The letter’s 37 authors cannot be easily dismissed. All have relevant expertise in energy markets, engineering and the environment.

That said, Broad is adamant that Snowy 2.0 is “underpinned by a strong business case”. He alleges that “critics have run with every falsehood under the sun” and that most arguments are “flimsy” and not warranting a response….

The project’s announcement bears many of the hallmarks of the National Broadband Network, which was a dream brought to life on the back of a drinks coaster. As predicted, it is a technological and commercial white elephant.

While there were no drinks coasters, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro 2.0 announcement in 2017 was widely viewed as a cynically timed thought bubble. Like the NBN, it had no business case but was still acclaimed as an “electricity game-changer”. Turnbull boasted, “it will increase the generation of the Snowy Hydro scheme by 50 per cent, adding 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the national electricity market”. He made no reference to cost. However, Broad later told a Senate estimates hearing that a “very rough, top-level estimate”, was $2bn.

Rough it was. Two years later, a construction contract was let for $5.1bn….

All in all, and without allowing for cost overruns, the final investment for the entire project could well sit at about $14bn or, seven times the original indicative figure….

Whatever the reality, Australians are getting the impression that Snowy Hydro 2.0 is yet another “trust me” project where the business case has been written to reflect the announcement. It will take time for the truth to be known but, sadly, history is not on the government’s side.

The sad part is that we still live in a kind of fantasy theoretical economic environment in which government waste is believed to be good for the economy. It may well be good for those on the receiving end of all this money, but for the rest of us, it is a straightforward loss that keeps us much poorer than we would otherwise have been.

Risk perception and Covid-1984

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20 million tests with 423,000 positive results unadjusted for the 2.3% false positive estimate apparently means, to a professor of statistics, that virtually no one may actually be covid-positive given the accuracy of the tests we now have available.

The notion that a proper understanding of risk lies behind the support for lockdowns and all of the other measures taken is without foundation. The chap in the video thinks that because in some abstruse approach to dealing with a set of numbers, that the entire British public will rise up and demand that the entire lockdown and protective apparatus be dismantled and that the health authorities and even the government will be held accountable for some sort of fraud.

What a joke! The real point is that virtually no one cares about the situation at large and in general, but only about themselves. And no one cares that their personal risk is, objectively measured, virtually zero, but only if their personal risk is more than zero. If it is, then lock it all down and throw away the key until you can come back with a vaccine that will with certainty protect ME from death.

To paraphrase Stalin, my death is a tragedy, that virtually no one else is dying is an irrelevancy.

Does anyone really get influenced by any of this: Survival rates for COVID-19?

The CDC last week posted its new estimate of the survival rates for COVID-19, broken up by age.

This link put those number in clear terms:

0-19 years: 99.997%
20-49 years: 99.98%
50-69 years: 99.5%
70+ years: 94.6%

That is, your chance of dying, by age, is as follows:

0-19 years: 0.003%%
20-49 years: 0.002%
50-69 years: 000.5%
70+ years: 0.054%

That may seem like a negligible number to you, but too all to many individuals it is a finite possibility. So far as all this is being conceived, even if someone is under 50 years of age, one chance in 50,000 is much too large, they think,if that one person is ME.

The politics of Covid is understood best by the hysterics and madmen political leaders amongst us. Any perceived risk greater than zero is unacceptable to a very large proportion of the VOTING public. Say this proportion is five percent, and it is likely much larger than that, no government will remain in place if it alienates so many. That’s where this comes from.

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1310208435581902848?

That, I promise you, is poll-driven.

The Murdoch Press and the left

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From Five myths about Rupert Murdoch published in The Washington Post. Myth Number 1:

1. Murdoch is on the far right.

Fairness and balance aside, Fox News serves up some of the most conservative voices active in American politics. The Wall Street Journal publishes consistently anti-tax and anti-regulatory editorials and opinion pieces. Murdoch’s London tabloids beat the drums for the invasion of Iraq, while his Australian tabloids routinely mock the idea of global warming.

And yet, this is a guy who kept a bust of Lenin in his student chambers at Oxford University. Murdoch founded his native Australia’s sole national newspaper (the Australian) in 1964 and encouraged its reporting on conditions confronting aboriginal peoples. Even though he is hostile to government initiatives on climate change, groups that examine corporate carbon emissions have given News Corp. high marks for monitoring and disclosing its footprint; the company beat a five-year deadline that he set back in 2007 to become carbon-neutral. A naturalized American citizen, Murdoch supports more liberal immigration laws.

Over the years, he has moved to the right. But his cultural conservatism and skepticism of regulation are tempered by more progressive stands, influenced in part by his three adult children with his second wife. And his political instincts prove flexible. Although he went after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a leading Republican, last year for cozying up to President Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy so close to Election Day, Murdoch has made common cause with center-left Democrats such as the late New York City mayor Ed Koch and Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was a senator from New York. Similarly, he backed Labor’s Tony Blair for prime minister three times in Britain. He is simply not as conservative as Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes or the Journal editorial page.

And then there is this from Wikipedia:

 At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and its leader, Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain.… Former [Labour] Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch “were in regular communication” and that “there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch”.

And in Australia.

Rudd certainly has a lot to say about the coverage of the 2007 federal election by this august organ’s parent company in his new book, Not for the Faint-hearted, released today:

True to the Murdoch newspaper and Howard government form guide … The Murdoch press continued with its breathless reporting …

We gave him a hard time in 2007? We gave him our endorsement. The Australian’s editorial, November 23, 2007:

Mr Rudd has spoken of recapturing some of the reform zeal of the Hawke and Keating years … We recognise that no change is free of risk, but we recommend a vote for Mr Rudd.

Rudd hated News’s coverage of his time at a strip joint in New York. Rudd’s memoir, yesterday:

Sure enough … I was hit with the full barrage of Murdoch front-page headlines, screaming RUDD’S STRIP CLUB SHAME and DRUNK RUDD CAN’T RECALL STRIP CLUB …

And our investigations into his multi-millionaire wife’s business dealings. Not for the Faint-hearted, continued:

The Murdoch press stalking her as if she was a criminal … This was a type of McCarthyism; where once a charge is made, then published and sensationalised, it becomes legitimate to publish any subsequent charge …

Didn’t stop our sister paper The Daily Telegraph from endorsing him. November 23, 2007:

The Daily Telegraph believes Kevin Rudd should be the next prime minister … we now believe Mr Howard has reached his use-by date …

As did Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail, November 23, 2007:

Kevin Rudd is a man for his time … he has the support of The Courier-Mail, only the second endorsement we have given federal Labor since the newspaper was established 74 years ago.

The question was not who was responsible but why did anyone think it was the right way to go?

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I watched the examination of Daniel Andrews the other day until I could bear it no longer. The major issue seemed to be who had decided to employ these private contractors rather than bring in the ADF. But that was not the right issue. The right issue is why was that decision made? And let us not kid ourselves. The decision was made by Daniel Andrews irrespective of who is being asked to take the rap. As if he didn’t know what was going on. Is everyone an absolute idiot?

But that aside, the question of who is irrelevant. What demands explanation is why it was decided almost immediately to enforce the quarantine within Victoria using unqualified personnel who had to be trained from scratch.

It cannot be because they were a cheaper source of labour, since they cost an additional $18m whereas the ADF were being sponsored and funded by the Commonwealth.

It cannot be because these people had an expertise that would allow them to undertake these tasks with greater focus and with less potential for mistakes. We know that cannot be the case since we have heard from many of them about their lack of relevant skills and qualifications and their absence of training.

We also know it cannot be the case that they had a superior skill set since the virus – uniquely in Victoria – escaped from confinement and went onto to kill hundreds more while being contained everywhere else.

It cannot be because Daniel Andrews wanted to provide more money to his union colleagues by providing them with sinecures that would earn them a tonne of money for providing an essentially simple service, because the task wasn’t all that simple as it turned out. But the money they most surely did receive, lucky them, for taking on a job that was well beyond their capabilities.

So why were these completely unskilled union colleagues of the premier chosen to receive the millions for undertaking these tasks even though they were not even a favoured tenderer for the state and had no requisite skills?

It is obviously a very difficult question because not a single person seems to be able to come up with a plausible answer.