Wolf Richter

Intuit’s Long Hard Fight To Stick It To The Taxpayer

“The government imposed the income tax burden in the first place,” said former California Republican legislator Tom Campbell about the process of filing tax returns. “So if it wants to make it easier, for heaven’s sake, why not?” But two companies that sell tax preparation software and services have been lobbying tooth and nail against making it easier—and won.

Cyprus And The Eurozone Bank Bailout Hypocrisy

Cyprus didn’t prick the Eurozone bailout bubble, the notion that bank investors who took enormous risks to gain financial rewards would always be made whole by taxpayers. That bubble had already been pricked in February. But it was the first time that the international bailout cabal, the Troika, stuck its needle into it—while Germany quietly bailed out all investors in one of its own rotten banks.

Confident In The Security Of Skype And Other Encrypted Services?

Internet companies know practically everything about their users. And servers never forget. Advertisers, ID thieves, insurance companies, and others are trying to get this data. But “law enforcement” around the world can simply bully its way to it. Now Microsoft confessed: even your data and conversations on its encrypted services that you thought were secure aren’t because, upon request, it gives the crypto keys to governments around the world.

A CEO Explains Why He Sold A German Soul To the Chinese

Putzmeister was a paragon of the German Mittelstand—family-owned firms with innovative technologies and high-quality manufacturing that dominate their niches worldwide. But in 2012, it was acquired by a Chinese giant. Now its German CEO reveals just how impossible integration is and how dire not only Europe but the world look to him, particularly China.

Will the Real Clowns Please Stand Up?

Contributed by Don Quijones: Italy has Beppe Grillo. But with European governments reeling from self-inflicted crises, and the euro debacle descending into a tragi-comic farce, one wonders who the real clowns are – especially here in Spain, where ministers gorge themselves on the public purse, leaving behind a trail of evidence so obvious that even the mainstream media can’t ignore it.

Growth Industry In France: Hounding Companies For Back Taxes and Penalties

For corporate welfare queens that know how to leverage worldwide tax systems, France offers a free ride. But as the French government tries in a vain and desperate effort to make ends meet, it’s not only going after multinationals and their tax optimization schemes but also smaller companies that are gasping for air. Revenues from aggressive collections—“not far from blackmail,” an insider says—have jumped, one of the rare areas of growth in France.

Housing Bubble 2 Forms: But This Time It’s Different

We have seen it for several years now: foreclosure sales—there were 5 million since the peak of the housing bubble—have become the hunting grounds for investors with two goals: hanging on to these homes until the Fed’s flood of money drives up their value; and defraying the expenses of ownership by renting them out. And…

The Fed’s Token Voice Of Reason: Megabanks Undermine Americans’ Faith In Democracy

At the CPAC, as Republicans struggled with the future, some speakers drew crowds of over 1,000 people. But Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher was shuffled off to “an out-of-the-way ballroom” with barely two dozen people showing up; yet he’d talk about “the injustice of operating our economy under the thumb” of too-big-to-fail banks.

IMF: Eurozone Banks Are In Trouble, Trample Taxpayers and Democracy To Bail Them Out!

Why is it that 17 nations have to fundamentally reorganize themselves and shift sovereignty away from national parliaments to new layers of transnational, beyond-control bureaucracies that can extract untold wealth from taxpayers—just to save the banks?

At The Confluence of Free Money, Pent-Up Demand, And Reality

New vehicle sales have staged a phenomenal recovery from the financial crisis, when buyers went on strike. Sales below the replacement rate create a vacuum that wants to be filled. Pent-up demand. When it kicked in, sales jumped by over 10% annually. Exuberance took over the bludgeoned industry. But late February, something happened to that vacuum.