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Global Economy Bursting?

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The Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-i...llion-new-rounds-of-ammo-2012-3#ixzz1qbrd3xy9

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office is getting an "indefinite delivery" of an "indefinite quantity" of .40 caliber ammunition from defense contractor ATK.

The high performance HST bullets are designed for law enforcement and ATK says they offer "optimum penetration for terminal performance."

This refers to the the bullet's hollow-point tip that passes through barriers and expands for a bigger impact without the rest of the bullet getting warped out of shape: "this bullet holds its jacket in the toughest conditions."

Since the government is cutting defense spending and troop levels, it makes one wonder why so many bullets? New wars? Or crowd control? Someone is expecting domestic trouble to the extreme.
 
The drug lords in Mexico need the ammo... I am sure ATF has a new program in the works to giveaway free ammo to drugdealers just so they can track who got shot with 'em.... Probably have a little GPS chip buried in the bullets.

If you shoot a 600 grain .50 cal. lead bullet do you know it won't matter how much body armour you have? The impact will likely knock you out anyway? .40 caliber ammo is likely being designed to penetrate light body armour. It is a pistol round.

Each officer should be practising with several hundred rounds annually. So I suppose it is how long is the contract? 1 year? 10? ... it's still a lot of ammo...and explains why ammo has got so incredibly high at the gun shop. I reload some of my own. Saves a lot of money.
 
Couch Potato said:
Economist says California should dump Prop.13.
Click to expand...

Like so many who are connected to the political system, they can only see more taxes and higher taxes as the only solution to the state spending deficits.

Are High Taxes About to Make Silicon Valley Pack Up and Leave?

http://moneymorning.com/2012/03/30/are-high-taxes-about-to-make-silicon-valley-pack-up-and-leave/

California Governor Jerry Brown is at it again.

He's cut a deal with the teachers' unions that would take the top rate of state income tax from 10.3% to 13.3%.

If passed on the November ballot, that would increase taxes on the top tier by a hefty 29%.

Since that would be the highest rate in the nation, it begs the question: How high would taxes have to go before Silicon Valley's zillionaires decided to make the great escape?

It's a very important question considering the condition of California's state budget.

After all, the Facebook IPO alone is expected to produce $2.5 billion in state tax revenue over the next five years. What if high tax rates set in motion the law of unintended consequences?

Like in the late 1990s when dot-com revenues enabled the state to go on a massive spending spree.

Not long after the tech bubble burst, the sudden budget crunch that followed in 2001-02 caused Governor Gray Davis to be recalled in a referendum.

It's a different set up this time, but the results could be the same.

Higher Taxes Create Capital Flight

Silicon Valley's tech sector provides both capital gains taxes from tech giants selling their stakes after companies go public and massive income tax revenues from their salaries and bonuses in the interim.

Faced with higher taxes the threat of relocation is very real - even among large, well-established companies. For instance, Boeing (NYSE: BA) relocated from Seattle to Chicago in 2001.

California's taxes and other living costs are already large enough to cause flight; in 2007-10 an annual average of 135,000 more people left California than arrived there.

However, the largest generators of California's tax base are not established companies, they are the young, brilliant entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and engineers involved in Silicon Valley enterprises.

These people are exceptionally footloose, with few family ties.

On the plus side, Silicon Valley is very tightly networked, so at least the more junior members of the tech sector would be tied there by their colleagues, competitors and mentors.

Still, the corollary of the Valley's networked nature is that the departure of a small number of key people could cause a mass exodus, with junior employees following their bosses and mentors.

Needless to say, almost all those key people will pay California's new top rate of income tax, if it is introduced.

California citizens should be very afraid. The unintended consequences of higher taxes are quite real.
 
the Facebook IPO alone is expected to produce $2.5 billion in state tax revenue
Click to expand...
You can bet a lot of people will be in the market for a cheap place to live in FL or TX when that happens...They'll move out for a year and save that 10%.
 
Brown's balancing act on tax hike: Wage populist fight to soak the rich or carefully court business?

http://www.mercurynews.com/californ...ns-balancing-act-tax-hike-wage-populist-fight

SACRAMENTO -- Now that left-leaning groups have joined forces with Gov. Jerry Brown on a tax-hike initiative, they are quietly urging him to take on their cause with a full-throated populist campaign to sock it to the rich.

The quandary for Brown is that he needs the support of both wings of the coalition he's trying to build. From the beginning of his 15-month-old administration, one of the governor's key strategies has been to avoid antagonizing business groups.

But polls are showing that the tax-the-rich plan is popular. A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll this week showed that Brown's latest tax proposal has the support of 64 percent of registered voters.

Two weeks ago, Brown struck a deal with backers of the so-called millionaire's tax, the California Federation of Teachers and other liberal groups, to merge their proposals. In a concession to the teachers' federation, Brown agreed to calling the measure a "millionaire's tax." The governor's supporters have begun the task of collecting a million signatures over the next two months to place the new tax proposal on the November ballot.

The hybrid initiative would hike income taxes on the wealthy more than Brown's original measure. The new plan would raise a series of income-tax rates starting with individuals who earn more than $250,000 a year, while also inching up the sales tax by a quarter-cent. The higher income taxes, which would last for seven years, and the increased sales tax, which would last for four, would bring in about $9 billion in the first year.

Also apparently headed to the ballot is a proposal sponsored by wealthy attorney Molly Munger to increase taxes on almost all Californians to pay for education.


Jerry Brown's Big Lie

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577309651936695384.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The fate of the California governor's tax initiative depends on whether voters buy his sales pitch that new revenues will benefit schools. They won't.

According to a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll, 64% of Californians, including three-quarters of independents, support the Democratic governor's initiative to raise taxes on those earning more than $250,000. But that's in part because the poll and the ballot initiative's language frame the tax hike as a school-funding mechanism. The governor has also threatened to cut up to $5 billion from education if voters don't approve the tax hikes.

But here's the rub. About half of all new revenues will actually go to teachers' pensions. As former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pension advisor David Crane recently pointed out in the Sacramento Bee, the California State Teachers' Retirement System is seeking an additional $4.5 billion annually from the state to help pay down its $60 billion unfunded liability. If the state doesn't cough up the dough, local districts and teachers will have to increase their contributions. So any new revenues that flow to school districts will actually end up in the teachers' retirement fund. The rest of the revenues raised by the tax hike, by the way, will go toward paying for state employees' pensions and retiree health benefits, which this year cost taxpayers about $5 billion.
 
How Stockton, California Went Broke in Plain Sight

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577309231747497906.html

The city's fiscal history "has eerie similarities to a Ponzi scheme," says Bob Deis, the city manager Stockton hired in 2010. Over the years, the city promised employees huge—and unfunded—salaries and benefits, so when trouble struck officials began cutting back on services such as police and fire protection, plus libraries and parks.

Stockton's current leadership, which has already suspended some payments to bondholders and is negotiating with creditors and unions, is frank about its past shortcomings. In last year's budget, Stockton admitted that its biggest problem has been a lack of transparency resulting in a host of "hidden costs" in labor agreements for "obligations that are often difficult for citizens to identify or understand."

Stockton safety employees with 30 years of service receive 90% of their highest working salary as a pension, with cost-of-living adjustments up to 2% annually for the rest of their lives. And while the state requires workers to contribute between 7% and 9% of their salary toward pensions, Stockton agreed in a series of agreements with various municipal unions going back to the 1990s to pay the worker portion of the contribution along with its 20% employer share.

Stockton couldn't afford this rich program even in boom times, so officials played risky investment games. In 2007, the city borrowed $125 million and put the money into Calpers, the giant California pension fund, betting that investment managers could earn more than the interest Stockton owed on the debt. When the market tanked, Calpers lost 24%-30% of the loan's principal, according to city budget documents.

Now Stockton is stuck with interest costs on top of pension obligations that pile an additional 48% onto basic employee pay. Thus a public safety worker earning $70,000 annually costs the city another $33,000 in interest and pension-borrowing costs.

Perched precariously atop this mountain of obligations are retiree health benefits. Stockton officials awarded these to city employees in a series of votes in the 1990s but made no effort to fund them, intending simply to pay costs out of their budget as workers retired. As hundreds did just that over the years, the costs grew. Next year, the city's fiscal documents project, retiree health costs will surpass those of the city's regular work force. At last count the city's unfunded liabilities for retiree health care are above $400 million.

The big question is whether Stockton is only the tip of an iceberg. The 50 states alone have promised their employees retirement health-care benefits amounting to a $627 billion future liability—and funded only 4% of that cost, according to a recent accounting by Bloomberg Data. Unfunded state and municipal pension liabilities range up to $4 trillion, depending on what future investment assumptions you make.
 
Meredith Whitney is being pillared unmercifully for suggesting that Muni bonds will start a major default..circa late 2010. Bill Gross dumped bonds concerned over the issues (but not based on Whitney's reports.) But bonds maintained strong "buy" during 2011 and into this year. Why?

Whitney is right. Her timing is off but she is going to be proven late but right. These bonds are going to default like mad. The recall election of the Wisconsin governor is a real test of who owns the real power in government. The taxpayer or the employees and pensioners of government. How do we continue to fund pensions? Stockton is a tip of the iceberg. How many pensions are banking on high risk investments to pull their chestnuts out of the fire? Tons.

Lately, Whitney is defending herself by pointing out the machinations of governments to keep from defaulting in droves...like Stockton's "negoiations."

Duff McDonald argues that Whitney is correct.
The more general point that she was trying to make—that municipal finances in this country were a mess that was only going to get messier—was dead on. Laugh at her all you want, but then try this: go find one person who says their local taxes are falling or their municipal services have improved in the past year or two. I wish you luck in your endeavor

Read more: [url]http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-12/markets/31146776_1_defaults-analyst-meredith-whitney-moody#ixzz1qiJYpvt8[/URL]
Click to expand...

Cities are raising rates on trash. Services. A local town is trying to raise a petition to keep the one public swimming pool open. The town can't afford it. The town patriach in days gone by would have funded it himself but he died 5 years ago and his family is in the throes of a financial disaster that has forced them to sell almost all their assets to pay inheritence taxes and obligations.

Falling RE values have resulted in lower property taxes and that, in turn, has sucked the lifeblood from many small towns that have seen much of the sales tax base erode as well with retailer after retailer closing their doors.

Whitney's timing was wrong. Her analysis is going to be proven correct or this economy is going to have to make one whaleova turnaround...
 
Randolph Kinney said:
Like so many who are connected to the political system, they can only see more taxes and higher taxes as the only solution to the state spending deficits.

Are High Taxes About to Make Silicon Valley Pack Up and Leave?

http://moneymorning.com/2012/03/30/are-high-taxes-about-to-make-silicon-valley-pack-up-and-leave/

California Governor Jerry Brown is at it again.

He's cut a deal with the teachers' unions that would take the top rate of state income tax from 10.3% to 13.3%.

If passed on the November ballot, that would increase taxes on the top tier by a hefty 29%.

Since that would be the highest rate in the nation, it begs the question: How high would taxes have to go before Silicon Valley's zillionaires decided to make the great escape?

It's a very important question considering the condition of California's state budget.

After all, the Facebook IPO alone is expected to produce $2.5 billion in state tax revenue over the next five years. What if high tax rates set in motion the law of unintended consequences?

Like in the late 1990s when dot-com revenues enabled the state to go on a massive spending spree.

Not long after the tech bubble burst, the sudden budget crunch that followed in 2001-02 caused Governor Gray Davis to be recalled in a referendum.

It's a different set up this time, but the results could be the same.

Higher Taxes Create Capital Flight

Silicon Valley's tech sector provides both capital gains taxes from tech giants selling their stakes after companies go public and massive income tax revenues from their salaries and bonuses in the interim.

Faced with higher taxes the threat of relocation is very real - even among large, well-established companies. For instance, Boeing (NYSE: BA) relocated from Seattle to Chicago in 2001.

California's taxes and other living costs are already large enough to cause flight; in 2007-10 an annual average of 135,000 more people left California than arrived there.

However, the largest generators of California's tax base are not established companies, they are the young, brilliant entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and engineers involved in Silicon Valley enterprises.

These people are exceptionally footloose, with few family ties.

On the plus side, Silicon Valley is very tightly networked, so at least the more junior members of the tech sector would be tied there by their colleagues, competitors and mentors.

Still, the corollary of the Valley's networked nature is that the departure of a small number of key people could cause a mass exodus, with junior employees following their bosses and mentors.

Needless to say, almost all those key people will pay California's new top rate of income tax, if it is introduced.

California citizens should be very afraid. The unintended consequences of higher taxes are quite real.
Click to expand...

You obviously didn't bother to read his rational for eliminating it or you would have posted a different reply.
 
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