Global Economy Bursting?

[Restrain]

Argentina in financial collapse, President resigns and flees country, rioting leaves several dead.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Many analysts now predict the new government will likely end the Argentine peso's one-to-one peg with the dollar, in place since 1991. While it helped Argentina vanquish hyperinflation more than a decade ago, today it is blamed for making Argentine exports uncompetitive abroad.
Any devaluation of the peso could mean instant bankruptcy for thousands of Argentines, along with many of the country's largest businesses. More than 80 per cent of contracts and debts are denominated in the dollar.


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Read more: [url]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-91169/President-resigns-riots-leave-22-dead-Argentina.html#ixzz2FpoEJAeu[/URL]

[url]http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20121221/API/1212210778/Monti-resigns-as-Italy-heads-to-elections[/URL]

[url]http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20121222/API/1212220505/Hurting-Spaniards-pin-hopes-on-Christmas-lottery[/URL]

No matter what Congress does to address the year-end fiscal cliff, it's already too late for employers to accurately withhold income taxes from January paychecks, unless all the current tax rates remain unchanged, which is an unlikely scenario.
Social Security payroll taxes are set to increase on Jan. 1, so workers should immediately feel the squeeze of a 2 percent cut in their take-home pay. But as talks drag on over how to address other year-end tax increases, the Internal Revenue Service has delayed releasing income tax withholding tables for 2013.

[url]http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20121222/APW/1212220627/Don't-be-fooled-by-January-pay-_-higher-taxes-loom[/URL]

Medicare taxes to go up on high income earners this coming year.

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[Randolph Kinney]

For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/e...?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121223&_r=0

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Something about you can take the boy (girl in these cases) out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy.

Sad as it is, too many students don't have a clear message and guidance to what a degree is and what you need to make the leap from goth ghetto kid to a job. I know a waitress, sweet, smart, and worked for years to a degree in general business. What do you do with that? In this world it needs to be medicine, science, engineering or math. And unless you have a goal of lawyer in Dad's law firm, then even lawyers are significantly better off with undergrad degrees in engineering or accounting. A buddy of mine ended up as an FBI agent with an accounting/law degree. General practise as a lawyer once title opinions slowed down around here is pretty slow business.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

California law means ketchup will come from China

Beginning Jan. 1, under the terms of a groundbreaking California environmental law known as AB 32, Morning Star and 350 other companies statewide will begin paying for those emissions, which trap heat and contribute to global warming.

Companies are trying to figure out how this will affect their bottom lines and have lobbied state regulators to minimize the costs. In the meantime they are weighing their options. Should they stay and adapt or move operations elsewhere?

Morning Star, a top producer in a $926 million industry, has to be near the tomato fields of California’s Central Valley, so relocating was never an option. Its biggest question is how to handle the extra costs. For the 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually by Morning Star’s three plants, the company is being awarded about 192,500 free allowances the first year; the company must buy the remainder on the open market. In the first allowance auction in November, the allowance price settled at $10.09 a ton, meaning in the first year Morning Star has to pay roughly $75,000 to cover its emissions.

But over the next five years, the number of free allowances will decrease sharply to encourage further emissions cuts. At current rates, that means Morning Star will have to buy 100,000 allowances for both 2017 and 2018, by which time the prices may have doubled or tripled in an open market. The company estimates the law will cost it an extra $20 million over the next seven years.

Nick Kastle, a company spokesman, said it would almost certainly pass on the new costs to makers of ketchup and frozen pizza, which would be likely to share the extra costs with consumers. “People nationwide are going to be affected by AB 32,” he said. “In a global marketplace you can’t pass along all of your costs,” he said.

Mr. Kastle said Morning Star’s margins are too slim to absorb new regulatory costs. But he also worries about the consequence of passing them on. He knows that the California garlic industry lost half its market to Chinese imports in less than a decade, and notes that China’s tomato-processing industry is on the rise.

State tomato processors control more than 95 percent of the American market, but they fear that the fast-growing Chinese sector could make inroads.

EoM

Chinese garlic? Chinese Ketchup? Next it will be Chinese pizza.

 

[Meandering]

he said. “In a global marketplace you can’t pass along all of your costs,” he said.

This is exactly why we went decades and generations with import tariffs and protectionism laws. Should we now be surprised that as a country, it costs us more to have a different standard of living than the rest of the world?


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[Randolph Kinney]

This is exactly why we went decades and generations with import tariffs and protectionism laws. Should we now be surprised that as a country, it costs us more to have a different standard of living than the rest of the world?


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Excuse me, we have a different regulatory structure with burden of compliance cost plus direct and indirect taxation for providing same. That does not equate to a higher standard of living. It does translate into less competitiveness in a global market.

The information explains how it is the Chinese are capturing food production. Just like logs were too expensive to process in this country, so too will agriculture be too expensive to process in this country.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Easy to challenge a country that gets all its food from you. Now think about Chinese ketchup. Remember the tainted baby formula sold there? What better way to make tomato paste redder than to put lead in it.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

California’s Largest Corporation is Headed for the Exit

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/californias-largest-corporation-is-headed-for-the-exit/

Chevron is California’s largest corporation, but it seems to be making the move to becoming Texas’ largest corporation instead.

Employees at Chevron’s San Ramon corporate headquarters received an unexpected email yesterday. It notified them that a quarter of their jobs are being moved from California to Texas.

That’s 800 jobs out the door which gives Chevron a larger presence in Texas than it still has in California.

But surely this is another problem that can be solved with more taxes. If we just invest more money in the schools, then the next generation of Californians will be divided between those who stay and collect welfare checks and those who get the hell out.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

U.S. rejects California's request for a penalty exemption

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1224-school-penalty-20121224,0,6606485.story

The state sought a waiver from a mandate requiring nearly all students to be academically proficient by 2014 as part of the federal No Child Left Behind program.

Under federal rules, more than 6,000 California schools have been labeled as failing.

Besides enduring a stigma of failure, they must also set aside as much as 20% of their federal funds to set up tutoring services with outside vendors and to transport students to "non-failing" schools if the families so choose.