Common Cents

Port to port

Ralph Murphy

(1/1/2020) Congress passed a $1.4 trillion spending bill just before the holiday break and the President quickly signed the measure the following day. It was presented as a bipartisan victory and funding for varied federal programs will be assured through September avoiding any chance of a shutdown. The bill included tax break, cuts, and cancellations that do deflate actual outlays associated with earlier packages. During the Obama administration or even early Trump a $2 trillion higher budget was routine. It begs the question where did that other money go when it was a tax withdrawal from the collective paychecks? It seems varied programs many likely illegal cash redirects to home and abroad received it and they do have to be explored in the current realignments. The earner has it now.

There seemed complex informal understandings within a limited control group attached to New York banking officials who could manipulate tax and spending measures both for their clients and to affect the national political community and legislation. They had ties to the corporate leaders who oddly lacked a collective voice in managing the earnings or even working capital surrendered to that impersonal medium of exchange. I have written of it before but want to include the international fallout of the guilds. The businesses were the source of pooled wealth in sales but had to abide by caps and redirects of the more powerful bankers who also then enjoyed federal security organ support. They don’t anymore.

There appeared to have been direct bailout programs of simple cash allotments to friends of the New York bankers abroad. The representatives of the host recipients were even listed on bank group host senior positions. Those money transfers amounted to simple political program welfare but were generally within the scope of possibility to the victimized general public as billed to a poorly sourced but avoidable recession. Physical structures abroad often reflected the similar wealth aspect of the spending. My new point is the impact of the budget as well as bank investing both at home and to dependents abroad as their access to the cash will now have to be overt and legal far from their customary receipts.

The system as evolved to the current implicate of the billing restores private sector funds to discretionary consumer spending rather than the New York guild as brokered by tax funds. It also included management techniques or obligations known as hedge funds linked again to the major banks and included corporate obligation of staff control. price and output policies and mergers of what had to be competing producers for the earnings to rollover as new sales. Hedge funds have played a role in the American economy since the 1970 s when the Nixon administration was talked into limited wage and price controls. They became a real corporate control source following bank consolidation linked to the Dodd Frank Wall Street reform and protection act of 2010.

The top four banks to the era banks as JP Morgan now Chase bank or Citibank controlled most of the nation’s working capital but outsourced it to their clients both in Europe and no return Chinese ventures which crippled the system and caused realignment to conventional investments. That ended with Dodd Frank repeal last year.The point now is the affect the money will have on conventional supply and demand especially newer investment opportunities without the New Yorkers playing politics with the cash and bailing out that Chinese women’s movement or eccentric British who could do whatever they wanted with it and claim competence to investment savvy.

It wasn’t just the bankers but included subsidy and in Germany’s case overt tax policies known as a Solidarity tax of 5.5% on personal income that was installed initially higher just after unification in the early 1990 s. It’s reviewed recently and has been roughly halved but the wealthy still retain the tax burden and it’s poorly sourced and managed to press review. There were other taxes there that seemed to serve the-provided funds to the eastern lander or regions like a gas or excise tax but those outlays are even harder to track.

Despite the friendly projection of unification the eastern communities were very skeletal, poor, hostile and bloc inundated. The western presence was drawn down to an absolute minimum. Berlin, in the middle of it, drifted hard left with security organs both intelligence and federal police reflecting those players and branching out as aggression to western lander. It seemed to have been recently confronted by internal opposition as the federal police chief was removed last year and British occupation areas returned to domestic interests as Brexit led to their visa cancelations. They’re stationing to 90 day guest visas in Germany and other regions of Europe and the controlled repatriation from occupation zones included areas they shared with the Russians.

Through all that it didn’t seem a single American business closed due to non-market forces as politics. They included fast food chains and even car dealers, Jeep and Ford sell well. There was an alleged plan to create the German Democratic People’s Republic or GDRP that fell through along with a rumored cross border war that would have consolidated socialist policies in that production hub. That all ended by Brexit but Berlin’s still unstable though monetary interests beyond tax policy are relatively coherent with regional focus aiding producers not aliens.

The British will now have to leave their administration posts where they wielded awkwardly high influence and tax control. They've has have a very long history of really suspect service provision void of any market role and it has proven recessionary costly and served as a prototype for others as the Russians then Chinese women movements that also attached to the American federal aid. Germany beyond the bloc seems to pay the French as the guild role presumably then linked to banking or corporate and that often social or religious obligation led to transfers not sales as they could have in a more exposed business environment.

The issue is the realignment and the best the west can do is to let competence and markets dictate cash flows only stepping in with regulatory curbs if especially a foreign investment strategy would prove too costly or import too threatening which can happen. Generally it would be the case to less developed economies with singular output dependency and a foreign program that’s less costly or higher grade.

Return on investment is a function of demand wanting the good or service and capacity or desire to create it from "nothing". That’s based again on opportunity and resource recombination human and physical. That’s my frame of reference on these dealings as it does reflect what people are willing to work for. If trying to bargain with especially an ill-defined table commitment much of this would be impossible. Simple demand and supply commitments based on point in time market desire at a price broker is the conventional frame of reference.

The problem now is the transfers of cash made very unlikely winners to appearance of real political " hustlers" that discouraged their own domestic innovation and even insured continued political longevity to areas which could better produce or even compete with the foreign gift givers. Social bonding issues and group or team commitments can be consoling but also awkwardly limiting and wealth levels reflect them.

Banking, tax policies, subsidy programs and suspect earnings reports all have to be carefully scrutinize for unlikely dips or gains associated with domestic programs. They can be with sound regulatory authority, beyond very crude markets as commodity links individual as physical damage or theft are also generally applicable to defensive of impersonal of them that would not include management and even then you’ll find even OPEC run by the western businesses if competing.

A realistic appraisal of market output and future consumer trends would ideally include the need to terminate the guild programs that arbitrarily and inconsistently redirect cash flows. Price and output levels in favor the control groups. Subsidies further distort market values as do poorly scrutinized tax programs no matter their inception motive. Legal norms that apply to individuals as theft or damage are routinely transferable actions to impersonal organizations and deserve their support. Falsified and earnings and projection of competence based an solicitation of others must be ended, seems to have been if that spending bill is honored in a continuum and boards a riding production tide in keeping with quantifiable proof of market needs and gains.