news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100915/ts_nm/us_greenspan
Greenspan testifies at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing in Washington Reuters - Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, testifies before the Financial Crisis Inquiry ...
Reversing a long-standing aversion to tax increases, Greenspan warned of "very grave problems ahead" if the budget deficit, swollen to around $1 trillion by massive amounts of stimulus spending, is not tackled soon. "I am in favor for the first time in my memory of raising taxes," Greenspan told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "I would love to see taxes go down, and I would hope that what we would do is we allow the tax cuts, the so called Bush tax cuts, all to lapse as they will ... on December 31 and then gradually bring the level of expenditure down," he said. The President Bush-era tax cuts, which were supported by Greenspan in 2001 and 2003, are set to expire at the end of this year. President Obama says he wants to cap taxes on middle and lower income households but allow income tax rates to revert to higher levels for the wealthy. Investors are hoping that dividend and capital gains taxes will be capped at 20 percent, or less, compared with the current 15 percent. "We should not have tax cuts with borrowed money, but we should have tax cuts, and the more as far as I'm concerned the better, but only in the context of bringing the deficit down," he said. "Unless we do that, I think we have very grave problems ahead." The tax issue is key in the forthcoming mid-term elections in November, with Republicans pushing to keep the lower rates and saying higher taxes will dampen the economic recovery. Greenspan said the choice over whether to raise taxes was between "terrible" and "worse." Letting the budget deficit run rampant was the worse option, he said. Greenspan warned that the budget deficit was crowding out capital investment and said stimulus spending had been less successful than anticipated. He said the stimulus plan had probably reduced private investment by one-third to a half of the total plan. "We have to find a way to simmer down the extent of activism that is currently going on and allow this economy to heal. Greenspan headed the Federal Reserve for almost 19 years until he retired in 2006. Now 84, he was regarded as an oracle on the economy before the financial crisis. However, suggestions that his loose-money policies in the early 2000s helped inflate the US housing bubble hurt his reputation. In a Time Magazine list of people responsible for the economic crisis, Greenspan was named No.
She actually believes that "Big Money" is creating more businesses in THIS country? were all hippies, treehuggers and you are all mean, greedy and selfish! label, label label and let the real controllers continue to control!
Report Abuse How about the government first balances the budget and uses the tax increase only to reduce the national debt. Until then they will just waste any additional taxes on new spending, and I say I can spend the money more wisely than congress can.
Report Abuse Everybody complains about higher taxes, but at least we get the use of the roads, parks, airports, etc that are financed thru our taxes. They can raise our rates without fear of getting booted out of office. If taxes went up as fast as insurance rates, there would be a revolution, but most citizens just fall in line and pay up. And yet, let someone suggest raising taxes is necessary and everybody is ready to join the revolution. We, the people, allowed the government to run up the debt.
Report Abuse Everyone wants to get a big woody about the "rich" getting a tax cut. If I earned $250,000 I would be very happy, but I don't think I would considered MYSELF "rich". I would consider people like Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton, Sean Penn, Barbara Streisand, etc to be quite rich. The problem I see with increasing the tax rate for the rich is this: If our taxes are to be used for parks, roads, police, fire, sewer, water, etc, why is one person any more liable for those ammenities than any other person. We all use these services an equal amount so why should someone pay more only based on the fact that they make more money. I think an across the board tax rate makes the most sense. What is the incentive to make more money if you know you have to pay more taxes. And why do we continue to elect millionaires to our Congress and Senate? These are the people that are dooming each and everyone of us to these extremely high taxes.
Report Abuse What part of stop spending don't the liberals understand. Who can possible think that spending more than you take in, actually ten times what you spend, is a good idea. Must be all those libs who got loans on houses, didn't realize that having bills higher than their income was a bad idea.
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