Wall St Spending A Fortune In Lobbying To Defeat Private Equity Tax Hike

Washington Post:

The nascent fight over whether to raise taxes on Wall Street hot shots has become one of the year's biggest lobbying bonanzas.

In order to defeat what amounts to two pieces of tax legislation, those new high rollers of finance -- private equity firms and hedge funds -- have been flooding Washington with money. Even though legislation was introduced just this spring, the buyout firms have already distributed at least $5.5 million in lobbying fees, quadruple what they spent in all of 2006, according to Bloomberg News.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

12:05 AM on 08/22/2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cS9-0QVL0
Webster Tarpley on Crash of 2007 taped 8.20.07pt 1

Hedge Funds (and Private Equity) should be outlawed

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

07:21 PM on 08/21/2007

"We Don't Pay Taxes. Only The Little People Pay Taxes."
- Leona Helmsley

the tax system is unfair. labor is taxed but capital gains are taxed much less, and the tax loopholes get worse the wealthier you get.

the wealthy have gotten so unholy-wealthy they don't even need a labor-based economy anymore, they can just build pyramids of debt-trading. so they tax labor and subsidize rapacious financial markets. it's really obscene when you think about it.

[BuckBurris]

02:40 PM on 08/21/2007

I am no wild eted fan of capital punishment.However, in the case of lobbying ... yes! I'd recommend the death penalty for that diksgusting crime.

[realitytrumpsbull]

01:22 PM on 08/21/2007

I think you could solve the Wall Street problem by simply taxing it completely out of existence. Make it so that if you invest in something, or are even simply standing ON Wall Street, read the Journal, or even just talk about stocks and bonds, you're immediately eligible for the government's 245% tax bracket, or 1.3 trillion dollars per hour, whichever is more. That'd put paid to the bernanke's, the grossos, the trumps, and the rest of em in about 3.45 seconds. Game, set, and match, let's have a 400,000% tax bracket for the business-suit mobsters, put em out of business.

[GiveMeStrength]

12:38 PM on 08/21/2007

When will Americans wake up and realize that "What's good for Wall Street is not what is good for America"!

Heil Bush!

[Hopalongpoppyseed]

12:28 PM on 08/21/2007

Oink Oink.

[Grunty1]

10:54 AM on 08/21/2007

Of course, all this money COULD just be used to pay the tax....