Re: Michael Hudson on capital gains

sinister wrote:
http://counterpunch.org/hudson04172008.html

"In an argumentative mode, the moderator pointed out the long-discredited 'supply side' Republican rationale for tax cuts. Is it not true, he asked, that each time the capital gains tax was cut, receipts increased? He did NOT explain that asset-price inflation had gone hand in hand with tax cuts.

Yes, they did. Doesn't this show that the phrase "tax cuts" was
code for both?

This all comes back to the text of the Federal Reserve Act...

http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/fract/sect02a.htm
"...so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment,
...."

....being to create a climate of inflating employment numbers.

Assuming that Both Sides of this debate accept the Federal Reserve
Act, what is there to argue about?

Nor did he note the fact that some 80% of the tax is in land-price gains--gains that speculators made 'in their sleep' while Mr. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve was flooding the real estate bubble with credit."

80% seems high. And the real estate bubble was one of about ... four?
The equities one ending in 1987, the dotcom one, the real estate
bubble, then the present/next one ( what, oil and comoodities?).

We have Federal law, indeed, foundational law to the creation of the
Fed that *demands* this. Reagan et al just managed this to marry
traditional Republican protestations of frugality onto FDR
Fed money pump stuff.

Meanwhile, global GDP just keeps going up. Hasn't this *worked*?

--
Les Cargill
.