Free PDF Copy of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
“I’m Tired” response from the Cradle of Western Civilization
Good day Sir, I just come across your blog ... and I am proud of you. I am just 54 and live in Athens, Greece. The article that really impressed me most was the one that you wrote back in February 2009, titled “I am tired”. Most of your views find me in total agreement and I thought of send you this mail just to say this. Good luck and God bless, --George K.
Clean Energy's Accounting Gimmick: "Free" Taxpayer Subsidies
Excerpt: The DOE loan guarantee program backs private financing for innovative projects that produce energy with low greenhouse gas emissions. Congress has provided most of the lending authority in the program ($34 billion to date) under something called “self-pay.” It is the only federal loan program with such a rule. An energy project that wins a loan guarantee from the DOE under the self-pay program has to pay the government a fee that DOE and the Office of Management and Budget estimate will fully cover the cost of the guarantee. In other words, Congress doesn’t need to budget a single penny for DOE to back billions of dollars in loans for clean energy projects, and that is where the budget gimmick comes into play. To date, the DOE has made conditional commitments to back over $10 billion in loans under the self-pay program and is reviewing a number of other applicants. (The fee for Solydra’s loan guarantee was funded with a federal appropriation, so it didn’t have to pay under the self-pay program.) Accounting rules for loan programs in the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA) effectively require that budget analysts at DOE and OMB exclude market risk from their calculation of loan program costs. Market risk is the risk that loan defaults will be more frequent and severe in times of economic stress. All lenders charge a premium to bear that kind of risk, and there’s no reason why taxpayers wouldn’t too. But the FCRA requires that budget analysts discount the expected performance of a federally-backed loan using risk-free U.S. Treasury interest rates, thereby stripping out any market risk premium that lenders would charge. The risk is excluded despite the fact that the federal government cannot make market risk go away when it backs loans, nor can it reduce it.
Stephen,
to the American people and must be reformed. In our 21st Century Contract With America, we address tax simplification in a way that is both bold and pragmatic. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, I led the effort to reform welfare, resulting in 66% of those on welfare getting a job or going to school. So I know what it takes to actually pass historic reforms. The 21st Century Contract With America has a tax simplification plan that I am uniquely qualified to pass through Congress. Here is the plan you have helped us develop:![[]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVWPE3ZaRa1Q7TbF9XuJAZQ0eH-jqmp3Ez5qLeuEjFvGtvem-Ww8whWrbnrUiJ6WOLWkyQbbSxwNKrgTo1lRdw2swrXef2tRIjmfDED4b4ziKIxLl_x5fheWAX4UPukqBgTeYe-cnC3g/s1600/Mueller2.jpg)
