TW: This is Norquist's contribution to the Politico's dialogue on what to do with the bailout, Norquist was a ringleader in defeating the bill yesterday (btw Norquist is one of the most powerful Republican activists, he is the king of cut taxes no matter what especially for the wealthy):
"If the administration would defer or repeal the mark to market rule, announce that it will unilaterally index the basis for capital gains to inflation -- a move super-lawyer Chuck Cooper has pointed out the president has the power to do as an executive order -- and undo the Clinton era supersizing of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and fight (understandably unsuccessfully with this congress) to reduce/abolish capital gains taxes there might be an argument for the bailout. (Of course if those things were done there would be no need for the bailout.)"
TW: I defer to Mr. Norris on the mark to mkt scam, but then by executive fiat he wants W. Bush to reduce cap gains taxes (because the previous W. Bush reduction just were not enough)and then stop the CRA (you know the item every ecomomist blames for the crisis...not so much really)
From Norris:
"The political lynching of truth-telling in accounting is gatthering steam...If only [the bankers] could value their assets at what they just know they would be worth in a rational world, all would be well...In a Dow Jones column, Michael Rapoport points out the obvious: Wachovia went out with a book value of $75 billion. Citi paid $2 billion. Could it be that asset values are overstated, not understated?..In any case, policy makers should remember the sad history of changing accounting rules to keep banks afloat."
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/lying-bank-accounting/
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