News Release Archive - Economy and Business

Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept just released his latest project: “EMPIRE POLITICIAN: A Half-Century of Joe Biden’s Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA.”

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson@gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is executive director of World Beyond War and recently wrote the piece “Biden’s Announcement That Trump Got Military Spending Just Right Is Dead Wrong.” Today, he tweeted about New York Times columnist Tom Friedman now claiming: “China is now a true peer competitor in the military.” As Swanson recently wrote: “U.S. military spending is $1.25 trillion per year across numerous departments. Even just taking the $700 billion and change that goes to the Pentagon and stands in for the full amount in media coverage, U.S. military spending has been climbing for years, including during the Trump years, and is the equivalent of many of the world’s top military spenders combined, most of which are U.S. allies, NATO members, and U.S. weapons customers.

“Still using that artificially reduced figure, China is at 37 percent of it, Russia at 8.9 percent, and Iran is spending 1.3 percent. These are, of course, comparisons of absolute amounts. Per capita comparisons are extreme as well. The United States, every year, takes $2,170 from every man, woman, and child for wars and war preparations, while Russia takes $439, China $189, and Iran $114.”

LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN, lkoshgarian@nationalpriorities.org, @natpriorities
Koshgarian is program director of the National Priorities Project, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. She notes that while Biden is heralding the delayed withdrawal of thousands of troops from Afghanistan, “instead of redirecting any savings to our dire domestic situation, they are plowing those savings right back into the Pentagon.

“The majority of Americans support shifting at least ten percent of the Pentagon budget to pay for other urgent needs. Americans deserve to know that the administration isn’t representing their priorities on Pentagon spending. It’s past time we had a national conversation about the resources being wasted on the Pentagon.”

Earlier this month, the group put out a statement on Biden’s proposed budget: “There is no shortage of options for how to rein in the Pentagon’s excesses. Profitable weapons systems and costly service contracts account for more than half of the Pentagon budget, and the nation’s longest war continues to drain national coffers. Experts from across the political spectrum have put forth detailed proposals for Pentagon cuts that would put real security needs above contractor profits and endless war. … The cumulative cost of these wars has topped $6.4 trillion, and every one of those dollars could have been put to better use. Even a moderate ten percent cut in Pentagon spending could be used to create more than one million jobs in infrastructure, or end homelessness.”

LISA DONNER, Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Donner is executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, which just released the report “Wall Street Money in Washington.” She said today: “The enormous sums that Wall Street has at its disposal, combined with a broken campaign finance system, means there is little practical limit to the amount of money the financial services industry can inject into American debate on politics and policy. Year in and year out, this torrent of money gives Wall Street an outsized role in how we are governed, while driving and protecting policies that help this industry’s super wealthy amass even greater fortunes at the expense of the rest of us.”

The group found: “During the 2019-20 election cycle, Wall Street spent at least $2.9 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying to influence policy in Washington. … That total, which amounts to $4 million a day, shatters the previous record of $2 billion set in the 2015-16 presidential cycle.

“The highest-ever level of spending by Wall Street banks and financial services reflects the industry’s relentless push to influence decision-making, regardless of the party that controls Congress or the executive branch.”

The group states that “the financial sector spent an extraordinary amount of money in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to preserve Republican control of the Senate and maintain a divided government that would lock in deregulation and tax cuts enacted under President Trump and prevent financial reform legislation. …

“In this election cycle, individuals and entities associated with the financial sector reported making $4,971,464 in contributions to the eight Republican Senators and $38,512,126 to the 139 House members who voted to overturn the election (as reported by February 17, 2021), for a total of $43,483,590.” But the group also notes that “of the $982,775,706 in party-coded contributions by individuals and PACs associated with finance, 47 percent went to Republicans and 53 percent went to Democrats.” The group also stresses that because of dark money, these numbers are a bare minimum — they are simply unable to track all the cash involved.

Among the biggest spenders were: Bloomberg LP, National Association of Realtors, Blackstone Group, Charles Schwab & Co., American Bankers Association, Paloma Partners, Bain Capital, Renaissance Technologies and Wells Fargo.

Among the largest recipients: Senate Leadership Fund, Senate Majority, Independence USA PAC, House Majority PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund and America First Action, NextGen Climate Action and American Bridge 21st Century.

MATT GARDNER, matt@itep.org, @iteptweets
Gardner is a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. He just wrote the piece “Zoom Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes on Pandemic Profits,” which states: “Zoom Video Communications, the company providing a platform used by remote workers and school children across the country during the pandemic, saw its profits increase by more than 4,000 percent last year but paid no federal corporate income tax on those profits.

“The company reports that it made $660 million of pre-tax profits for 2020, an exponential increase from its $16 million in pre-tax profits in 2019. The immediate shift to online activity explains the company’s unprecedented income growth. For many, Zoom has become a ubiquitous daily meeting space, both for work, class instruction, family gatherings and evening happy hours.

“But why was the company’s income bonanza not matched by at least a token federal tax bill? The main answer appears to be the company’s lavish use of executive stock options. Zoom’s income tax reconciliation says it reduced its worldwide income taxes by $300 million in 2020 using stock-based compensation.

“As an ITEP report explains, companies that compensate their leadership with stock options can write off, for tax purposes, huge expenses that far exceed their actual cost. This is a strategy that has been leveraged effectively by virtually every tech giant in the last decade, from Apple to Facebook to Microsoft. Zoom’s success in using stock options to avoid taxes is neither surprising nor (currently) illegal.

“Stock options aren’t the entire story behind Zoom’s success in avoiding federal income taxes in 2020. The company appears to have enjoyed tax benefits from accelerated depreciation and research and development tax credits. Notably, the combination of three tax breaks appears to be the recipe that Amazon and Netflix have used with such success to reduce their federal tax bills during the Trump corporate tax era so far.”

Forbes just published a piece by pollster John Zogby: “Majority Of New Yorkers Want To Collect A Century-Old Phantom Tax That Will Generate Billions In New Revenue,” which states: “For over 100 years, New York State law has provided for a stock transfer tax that essentially collects a tax on all stock transactions. For many years, after heavy lobbying by stock traders, tax money was actually collected — then immediately rebated to the firms that sold the stocks. In other words, it has been for most of its existence a phantom tax.

“Since 1982, the charade of collecting first then rebating the revenue was halted, but the stock transfer tax is still on the books as state law. So, what are we talking about in real dollars and cents? The tax translates into a 5-cent tax per share every time a stock is sold, thus in 2020, with the average trade on the NASDAQ at about eight thousand four hundred dollars, the total tax would have been around $8.80 a trade, or .1 percent — a minuscule sum anyway you look at it. Since 1982, however, New York has kept the tax on the books, but it has rebated more than $350 billion to Wall Street investors.

“Most New Yorkers are not even aware of this issue. John Zogby Strategies was commissioned by a coalition of public interest groups, unions, and Albany legislative leaders to test support or opposition of breathing new life into this phantom tax. Our poll of 704 likely voters statewide found that overall, 53 percent agreed it should be collected while only 34 percent disagreed. After arguments both in support and opposition were read to voters, agreement rose to 59 percent while opposition declined to 30 percent — a 29-point differential.”

JAMES HENRY, jsh11963@gmail.com, @submergingmkt
Henry is Global Justice Fellow at Yale University and managing director at the Sag Harbor Group. He said today: “The New York State legislature is meeting Tuesday to decide what its revenue options are and Wall Street is really digging in especially because Gov. Andrew Cuomo is imperiled. They have systematically understated the Wall Street revenues that this tax would produce. … If the feds adopt a national financial transaction tax before New York State does then all the money would flow into the federal treasury. So there’s really no good argument for not doing this except that Wall Street is very nervous about this escalating into the first successful progressive tax reform in 50 years.”

Henry is co-author of the paper “Submission to New York State Assembly: the case for Financial Transactions Taxes,” which states: “In New York state, Assemblyman Rep. Phil Steck has sponsored a disarmingly simple three-page bill that would raise some $10-20 billion a year from Wall Street and plough the money into the pandemic response and the local economy, creating jobs with a fair, efficient and progressive tax.”