Headlines

The shutdown backlash is coming soon — with a vengeance

Small business rescue loan program hits $349 billion limit and is now out of money

Professional gamblers in Nevada now able to collect unemployment ...

Jimmy Carter ‘distressed’ over Trump halting W.H.O. Funding

‘Inexcusable’: Debbie Dingle slams Michigan protestors

Coronavirus live update: Trump to unveil reopening guidelines, China races toward a vaccine

Bailout checks go to the dead!

Dems demand halt construction on border wall during coronavirus crisis

Top Muslim political group backs Biden

The US economy has erased nearly all the job gains since the Great Recession

22 million jobs vanish in month ...

NJ governor: ‘I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights’ when issuing stay-at-home order

Skin the Cat

Goldman Sachs is now making loans to its cash-strapped employees. See: Goldman Loans. This, most likely, is in response to the public outrage that has arisen over the bonuses that AIG recently gave to many of its managers. Like AIG, Goldman was also a recipient of taxpayer largess to the tune of $10 billion of TARP funds last fall PLUS a $12.9 billion pass-through of taxpayer funds from AIG (which I wrote about in my previous blog post). This loan program pretty much substitutes for what would be standard bonuses at Goldman. Instead, it is loaning its employees the money necessary to meet their internal capital calls.

Now the rub … I would be willing to bet a good steak dinner that many of these “loans” will be eventually forgiven by Goldman. Thus they effectively will turn out to be retroactive bonuses without the pejorative label. (And this legerdemain also allows recipients to defer income taxes on these payments.) So you see … there is more than one way to skin a taxpayer.