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The American Empire in a Changing World



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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

''The death of U.S. capitalism''

From Canadian Business News

"In his new book, Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government—and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead (Viking), David Rothkopf explains how the United States, once viewed as the model for a mixed-market economy, is increasingly held captive by the avarice of private interests. Goldman Sachs and the financial services industry lobbied U.S. lawmakers for decades to achieve ever-lower levels of regulation and taxation, moving business elsewhere when they didn’t get what they wanted. In 2008, Goldman paid just $14 million in taxes on $1.4 billion in earnings—a 1% tax rate—thanks to its practice of moving earnings offshore to lower-tax jurisdictions. Yet when the housing bubble burst and unregulated markets imploded, Goldman et al. were only too happy to accept billions in taxpayer handouts. As Rothkopf puts it, “Goldman was a U.S. company when it needed U.S. funds but less so when it came to paying taxes."


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