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iamwinkler

They, Moody's, should change their name to Moody's Investors Disservice considering the fine job they did leading up to the collapse of the housing bubble. The question is, who pays them? In the case of bond sellers (those borrowing the money), e.g. MGM, the borrower does. Furthermore, Moodys, Standard and Poors, et. al relies on these same borrowers for repeat business, which at the very least creates the appearnce if not the fact of a serious conflict of interest.

Great. Mr. Loveman's all in with a pair of Deuces. Hope nobody calls him on them.

Ronster, no problem. I feel the same way, my Dad was a Teamster back in the day. No offense taken, I should have been clearer.

Jon, you have a point but you are obscuring the issue, the benefits of tax shelters went out in the 1980's with the enactment of the "at-risk" provisions and passive activity loss limitation provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Now, I grant you, the wealthy still have a myriad of ways to evade and avoid taxes. The correct response to my friend Bakersfield would be to say, "Wynn Resorts, Inc. is a C Corporation and therefore taxable income in excess of $18,333,333 is taxed at a flat 35% rate. So if Steve Wynn gets a $1,000,000 raise, Wynn Resorts gets a $1,000,000 deduction and pays $350,000 less in taxes. Steve Wynn, who I am willing to bet you, is in the top individual bracket at 35%, will pay $350,000 in additional taxes on the raise." Another words the transaction is revenue neutral to the federal treasury. My point to Joe was that the rate structure should be more progressive for the higher earners, paying top rate at 39.6% as under Bill Clinton vs. 35% now is not going to cause someone like Steve Wynn to work, earn less, hire fewer people, etc. So as not to be accused of engaging in class warfare I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite billionaire capitalists, Warren Buffet: "There's class warfare alright, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."