Ravengate
Partners - Stock market, economic and political commentary by Patricia Chadwick

For probably close to thirty years, I have been a registered Republican and have voted Republican in most – but not all – elections. Rush Limbaugh does not represent me as a Republican, and I don’t know too many Republicans who would say he speaks for them either. And for sure he is not the leader of the Republican Party. As one of my most intelligent Republican friends said to me the other day, “Rush Limbaugh is no leader. He is just a provocateur.”

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Credit card horror stories have been pouring in to me since my Monday blog.One man said his experience with Capital One was so bad that he got the last laugh by shorting the stock at $45.It is now $10, so he is certainly the winner.As he put it, “jokes on them now – and as we say in the south, ‘it aint so funny when the rabbit has the gun.’ ”Good for him.

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Lately, I have been receiving numerous emails relaying credit card horror stories, in response to my frequent blogs on the subject. But the one I got on Friday takes the cake and I am retelling it because I know the person well who sent it to me, I can vouch for the facts and she has given her permission to share her story. In fact, when she wrote to me, she suggested that I do so.

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Lowering taxes in the midst of a recession is considered, in the science of economics, to be an expansionary move, i.e. one that will help to stimulate economic growth and end the recession.

The obvious corollary is that raising taxes during the midst of a recession is an economically contractionary move, one that will act to remove a stimulus to economic recovery and which will impede growth. So purely from an economic and mathematical point of view, it seems that the tax increases proposed in the current budget plan will only serve to lengthen this already seriously deep recession.

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