Tag: Romney

Wall Street has diversity

There are the big banks and the rest — hedge-fund operators, private equity companies, etc., who have their problems with the big guys, Ira Stoll explains:

* Many of the hedge fund and private equity guys used to work at the big banks and left to strike out on their own for a reason.

* The smaller firms compete with the big banks for the job of managing capital for rich individuals and institutions.

* When the banks raise capital or handle trades for the smaller firms, they charge fees that the smaller firms wish were lower.

* The banks have access to cheap capital via the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that the smaller firms dont get.

* The smaller firms sometimes dont like the trading terms set by the banks on things like posting collateral.

* The bank executives dont like the way the non-bank guys pay the capital gains tax rate on their carried interest, while the bank executives pay a higher income tax rate on their compensation.

What’s more, they give money to different parties, the big guys to Dems and Obama, the others to Republicans and Romney. So don’t lump them together as if they lacked diversity.

Argues Stoll of NY Sun.  But Obama does take some private equity money, as Halper of Weekly Standard points out

Hanna Loikkanen
Hanna Loikkanen is not part of this story but is clearly a nice person deserving of some more recognition. (Photo credit: East Capital)

.  It’s not as if he’s boycotting them.  He doesn’t boycott money.

Larry Kudlow bullish on Romney

And persuasively so.

On economic policy, he would limit the government budget to 20% of GDP, slash $500 billion in his first term, and restrain Medicaid, food stamps, and other entitlement transfers before block-granting them to the states. His Medicare reform is near identical to the Wyden-Ryan approach. He’s for a true, all-of-the-above energy policy that would take the regulatory handcuffs off drilling on federal lands. He would repeal Obamacare. He has come up with a supply-side tax cut that lowers marginal rates by 20% across-the-board and drops the corporate tax to 25%.

These are very conservative positions. One can seriously ask whether Romney isn’t the most conservative presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.

None of this penalizing success:

Romney made it clear that economic freedom is the key to the American economy. He said, “The history of the world has shown that economic freedom is the only force that has consistently lifted people out of poverty.” He added, “The genius of America is that we nurture these dreams and the dreamers. We honor them, and, yes, we reward them.”

Pause a moment on the idea of rewarding the dreamers. This is a crucial difference with Obama, who wants to penalize the dreamers. Make a bunch of money and you’re gonna pay higher tax rates. It’s the class-warfare 1% versus the 99%. Tax the rich. Redistribute.

Nope.  In conclusion:

This is Reagan-like. This is Jack Kemp-like. This is Paul Ryan’s American idea.

This is, in short, profoundly conservative. An election winner.