>Fix the loophole where billionaires use their unrealized assets as collateral for borrowing. When they do, make those as realized assets and tax them. Don't apply a blanket unrealized tax.
This would require taxing people on the market value of their home pre-mortgage deduction(which is the exact same scheme as what billionaires use just on the smaller scale),which would never pass anywhere.
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect waiving the deductibility of interest expense/debt based on wealth would be blatantly unconstitutional in virtually all of EU.
1) Because the transport fee that Gazprom used to pay to Ukraine was one of the safest rents in the (very dysfunctional) Ukrainian economy(the other being the Odessa port). If you really want to go that far back, the gas dispute in 2008-2009 is when things really started going bad between Russia and Ukraine.
2) Because this gas was needed in Europe.
I would go as far as to say that if there is any peace in Ukraine within the next few years then Ukraine will probably demand that if any gas goes from Russia to Europe it would go through Ukraine.
It's all fun and games, but you need to remember that this is Canton Vaud, one of the most fiscally irresponsible cantons/states in all of Switzerland. The article briefly mentions is, but a lot of this "cooperative" housing is heavily subsidized by the canton itself (the article mentions the cheaper 99-year lease but it goes way beyond that) and the resulting shortfall in money is paid for by other people (i.e 100,000CHF yearly income in Vaud is the massive marginal tax wall in Vaud). I've still, to this day, not managed to find out any detail about how these apartments are valued for the purpose of the VD wealth taxes (You can impute house price based on comparatives or rent, here obviously rent would be lower).
This has nothing to do with Vaud fiscal irresponsibility. Cooperatives are all over Switzerland, very common in Zurich for instance they own 18% of the units.
I don't have any specific knowledge of Swiss co-ops, but I'd imagine it's some of the same reasons as other co-op buildings elsewhere: economic crash means residents can't pay rent or fees, improper budgeting for large future expenses that eventually come due, or poor construction or new safety requirements cause a huge expense.
In Florida right now, in the wake of the Surfside disaster, a lot of condos are struggling with solvency because of the cost of the new safety requirements. Then there is always new technology (asbestos, aluminum wiring, spray foam insulation, polyurethane cladding) that will one day have to be remediated. Then there is climate change.
I think the key is good management and good construction. Unfortunately, both of those things are very opaque for your average person.
Serious question: Do you ever actually ship things to the US using La Poste? I've NEVER shipped things to the US using La Poste, although the fact that I work in finance might have something to do with it.
AfD is literally a shitty copy-paste of UDC/SVP (Switzerland). Shitty because they lack the one big advantage SVP had in the 90s: Big money backing it. If AfD had at least ONE German billionaire seriously backing it they would already be in power.
At IB you can get margin interest rates of like 6% I think? SP500 total return is like 9.5% already this year, 25 and 26% in 2024/2023. You get paid to borrow like crazy. Exactly why Dave Ramsey is the worst financial youtuber of the 10s: When rates are close to 0, you only need a 1% return to pay the carry. You should be borrowing like crazy.
Yeah back when margin rates were close to 1% it made a ton of sense to use margin. I was pretty cautious with it but bought a bunch of blue chip dividend stocks- altria, vz, etc at 1% rates and collected 5% dividends. For awhile I could even deduct the margin interest from my income.
At a 6% rate though, this is very risky. Your hurdle rate is just below the average market return rate. There are better ways to gamble on the market if that's what you want to do-UPRO and TQQQ come to mind, as well as options.
And if it doesn't pop? I mean I don't even disagree with there being massive bubble risks, but like my comment was more aimed at the fact that high margin debt doesn't mean anything without knowing the return of the asset you buy with debt and the debt cost.
Let's not even get into the fact that in jurisdictions with wealth taxes and interest deductions from income levering up actually "cuts" your tax bill.
And these days many Russian ultra-patriots are proudly accepting the representation of Russia as Mordor and its soldiers as orcs in the war in Ukraine.
The outlined reasons are cartoonishly communist, but "The Last Ringbearer"'s worldview is not communist. It is more like "the West are liars". And yes, this does resonate in Russia.
>And what about the soldiers who carry out deep strike operations, launching drones from 50 or 100 kilometers or more from the front, striking 500 kilometers or more deep against logistics and industry? Should they even bother wearing uniforms when they hop out of a van for a couple hours to launch their pre-programmed drones, just for a traitorous local to easily identify them and text their location to the enemy?
I mean, you get taught this early on in the army, no uniform when fighting a recognized nation is a war crime (unless youre a militia in which case you still need some "uniform").
>This whole drama unfolds both in front of officers in traditional Tactical Operations Centers, and increasingly, in front of splintered command teams and individuals watching from safehouses via livestream. At the end of the mission, the soldier will go home and pass on his kill footage to score “points” for his command to receive additional official funding.
Gameification is by far the worst innovation of the Ukrainian army so far. All it does is funnel even more funding/equipment into brigades that are already well equipped and typically stationed at easier parts of the front.
Until these ships are actively forced into ports by navies nothing will happen. And the last time someone(Estonia) tried to do that, Russia simply scrambled a Su-35 and that was that.
IMO regulation reforms like suggested in the article won't do anything. Making the Western ruleset stricter when Russia already doesn't follow it seems a bit naive.
>Private equity firms have become more competitive in recent years by recruiting young bankers — freshly trained at a cost to investment banks — months or even years ahead of when they actually join.
When your IB first year analyst is averaging 80 hours per week, like they probably still do, they're not being trained at a "cost" to you, especially since the salaries have not at all followed the workload.
This would require taxing people on the market value of their home pre-mortgage deduction(which is the exact same scheme as what billionaires use just on the smaller scale),which would never pass anywhere.
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect waiving the deductibility of interest expense/debt based on wealth would be blatantly unconstitutional in virtually all of EU.
reply