"F. George McDuffee" wrote:

When I suggested in a "starvation wages" sub thread, which
posited companies don't pay taxes, they just pass these
along to the customer, that in [too] many cases the major
corporations now depend on subsidies and tax preferences for
most of their "profit", several people expressed doubts.

You may find the following of interest. 700 billion has
been hijacked from the makers and savers and given to the
corporate "takers" by just the FRB. The technical term for
this is "financial repression."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...on-borrow.html
snip
America’s companies, from Apple Inc. (AAPL) to Verizon
Communications Inc., are saving about $700 billion in
interest payments with the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented
stimulus.

Corporate bond yields over the past four years have fallen
to an average of 4.6 percent from 6.14 percent in the five
years before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s demise, a
savings equal to $15.4 million annually per every $1 billion
borrowed.
snip

You make a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions. Bond yields are
low because the demand for bonds is extraordinarily high. Just
because a reporter gives the FED credit doesn't make it so.
Nobody has twisted arms to get people to buy more bonds. The
FED didn't create the demand for low risk assets.


What in the way of *DOMESTIC* investment, job creation, and
increased tax base has resulted? Wall Street is not Main
Street, and the "market" is not the American economy.

What sort of job creation and investment do you expect?
Businesses do those things when they forecast the increased
output can be sold. When they have no expectation of more
sales they hang on to the money. But what is that "money"
that the corporations are hanging on to?

Do you think large corporations hold bundles of Ben Franklin's or
large savings accounts at the bank. The "money" they are holding
for the most part is bonds.