Tuesday, October 14, 2008

McCain's Pension and Family Security Plan...Lame

Although a day later than promised, McCain finally delivered his new financial rescue plan strategy, with 5 basic points :

1. Lower taxes for seniors tapping their retirement accounts and suspend rules that force seniors to liquidate their accounts during economic crisis. (1/2 New)

2. Accelerate the tax write-offs for those forced to sell at at a loss in the current market. (New)

3. Reduce capital gains taxes for '09 and '10.

4. His Homeowner Resurgence Plan, where mortgages would be purchased directly from homeowners and mortgage services and replaced with manageable fixed-rate mortgages.

5. For workers, eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits.

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While 2-5 don't seem all that bad, other than the fact that #3 is fairly moot at the time being, given the general lack of capital gains being realized these days.

Where I do have a problem is with number 1.

while not a stock market expert, I understand that when there is a massive sell-off, stocks fall, and when there is a massive injection of capital, stocks rise. So with that in mind, if a large demographic has incentive to sell off their holdings, based on lower taxes, why would we expect anything less than for stocks to fall.

In a time when we have seen the DOW plummet so significantly, in such a small amount of time, do we really need to create incentives that would splash fuel on the fire?

...as you were

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