The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t just enforce the rules that govern Wall Street. When asked, it often grants individual companies exemptions from the rules. But companies that win those special breaks often fail to comply with the conditions that come with them, the SEC’s inspector general said in a report released Thursday.
What’s more, the agency has no formalized process for monitoring whether companies live up to their end of the bargain, the report said. Though the agency routinely inspects financial firms, “only in rare cases” did the examiners focus on that question, the report said.
Economic Glance
For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent.
The United States is a low-tax country. That’s true for individuals and for corporations, and it’s true whether you compare us to other countries or the America of the past. No matter how you slice it the conclusion is the same.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of former President George W. Bush signing into law his 2001 tax cuts (he passed a second round in 2003). While doing so, Bush promised prosperity and growth, but the nation got neither.





























