In an interview by Fareed Zakaria, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner revealed (or more, admitted?) that he’d never held a “real job”.  Essentially, since grad school he’s spent his entire professional life in some sort of “policy job”.

Initially, this made me really mad, until I realized that a good portion of those making “policy” haven’t held a real job either.  So Geithner is no odd duck.

Realizing that I’ve got better things to do than be enraged about the people that make up our corrupt government, I moved on to determining what criteria candidates need to get my vote in the future.

A real job is now one of those criteria.

From now on, you need experience in a “real job” to get my vote.  That means a real, no kiddin’ 8 to 5 gig making a no-kiddin’ paycheck.  And you need some tenure too.  None of this, “I worked as an intern as a financial analyst while in school” stuff.

If you want a government job determining how my hard earned tax dollars get spent, you need to have some concept of how my tax dollars are earned.

Category: Business, Finance, Politics Tags: job qualifications, Tim Geithner

A recent report from the Associated Press revealed that 47% of American households pay no taxes.  None.  Zip, zilch, nada.

In fact, if you are in a family of 4 making less than $50k per year, you end up owing nothing.

If this fact has you a bit peeved after stewing over your taxes for the last several weeks, keep reading, it gets better.

The bottom 40% of households will actually make money off Uncle Sam this year.  Put another way, they don’t pay taxes, yet they still get a check in the mail from the U.S. government.  It’s really not a refund, since they don’t have anything withheld to return.

So all the infrastructure that we all take advantage of (military, interstate, national airspace system, postal service, etc), regardless of income; 50% of American households pay not only for their share, but the other 50% of households share as well.

Think about this: If you owe money this year, you may as well give half of what you owe to your neighbor.  He’ll get it anyway.

Category: Taxes Tags: Taxes

Duncan Energy Partners (DEP: chart, web, Y!) chairman Dan Duncan passed away in his home on Sunday night.

Duncan was no spring chicken, but in recent interviews, he really didn’t show any signs of, well…. decline.

The company indicated that it does not intend to change ownership or management of the partnerships, but it does leave the average DEP stockholder to question how the interests of the partnership going forward will be aligned with shareholders.

Ideally, you want all parties interests to be aligned.  If the CEO holds 50% of the shares and depends on the value of those shares appreciating in value, as a smaller stakes shareholder, you can feel somewhat secure that he’ll strive to create growth and value in the company to keep the value of the shares going up.  In essence, your general interests in the company are aligned.

Now that Duncan isn’t around, it will be interesting to see how interests of all parties line up.

Category: Investing Tags: Dan Duncan, DEP