On The Economic Populist you might have noticed the middle column. We try to list other sites and blogs who have exceptional insight and writing on what is happening in the U.S. economy.

Sometimes though, one cannot say it better but miss those who did. This week has damning posts on tax avoidance through offshore outsourcing.

Must Read Post #1

George Washington, Zero Hedge, writes on GE using offshore outsourcing to avoid taxes. In After Getting Bailed Out By American Taxpayers, General Electric Pays Zero U.S. Taxes, Pretending that All of Its Profits are Overseas, we have:

GE had plenty of earnings last year -- just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company's U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit. - source CNN

Must Read Post #2

Manipulating the international tax code by offshore outsourcing jobs and production is an ongoing theme. Dave Johnson explains how it all works well in A Tax Trick That Forces Companies To Close Factories:

You make an item in one country, and sell it at cost to a subsidiary that is based (post office box) in a tax haven country with no or low taxes. So there is no profit to report in the country that it was made in. Then, your company or another subsidiary buys it for import in the US, for a price near to the amount the product will be sold for here. So when it sells, there is no profit to be taxed here. All the profit occurs in the low-or-no tax country.

Remember the campaign promises to stop this? There is one small problem. The Obama administration decided to do nothing earlier.

For a deeper background on how this all works, there is a GAO report (EP overview), which found 83% of the top 100 corporations routinely use tax havens and other methods above to avoid paying taxes, as our textbook GE example proves. Note the big detailed plan to curb these tax haven abuses by Treasury Secretary Geithner. All of those plans were dropped.

Must Read Post #3

Think the recent Goldman Sachs Fraud is isolated or even just Goldman Sachs? Think again. Yves Smith writes Rabobank: Merrill Committed Similar Fraud to Goldman With a Magnetar-Sponsored CDO. Assuredly more of these stories are to come.

Must Read Post #4

Oh while cruel and heartless bastards post comments on this site damning those who cannot pay their mortgage, we have JPMorgan gets paid to borrow $271 billion. Lovely huh? The U.S. middle class gets thrown out onto the street, their finances wiped out, yet the big banks make big profits when they borrow?