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Taxes Raised On The Rich, The Dow Goes Up. GOP Wrong Again

Wow. The Dow is approaching 14000 for the first time since 2007. This, in spite of the fact that taxes on the top 1% went up for the first time in over a decade.

Seems Republicans were wrong on this too.

Last week the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed above 1,500 for the first time in five years. This week the Dow Jones industrial average has been flirting with 14,000, a level it hasn’t seen since October 2007.

In early trading Tuesday, the Dow added 22 points, or 0.2%, to 13,905.

Stocks are a bit pricey relative to their earnings, but are nowhere near the overheated levels they’ve seen before, said Robert Shiller, a famed Yale University economist who identified the stock market and housing bubbles of the last decade.

Shiller, who may be best known for a widely reported index tracking U.S. house prices bearing his name, also created an index to track whether stocks were cheap or overpriced.

His CAPE index — which stands for cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio — factors in 10 years’ worth of earnings. He has collected data stretching back to 1871.

Romney’s Family Trust Fund Violated Romney’s Pledge To Republican Party

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised in 2007 he would shed any investments that conflicted with Republican positions on hot-button domestic and foreign policy issues. But Romney’s family trusts kept some of those holdings and repeatedly bought new ones until 2010, when they were finally sold off for more than $3 million, according to a detailed review of Romney’s financial records by The Associated Press.

Recently disclosed tax returns for three family trust funds for Romney, his wife, Ann, and their adult children show scores of trades in companies whose business operations are inconsistent with Republican Party stances that Romney favors on Iran, China, stem cell research, abortion and other issues.

A Romney campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said the former Massachusetts governor has no control over the investments made by his blind trust, but the trustee has tried to manage the trades “in a manner consistent with Gov. Romney’s publicly expressed positions.”

The continual trading between 2006 and 2010 raises questions about why the investments continued for three years, even after Romney said in 2007 that the trust would sell off any conflicted holdings. Those trades came during a period when Romney has sought to convince voters of his conservative Republican values. The trades also raise questions about whether any of the transactions were vetted for possible conflicts or political perception before they were made.

“Financially, these would seem to be completely legitimate investments,” said Thomas B. Cooke, a professor of business law at Georgetown University and former president of the National Society of Tax Professionals. “But for someone running for president, there’s also a smell test.”

Romney’s spokeswoman would not respond to questions about the timing or vetting of his investments in his blind trust. She said, however, that the lawyer running the trust occasionally makes adjustments in holdings with Romney’s positions in mind.