Tag: jack lew
The Way Of The World, Hamilton, Jackson and Tubman

The Way Of The World, Hamilton, Jackson and Tubman

One treasury secretary has saved another. Isn’t that the way of the world? History has its eyes on you, Jacob Lew.

Brilliant, storied Alexander Hamilton, darling of Broadway and Wall Street, will stay on the $10 bill. Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, had his face saved by Lew, our treasury secretary, who promised a genteel uprising to keep Hamilton right where he is. Even Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer of the hip-hop musical “Hamilton,” pitched a plea to Lew.

Relax, Hamiltonians. America will keep singing his name. We’ll keep burying Aaron Burr, who slew him, in dust — even if Hamilton was no saint in sparking their duel.

Wait, there’s more news. All the fuss has produced a major move for President Andrew Jackson — off the $20 bill. Sing serendipity. From the annals of history, Lew chose Harriet Ross Tubman to be on the $20 bill, the first female face on paper bills in memory.

I knew that’s what Lew was going to do. He’s no historian, but choosing the 19th-century woman of color, code-named Moses, who led her people from slavery to freedom, nicely fits the tempo of our times. The nation watched as riots broke out in Baltimore last April.

Tubman was born into brutal slavery in the same state, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Under the lash. Her head bore the scar of an iron hurled at her.

As a conductor on the abolitionist Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses for runaway slaves often run by Quakers, Tubman was sought by catchers as the “most wanted” fugitive slave. But she kept returning, in disguise, to lead family and kin, crossing over the Chesapeake Bay terrain. She navigated by the North Star, singing signals, becoming a legend for her fearlessness.

The number Tubman led over the Mason-Dixon line to freedom is unknown, but some scholars say it may have been just under 100. Like most born into slavery, she was illiterate. Also a Marylander, Frederick Douglass was born nearby on a rich plantation about the same time.

Tubman’s life was about crossing treacherous borders. During the Civil War, she worked as a Union spy in South Carolina, cradle of the Confederacy, where she urged slaves to board Union boats to freedom. Not for nothing, the abolitionist John Brown called her “General Tubman.” (She declined to join his raid on a federal arsenal.)

Tubman’s displacement of Jackson makes rich irony. A famed military man, Jackson owned 100 slaves at his Nashville plantation. I visited the “Hermitage” and heard all about “The General” and his favorite places to sit. “Where did the slaves live?” I asked. In the woods, said the lady in period costume. Not a word about the “Trail of Tears” was spoken — the forced march that Jackson sent thousands of American Indians on, leaving their own lands for Oklahoma. And Donald Trump praises Jackson like a long-lost great-great grandfather.

In the 1830s, Jackson personified the “Slave Power” in Washington. He harshly enforced all the slavery laws on the books. To crown his racist legacy, he made Roger Taney the Chief Justice of the United States. In1857, Taney authored the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, so ruthless on race that it hastened the Civil War. Taney was a Marylander, too.

Reporting for the Baltimore Sun, I crossed miles and the Bay Bridge to explore this sorry history. Tubman sites on the Eastern Shore are gaining recognition as significant. The great house of the Lloyd plantation, where young “Fred” grew up, still stood when I came to call. And relatives of Tubman still tell her story, fresh as farmer’s peaches.

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story,” as the “Hamilton” song goes. We need to know more than second-grade stories about Tubman.

Lew named a line-up of seven women for re-designs of the $5, $10 and $20 (on the back of bills.) Most were Quaker or African-American. They were all truly great. If I were in the room where it happens: Jake, I’d say, don’t be fooled by the bonnet. Lucretia Mott started it all as the women’s rights movement and an abolitionist leader. Her fellow Quaker, Alice Paul, crossed to victory in 1920 — for suffrage.

Freedom fighter Tubman lived to a very old age, about 90 in 1913, but she never saw that day. Too bad she can’t live to see this one.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit Creators.com.

The Treasury Secretary’s Misperceptions About Wealth

The Treasury Secretary’s Misperceptions About Wealth

By Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s reckoning, being a millionaire does not constitute living high above the ranks of ordinary people. Lew said last week that back when he was in the private sector enjoying six- and seven-figure pay packages, “My own compensation was never in the stratosphere.”

Lew made that pronouncement as he sought to defend President Barack Obama’s embattled Treasury undersecretary nominee Antonio Weiss from charges that as a financial executive, he is out of touch with the interests of regular people. Lew was seeking to cast his own lot with the ranks of ordinary Americans at a time of growing economic inequality.

But in doing so, Lew shed light on a uniquely American phenomenon — the tendency of extraordinarily rich people to cast themselves as everyday members of the middle class.

Earlier this year, for example, Hillary Clinton made headlines when, in response to a question about her personal fortune, she claimed her family was “dead broke” when they left the White House. That statement followed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide casting those making $500,000 a year as merely upper middle class.

According to IRS data, 99 percent of American households make less than $388,000 a year, and 95 percent make less than $167,000 a year. The true middle in terms of income — that is, the cutoff to be in the top 50 percent of earners — is roughly $35,000 a year.

While Lew claims his private-sector compensation was not “in the stratosphere,” the data suggest otherwise.

According to New York University records, Lew was usually paid between $700,000 and $800,000 a year as the school’s vice president, while also receiving a $440,000 mortgage subsidy. Lew also earned $300,000 a year from Citigroup, with a “guaranteed incentive and retention award of not less than $1 million,” according to an employment agreement obtained by Businessweek.

That agreement said that the seven-figure award would be terminated if he left for another job, but with one exception: He would indeed get the cash if he accepted “a full-time high-level position with the United States government or regulatory body.” Lew was given a $940,000 bonus from Citigroup in the same week the bank received a $300 billion bailout from the federal government.

Then again, Lew is a pauper compared to Weiss. The Treasury nominee reported more than $15 million in compensation in the last two years at Lazard. Like Lew before him, Weiss would receive a massive payout from his firm if he gets a job in government.

Of course, there remains a bit of a debate about what constitutes “rich” in America. A recent New York Times poll showed 27 percent of Americans believe a family of four can be considered “rich” if its annual income is between $100,000 and $200,000, while another 20 percent say “rich” is defined as making between $200,000 and $300,000 a year.

That said, there appears to be consensus that compensation like that paid to Lew and Weiss constitutes “rich” — two-thirds of the country told the pollsters that making more than $300,000 means a household is wealthy.

While Lew’s comments leave him open to charges that he is out of touch with economic reality, he is not alone, as surveys show many Americans also have misconceptions about income distribution.

A recent study by Harvard University and Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University found Americans grossly underestimate the divide between CEO and average worker pay.

Such misperceptions were recently spotlighted by comedian Chris Rock in an interview with New York magazine. Of inequality, he said: “People don’t even know [about it]. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.”

David Sirota is a senior writer at the International Business Times and the best-selling author of the books “Hostile Takeover,” “The Uprising” and “Back to Our Future.” Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Official White House Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Lew Pushes Congress For Action On Corporate Offshore Tax ‘Inversions’

Lew Pushes Congress For Action On Corporate Offshore Tax ‘Inversions’

By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is close to finishing an evaluation into executive action to make a recent rise in corporate offshore tax shifting “less economically appealing,” but the best way to limit the maneuver is with legislation, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said Monday.

Lew said it was “imperative” that Congress act to limit so-called tax inversions, in which a U.S. company buys a smaller foreign rival and moves its headquarters there to take advantage of lower taxes.

Lew delivered his message in a speech to the Urban Institute think tank as lawmakers returned to Washington on Monday from their summer recess.

Democratic legislation is stalled in the House and Senate because of Republican insistence the issue be addressed as part of a broad overhaul of corporate taxes.

The Obama administration also would like to deal with the issue through such an overhaul, Lew said.

But with inversions happening more frequently, “we cannot wait to complete business tax reform before taking action to fix this problem,” he said.

Treasury officials have been looking into possible regulatory steps and are “completing an evaluation of what we can do to make these deals less economically appealing,” Lew said.

A decision will be made “in the very near future,” he said.

But there are limits to what the administration can do without legislation, Lew admitted.

“Any action we take will have a strong legal and policy basis, but will not be a substitute for meaningful legislation — it can only address part of the economics,” Lew said. “Only a change in the law can shut the door, and only tax reform can solve the problems in our tax code that leads to inversions.”

Inversions by U.S. companies have become more popular as many nations have taken steps to be more business-friendly, leaving the United States with the highest corporate tax rate among developed economies.

In recent weeks, Miami-based Burger King Worldwide Inc. announced it would shift its headquarters to Canada after the purchase of Tim Hortons Inc., and Illinois drugmaker AbbVie Inc. said it would reincorporate on the British island of Jersey after buying European rival Shire.

The Obama administration has been sharply critical of such moves, in which a domestic firm remains largely in the United States but its address changes for tax purposes.

The White House wants new limits that would apply to any inversions that took place since April.

“This practice allows the corporation to avoid their civic responsibilities while continuing to benefit from everything that makes America the best place in the world to do business — our rule of law, our intellectual property rights, our support for research and development, our universities, our innovative and entrepreneurial culture, and our skilled workforce,” Lew said Monday.

“This may be legal, but it is wrong, and our laws should change,” he said, echoing comments in July calling for U.S. companies to show “economic patriotism.”

It’s unclear what executive actions can be taken that would discourage inversions. Any steps short of changing the law are likely to be “relatively symbolic and toothless,” said Chris Krueger, a senior analyst at financial services firm Guggenheim Partners.

But talk of new retroactive limits on inversions is causing corporations to reconsider such moves, he said.

Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Richard Durbin (D-IL), are expected to propose new legislation this week aimed at reducing interest deductions for inverted companies. The bill would apply to companies that inverted since 1994.

Republicans probably will block a vote, and chances of any stand-alone inversion legislation passing this year is less than 10 percent, Krueger said.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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Lew: ‘Time Is Short’ For Congress To Raise Debt Limit

Lew: ‘Time Is Short’ For Congress To Raise Debt Limit

Washington (AFP) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Monday that the United States will exhaust its borrowing authority on Friday without action by Congress to lift the debt limit.

“Time is short. Congress needs to act to extend the nation’s borrowing authority, and it needs to act now,” Lew said in to prepared remarks at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

“In just a matter of days, the temporary suspension of the debt limit will end, and the Treasury Department will have to start using extraordinary measures so the government can continue to meet its obligations,” he said.

Lew noted that the automatic reinstatement of the cap on borrowing after February 7 comes at the beginning of tax filing season, when tax refunds cause net cash outflows “that deplete borrowing capacity very quickly.”

“We now forecast that we are likely to exhaust these measures by the end of this month,” he added.

On the February 7 deadline the borrowing cap will be locked at the total amount borrowed at that date. U.S. debt currently stands at $17.3 trillion.

The Treasury chief welcomed recent congressional compromises that finally delivered a government budget after political stalemate over the issue forced a 16-day partial government shutdown in October.

But he warned Congress against waiting to raise the debt limit at the 11th hour, highlighting that a delay can jeopardize the credibility of the world’s largest economy and roil financial markets.

He noted that in last year’s political gridlock, consumer and business confidence dropped and investors “publicly questioned whether it was too risky to hold certain types of U.S. government debt.”

“It is important to remember that increasing the debt limit is Congress’s responsibility, and Congress’s alone. That is because only Congress has the power to extend the nation’s borrowing authority. No Congress in the history of the United States has failed to meet this responsibility,” Lew said.

The Treasury chief criticized a push by some lawmakers to tie spending cuts to increasing the Treasury’s borrowing authority, noting that “raising the debt limit has nothing to do with new spending. It is about fulfilling spending obligations that Congress has already made and paying bills that have already been incurred.”

Opposition Republican lawmakers are considering policy riders to a debt ceiling bill that would help reduce the debt. President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration has stood steadfastly against the attachment of any conditions to the debt action.

Lew pressed Congress to avoid a self-inflicted wound to the U.S. economy as it enters 2014 with momentum from robust strength in the 2013 fourth quarter.

“This can and should be a breakthrough year for our economy,” he said. “Congress should act quickly to resolve the debt limit without unnecessary delays or political posturing that could snowball into a manufactured crisis that the American people so clearly want us to avoid.”

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb