Word: hubbarded
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...Hubbard had been pushing the dividend idea for months, but Bush's imagination was captured by Charles Schwab, leader of the eponymous brokerage firm. Schwab suggested the maneuver to Bush at the economic summit that the President convened in Waco, Texas, last August. Bush bit like a hungry bass. Throughout the fall, the number crunchers at Treasury massaged the numbers on all the different elements of the plan, running different options by scores of outside economists. Bush did not seriously consider a payroll-tax reduction, which some economists argue is fairer and would provide the most immediate tax relief...
...fake cash the way you can an earnings report. If companies are encouraged to pay dividends, they will have to manage their companies to deliver real earnings. That will make stocks more attractive and help the market. "Frankly, it's the biggest bang for the buck," says Glen Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. To discourage finagling, only companies that pay federal taxes can issue tax-free dividends. In lieu of cash, growth companies like Microsoft that don't pay dividends can issue "deemed" dividends, which represent reinvested profits...
...mathematical logic underpinning the plan is already stirring controversy. Hubbard and Friedman are making a huge and controversial macroeconomic bet that deficits don't matter, effectively reversing a decade of policymaking. "This Administration is trying to change the whole intellectual basis for fiscal policy that Alan Greenspan enforced when deficits were large in the early 1990s," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com a research firm. "We got fiscal discipline through the idea that deficits matter. That's been flipped on its head...
Greenspan and Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin felt that large deficits force interest rates higher because the government is competing with private businesses for funding. And higher interest rates, they thought, act as a drag on both the economy and the stock market. Hubbard dismisses that position, noting that no research conclusively links interest-rate increases to bigger deficits. He says rates will move up just .03% for every $200 billion of debt, or .22% for the $674 billion projected added debt. It's a small enough price, he argues, for growth that might lead to increased revenues that will...
...then there was the riff on loyalty from an old Elbert Hubbard essay, which Rowley received from a number of retired agents. A paraphrased version of Hub-bard's words used to hang on the walls of FBI headquarters while J. Edgar Hoover was director. It read, in part: "If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him; speak well of him and stand by the institution he represents. Remember--an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness ... If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault, why--resign your position and when...