Monday, February 02, 2009

Glamorous 5:30 am slot

I just did a 3 or 4-minute live radio slot on KCBS out of San Francisco, concerning the alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch in the Senate stimulus bill. Time of the appearance was a humane 8:30 am here in the East Coast, but as it was 5:30 am in the broadcast area I doubt there were all that many millions of listeners.

The topic was a $70 billion, one-year indexing patch to the AMT that news articles say the House is likely to accept.

I noted that the growth of the AMT is a big problem that everyone in theory wants to deal with (although no one wants to pay for it), that whatever its merits it really isn't stimulus, and that the continual one-year patches Congress uses to "fix" the AMT are like someone buying an expensive car on financing and pretending that all he has to worry about is this month's payment.

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