Daily Archives: March 23, 2021

Tax Burden is a measure of the tax burden imposed by government. It includes direct taxes, in terms of the top marginal tax rates on individual and corporate incomes, and overall taxes, including all forms of direct and indirect taxation at all levels of government, as a percentage of GDP. Thus, the fiscal freedom component is composed of three quantitative factors:

Fiscal freedom scores are calculated with a quadratic cost function to reflect the diminishing revenue returns from very high rates of taxation. The data for each factor are converted to a 100-point scale using the following equation:

Fiscal Freedomij= 100 (Factorij)2

where Fiscal Freedomij represents the fiscal freedom in country i for factor j; Factorij represents the value (based on a scale of 0 to 100) in country i for factor j; and is a coefficient set equal to 0.03. The minimum score for each factor is zero, which is not represented in the printed equation but was utilized because it means that no single high tax burden will make the other two factors irrelevant.

As an example, in the 2013 Index, Mauritius has a flat rate of 15 percent for both individual and corporate tax rates, which yields a score of 93.3 for each of the two factors. Mauritiuss overall tax burden as a portion of GDP is 18.5 percent, yielding a tax burden factor score of 89.7. When the three factors are averaged together, Mauritiuss overall fiscal freedom score becomes 92.1.

Sources. Unless otherwise noted, the Index relies on the following sources for information on taxation, in order of priority: Deloitte, International Tax and Business Guide Highlights; International Monetary Fund, Staff Country Report, Selected Issues and Statistical Appendix, and Staff Country Report, Article IV Consultation, 20092012; PricewaterhouseCoopers, Worldwide Tax Summaries, 20092012; countries investment agencies; other government authorities (embassy confirmations and/or the countrys treasury or tax authority); and Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Commerce and Country Finance, 20092012.

For information on tax burden as a percentage of GDP, the primary sources (in order of priority) were Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data; Eurostat, Government Finance Statistics data; African Development Bank and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, African Economic Outlook 2012; International Monetary Fund, Staff Country Report, Selected Issues, and Staff Country Report, Article IV Consultation, 20092012; Asian Development Bank, Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific, 20092012; and individual contacts from government agencies and multinational organizations such as the IMF and World Bank.

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Fiscal Freedom - The Heritage Foundation

The Iranian regime is shutting down the internet yet again this monththis time in response to the desperate protests in the Baluchistan and Sistan provinces. Tehran is methodically implementing a repressive playbook, imported at great expense from Beijing: first, label protesters as criminals; second, shut down the internet to prevent information from getting in or out; third, detain, torture and murder with impunity until the uprising is exhausted. But this time, the United States has the technology, resources and capacity to circumvent this oppression via satellite-provided internet, and give the Iranian opposition the ability to communicate freely. Deploying this capability would send the strongest possible message to the region and the world that America stands with those fighting for their freedom.

Also this month, perhaps not coincidentally, it was reported that the People's Republic of China is ramping up efforts to dominate the emerging frontier of satellite internet access. Presumably, the move reflects Beijing's concern that this new capability would undermine the regime's "great firewall" and put at risk the PRC's, and its clients', ability to isolate and fragment domestic resistance. Given our experience with Huawei and the 5G network, this should motivate the United States to exploit, not surrender, our technological edge to give the people of Iran a voice, but also to potentially offer it to others from Venezuela to Burma.

In June 2009, thousands of brave Iranians took to the streets to protest an obviously fraudulent presidential election. The strength and size of the protests took the Iranian regime by surprise, and the mullahs moved swiftly and brutally to suppress this "Green Revolution." Over the next decade under President Hassan Rouhani, who masterminded the suppression of the 1999 student revolt, Tehran, supported by Beijing, systematically built up a modern police state to monitor and break up any attempted uprising. When protests flared up again in late 2019, the regime was ready. Only, this time its tools were not only arrests, torture and executionalthough these were aggressively employedbut also communications. In an unprecedented act of censorship, Tehran cut off the nation's internet for more than three days by shutting down the state-controlled National Information Network (NIN), effectively silencing protesters' attempts to organize and communicate.

From our positions on President Donald Trump's National Security Council Staff at the time, it was intensely frustrating not to have a ready-made response to the mullahs' suppression of the Iranian people's ability to receive and transmit information. The Trump administration was outspoken in support of the demonstrations and in condemnation of the regime's draconian tactics, but we could not restore the communications protesters desperately needed to sustain their efforts.

In the months after the protests were suppressed, the NSC worked to remedy this failure, and establish a secure and reliable means to bypass Tehran's Beijing-style censorship and firewall. While previous efforts had focused on circumventing the NIN as the sole source of bandwidth in Iran, we began to look to new capabilities to bypass it altogether.

We gained valuable insights from the catastrophic 2017 Atlantic hurricane season (the three most aggressive stormsHarvey, Irma and Mariacaused billions of dollars of damage and took thousands of lives). The recovery effort posed the challenge of providing communications access to remote or disrupted areas. Private enterprise and the federal government deployed experimental technologies to restore communications. Existing satellite constellations can now provide remote internet bandwidth virtually everywhere, and can be configured to work with commercially available remote very-small-aperture terminals or portable modems and antennae, which can employ Virtual Private Networks at encryption levels that will protect users and allow them to access the internet completely independent of Tehran's NIN.

This project to harness this new capability and provide secure and reliable internet access to the Iranian people, which comes at a relatively modest cost, was initiated at the end of the Trump administration. The new administration should aggressively pursue it in light of the most recent uprising in Iran, as well as the threat from China to circumvent dissent. The project has broad, bipartisan congressional support; in 2019 the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs increased the funding for Global Internet Programs in its appropriations bill for the 2020 fiscal year to $70.5 million, an increase of $10 million from the previous fiscal year. These and other resources can be expeditiously reprogrammed to restore communications to the oppressed protesters in Baluchistan and Sistan.

Offering a voice to the Iranian people would hardly be an act of aggressionit would simply be a demonstration of America's commitment to the basic principle of the freedom of speech, a cornerstone of our Bill of Rights. That freedom should be a signature export for us, just as despotic censorship is for the PRC. Furthermore, the people of Iran will head to the polls this June for another presidential election. In the event there is a revival of the Green Revolution, getting this capability into place now could both circumvent and expose any attempt by the Iranian regime and their Chinese patrons to revert to their well-worn playbook of repression and brutality.

Victoria Coates is a Principal Member of Vie et Arte Solutions, LLC, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Robert Greenway is a Principal Member of Vie et Arte Solutions, LLC, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

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Offer Iranian Freedom Fighters the Connectivity Beijing Wants to Take Away | Opinion - Newsweek

BY THE NUMBERS

U.S. stock futures dropped Tuesday after the Dow and S&P 500 broke two-session losing streaks. The Nasdaq logged a second straight session of gains, recovering about half of Thursday's 3% decline. Tech stocks benefited over the past two sessions from the 10-year Treasury yield retreating from last week's 14-month high. (CNBC)

* Morgan Stanley's Wilson: Some expensive stocks may stay below highs for years (CNBC Pro)* Investor Howard Marks on where he's finding opportunity, valuations and bitcoin (CNBC Pro)

Tuesday marks one year since the Covid low in the stock market, which ended the fastest bear market ever and ushered in another bull market. The S&P 500 has gained 76% since the March 23, 2020, close of 2,237. Over the past year, two presidents, Congress and the Federal Reserve put extraordinary fiscal and monetary policies in place to support the economy during the pandemic.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testify Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee on the economy at noon ET. Yellen, who was Powell's predecessor, said she sees both growth and possibly full employment next year and credits President Joe Biden's Covid relief package. Powell's prepared remarks struck a cautiously optimistic tone, saying the economy is "much improved" but the recovery is "far from complete." (Reuters)

* Powell, at digital banking forum, calls cryptocurrencies 'not really useful stores of value' (CNBC)

On today's economic calendar, the government is out with new home sales for February at 10 a.m. ET, with forecasts calling for a 5.7% drop to an annual rate of 870,000 units. New home sales increased by 4.3% in January. In its first quarterly results since this year's Reddit-fueled short squeeze surge, GameStop (GME) reports after-the-bell this afternoon.

* GameStop loses second senior executive as shakeup deepens (Reuters)

AstraZeneca (AZN) said Tuesday it will work with an independent group of U.S. health advisors who expressed concern about possible outdated information in the U.K. drugmaker's Covid vaccine trial results. The company said it would "issue results of the primary analysis within 48 hours." The questions came one day after the company said a late-stage trial in U.S. and Latin America showed 79% efficacy for its two-shot regimen. (CNBC)

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News on Tuesday that AstraZeneca's inoculation is "likely a very good vaccine." However, he added, U.S. health advisors became concerned that data in AstraZeneca's public statement was "somewhat outdated and might, in fact, be misleading a bit." (ABC News)

* Regeneron and Roche antibody cocktail shown effective in Covid patients (Reuters)

Pfizer(PFE) CEO Albert Bourla told The Wall Street Journal the drugmakerwould expand its mRNA vaccine businessto target other viruses and pathogens beyond the coronavirus. Bourla said the company gained a decade's worth of experience in working with Germany'sBioNTech(BNTX) on the Covid vaccine and now ready to proceed on its own.

Covid cases are once again on the rise across more than half of the U.S. as health officials warn about reopening too soon and race to vaccinate more people before highly contagious strains become prevalent in the country. As of Sunday, the seven-day average of new cases rose by 5% or more in 27 states, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (CNBC)

* Mayor Bill de Blasio to end remote work for 80,000 in signal to rest of NYC (NYTimes)* New York to open Covid vaccine eligibility to people 50 and older (CNBC)

Biden is assembling the next big White House priority, a $3 trillion infrastructure package. That would be on top of his recently signed $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus. The president met privately late Monday with Senate Democrats as Congress has already begun laying the groundwork with legislation for developing roads, hospitals and green energy systems. (AP)

ViacomCBS(VIAC) will raise $3 billion from stock offerings, following a recent runup in its stock price. Media companies with streaming services, like the company's recently rebranded Paramount+, have been ramping up spending on new content. Viacom fell 5.3% in premarket action.

A U.S. federal agency is considering as evidence a formerTesla(TSLA) employee's complaint about how the company managed and communicated about fire risks and defects in its solar installations, CNBC has learned from documents received through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Microsoft(MSFT) is in talks to buy videogame chat community Discordfor more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to Bloomberg. One person familiar with the matter said Discord is more likely to go public than to sell itself, however.

Boeing(BA) struck a deal for a $5.28 billion two-year revolving credit agreement, higher than the $4 billion that the jet maker was originally said to be seeking. Boeing shares fell 1% in the premarket.

Baidu(BIDU) made its debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange following a secondary listing that raised $3.1 billion for the China-based internet company. Baidu's U.S. shares sank 2.3% in premarket trading.

Bilibili(BILI) is set to raise $2.6 billion following the pricing of a Hong Kong secondary listing, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke to Reuters. The price for the online video site operator's stock was said to be 2.6% below its Monday close in U.S. trading.

Tencent Music Entertainment(TME) reported quarterly results that came in slightly below Wall Street forecasts. The music streaming service also announced a multi-year licensing agreement with Warner Music and the formation of a joint venture music label with Warner in China. Tencent shares dropped 3.2% in premarket trading.

Peloton(PTON) recently bought three companies in a flurry of acquisitions, according to a Bloomberg report. The fitness equipment maker's acquisitions involved artificial intelligence, wearables and hardware.

Twitter(TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey's first tweet, offered for sale as a NFT, nonfungible token, was sold Monday for 1,630.58 ether, a cryptocurrency. That's equivalent to about $2.9 million based on ether's price at the time of sale. Dorsey said he will convert the proceeds to bitcoin and will then donate that to Give Directly's Africa Response fund. (CNBC)

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What to watch today: S&P 500 set to drop on anniversary of stock bull market - CNBC