Financial Transparency Coalition

While Iran claims its nuclear ambitions are benign—Tehran continues to maintain it is perusing nuclear power for "energy purposes"—the rest of the world has remained skeptical. For years, the international community has grown increasingly alarmed by Tehran's growing ambitions. Mostly they watch, sometimes they speak, and occasionally they act with adequate decisiveness. Among OECD countries, the United States has been the most willing to act. In fact, the United States has maintained some kind of sanctions on Iran—with varying degrees of severity—since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. These have, largely, been to no avail. Analysts generally agree that previous...

I heard a lot of things I liked during President Obama’s State of the Union address this evening. I also heard a couple of things I didn’t like. I’ll get to those. I want to talk specifically about his statements on corporate taxation. I’ll have to leave his statements on individual taxes to someone else. From the transcript of tonight’s State of the Union: Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and...

As you probably are already aware, it seems Mitt Romney can’t make up his mind on a lot of issues. He has been able to make his mind on one thing, though—quite clearly and quite decisively, mind you. That one thing is that Mitt Romney doesn’t like paying taxes. After much several months hemming, hawing, and waffling on the issue, Mitt finally bowed to mounting pressure on Monday to release his tax returns. But Mitt isn’t going to keep us waiting in suspense he finally decides to hand over his returns. While talking to reporters, he gave us a sneak...

This week, barring some extraordinary unforeseen circumstance, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote to reject President Obama’s request to raise the debt ceiling. “Oh no,” I can already hear America’s collective sigh. “Are you kidding me? Again?” Well, actually, not again. In case you need a reminder of the horrific events of last August (I certainly don’t want one), in what should have been a routine vote, Congress nearly failed to raise the debt ceiling, which would have sparked an economic Armageddon. I do not use that term lightly. Just in case you need another reminder, the debt ceiling has nothing...