Please adjust tin-foil hat right attanae to 38° 51' N  and left attanae to 77° 2' W before you receive this important message from ConspCom....

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.  ~Oscar Ameringer

I was in Atlanta a few months ago at a seminar with a bunch of tax and real estate attorneys discussing Estate planning when we came across a powerpoint slide with the schedule for the Federal Estate Tax.  You've all probably heard of the "Bush tax cuts" and the steady bickering about making them permanent or rolling some of them back to 2000 levels when they sunset in 2011.  They are trying to shift our focus to the rich not paying their fair share in terms of income tax rates and get us all worked into a frenzy about what is fair and scare us into believing the deck of cards will fall if the their bloated government and massive spending programs aren't funded.

Don't let these clever little clowns distract you from what is really going on.

There is something sinister afoot in DC and (let me adjust my tin foil hat again) I can see the possibility of a total economic collapse in 2011/2012.  I said possible because I have nowhere near the brain capacity or macro-economic sense to even pretend to understand the implications of what will happen in 2010, but it doesn't take a economic scientist to see quite clearly we are in for a major, never seen before shift of wealth in this country.

Lets look at the Federal Estate Tax schedule under the Bush and GOP led congress tax plan.  If you need a quick primer on you can click to this Wiki.

Federal Tax Rate, Bush Tax Cuts 2001 through 2011

Year    Exclusion    Rate
 
2001   $675,000     55%  
2002   $1 million    50%    
2003   $1 million    49%    
2004   $1.5 million 48%    
2005   $1.5 million 47%    
2006   $2 million    46%    
2007   $2 million    45%    
2008   $2 million    45%    
2009   $3.5 million  45%    
2010   repealed         0%    
2011   $1 million     55%

Did anything pop out at you when you look at the estate tax schedule?  If not look again and close attention to tax rates in 2010 and 2011.  Does this make any sense to you?  Why would we have a progressively higher tax exemption, progressively lower tax rate and then quite literally a "free for all" in 2010 and then regress back to 2001/2002 levels in 2011?

Follow the money and connect the dots.  If you've taken an interest in history you can recall the 'Gilded Age' where fortunes were amassed in railroads and banking.  The Gilded Age spawned into the Industrial Age where steel, oil, factory and car magnates were amassing huge stockpiles of wealth.  I won't get into a history lesson here other than to point out that a significant portion of the US economy was concentrated at one time in the hands of very few individuals we called tycoons and robber barons.  These men controlled tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in US, gold backed currency at that time.    This wealth has been carefully structured in tax free trusts and foundations, generating compound interest for long, long time now.  Just to get an idea of the magnititude of wealth, a $1,000,000 one time deposit in a trust account 90 years ago compounding at 6% is worth $189,464,511.23 today.

Here is a partial list of some of these businessmen considered Robber Barons...

John Jacob Astor (real estate, fur) - New York City
Andrew Carnegie (railroads, steel) - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Jay Cooke (finance) - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Charles Crocker (railroads) - California
Daniel Drew (finance) - New York state
James Buchanan Duke (tobacco) - near Durham, North Carolina
James Fisk (finance) - New York state
Henry Flagler (railroads, oil, the Standard Oil company) - New York City and Palm Beach, Florida
Henry Clay Frick (steel) - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and New York City
John Warne Gates (steel, oil) - Chicago and Texas
Jay Gould (finance, railroads) - New York (both state and city)
Edward Henry Harriman (railroads) - New York state
George Hearst (gold)
Collis P. Huntington (railroads) - California, Virginia, and New York
Andrew Mellon (finance) - Pennsylvania
J. P. Morgan (finance) - New York
Mark Hopkins (railroads) - California
John D. Rockefeller (oil) - Cleveland, Ohio
Leland Stanford (railroads) - Sacramento, California and San Francisco, California
Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads, shipping) - New York City, New York
James J. Hill (railroads) - St. Paul, Minnesota
George Mortimer Pullman (railroads) - Pullman, Chicago

Do you recognize some of those names on the list?  None of these men got to where they were by being stupid or naive.  I can assure you that their fortunes were structured and safe in foundations and trusts when they passed and their heirs have been living just off of the interest these stockpiles of wealth bring about.

If you had $10,000,000 in a trust today, what would you do?  Cash it out now and pay the US Treasury $3,600,000?  Cash it out in 2011 and pay $4,050,000 to Uncle Sam?  Wouldn't it be wise to wait until 2010 and cash out $10,000,000 and $5,000,000 in your left pocket and $5,000,000 in your right pocket?

What do you think is going to happen in 2010 when the hundreds of billions if not combined trillions of dollars of wealth in foundations and trusts can be moved, sliced, diced and pared tax free?  You can bet your marbles that anyone with half-a-brain would leave anything more than $1,000,000 for the government to tax in 2011 and beyond.  I'm sure the trustees and directors of mega-trusts and foundations already have a very comprehensive plan to move money out and into safe, tax-free shelters - many of them will be overseas.

So while billionaires like Mr. Buffet and our princes and princesses in DC direct our attention to income tax rates (which the wealthy do not contribute to), to feed a growing deficit and and out of control budget that they refuse to constrain.  They label hard working income producing families making $150k a year "the rich" and want to shift even more of the responsibility to feed their bloated budget...knowing full well that they provided the day for their puppet masters to take trillions of legitimate TAXABLE dollars (this money was never taxed to begin with) off the table.

I hope I explained this well enough for you to get the gist.  Would like to hear what you think because I personally think this is the scandal of all scandals.