LET CAMERAS ROLL
"Since 2006, according to the Department of Revenue, film tax credits have generated over half a billion dollars in new direct spending in Massachusetts from filmmakers.
"That means jobs. IATSE local 481 - the union representing most of the technicians and crafts people who work on movie sets - reports that its membership has increased nearly 50 percent in two years, and continues to grow. When people are collecting a paycheck instead of unemployment, they are paying taxes, and buying goods and services from other local businesses who are also paying taxes. That's the "multiplier" effect.
"Using a conservative multiplier, the total economic impact to our state, directly attributable to the film industry, is already well over a billion dollars. And before a single credit gets handed out to anybody, the state will collect additional taxes on that new spending (income, corporate, hotel-motel, meals, and gas - just to name a few). When these new taxes are factored in, it costs the state a nickel to get a dollar's worth of economic impact - which is a pretty good deal, no matter how you slice it."
NICK PALEOLOGOS
Massachusetts Film Office
"If we can attract this kind of business, why do we need or want casinos?"
RON NEWMAN
Archboston.org
BEAR STEARNS BAILOUT
"For three decades we have moved toward market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the United States, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over . . . The implications of this decision are evident: There will have to be far greater regulation of such institutions. The Fed has provided a valuable form of insurance to the investment banks. Indeed, that is already evident from what has happened in the stock market since the rescue: The other big investment banks have enjoyed sizeable jumps in their share prices. This is moral hazard made visible. The Fed decided that a money market 'strike' against investment banks is the equivalent of a run on deposits in a commercial bank. It concluded that it must, for this reason, open the monetary spigots in favour of such institutions. Greater regulation must be on the way."
MARTIN WOLF
Financial Times
"The Fed had every right to be calling the shots. They were taking the biggest risk in this transaction. The notion that a firm about to fail is entitled to be treated as being on an equal footing with its rescuers is absurd."
YVES SMITH
Nakedcapitalism.com
"Yes, the Fed leaned on Bear to take a bad deal. But that's because Bear needed the Fed, i.e. the taxpayers, to bail it out. Renegotiating the deal makes things worse by making failure marginally more attractive, and also by signaling to anyone else who needs funds that they should hold out for a better deal."
MEGAN McARDLE
The Atlantic
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