Blog Posts by Henry Blodget

Now that Mitt Romney has a good shot at becoming the next President of the United States, it seems time to give his tax returns a good read.

After all, Mitt Romney is an unusual Presidential candidate, in that he is totally loaded. (Not just rich--loaded).

And unlike some loaded people who run for office, Mitt Romney isn't just living off of a massive stash of cash he made long ago. Yes, Mitt Romney has a massive stash--most estimates put it in the neighborhood of $250 million--but he's also hauling in more year after year after year.

When Mitt Romney's tax returns were first released during the primaries, everyone focused on the top and bottom lines: How much money Mitt Romney made--and how little (on a percentage basis) he paid in taxes.

In the accompanying interview, my colleague Aaron Task and I discuss Romney's effective tax rate when it was released in January with for former investment banker Bill Cohan.

Well, Obamacare is now official, which means that a lot more people in the United States will have health insurance.

And it also means a lot more people will be paying more taxes.

(You didn't think Obamacare was free, did you?)

Here are some of the new taxes you're going to have to pay to pay for Obamacare:

• A 3.8% surtax on "investment income" when your adjusted gross income is more than $200,000 ($250,000 for joint-filers). What is "investment income?" Dividends, interest, rent, capital gains, annuities, house sales, partnerships, etc. Taxes on dividends will rise from 15% to 18.8%--if Congress extends the Bush tax cuts. If Congress does not extend the Bush tax cuts, taxes on dividends will rise from 15% to a shocking 43.8%. (WSJ)
• A 0.9% surtax on Medicare taxes for those making $200,000 or more ($250,000 joint). You already pay Medicare tax of 1.45%, and your employer pays another 1.45% for you (unless you're self-employed, in which case you pay the whole 2.9% yourself). Next year,

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David Segal of the New York Times takes an excellent look at what it's like to work in an Apple Store--an occupation that has become one of the favorite "McJobs" in our economy for hip college graduates.

The pay sucks (relatively), the stores are busy and crowded, and there's little upward mobility, so it's pretty much a dead-end job. The average Apple store retail workers earns a $11.91 per hour compared to the average Tiffany sales person who earns $15.60 an hour.

But 30,000 of the 40,000 Apple (AAPL) employees in the United States work in the stores, so this has now become the defining experience of working at the company.

And Apple is perceived as cool--much cooler than, say, McDonald's or Walmart or Starbucks--so the company is continually deluged with resumes. For every Apple Store employee who quits, disillusioned, after a couple of years, there are many more eager to take his or her place.

Apple picks a small percentage of lucky candidates

Provided by Business Insider

Last week, we pointed out one of the defining characteristics of our imbalanced economy:

• Corporate profit margins just hit a record-high
• Wages just hit a record-low

The juxtaposition of these two facts perfectly illustrates the fundamental problem with the U.S. economy.

What's the fundamental problem? The fundamental problem is that businesses are doing great, as exemplified by those record-high profit margins. But this corporate-and-owner prosperity is not flowing through to average Americans, as exemplified by the record-low wages.

Provided by Business Insider:

Google's (GOOG) CEO Larry Page missed yesterday's Google shareholder meeting.

Google said Larry has a voice condition and was therefore unable to speak.

The company also announced, however, that Larry will miss next week's big I/O developer conference and Google's second-quarter earnings call. The latter two absences have Wall Street concerned that something more is going on.

Doug Anmuth of JP Morgan:

Co-founder and CEO Larry Page was not present at the shareholder meeting. Google indicated that he had lost his voice and was unable to speak at the meeting, and also that he would not be speaking at next week's Google I/O developer conference or the company's 2Q earnings call. We have no specific reason to think there is anything more to Larry's condition, but we find it odd that the company would already rule him out of the 2Q call which is likely still a few weeks away. We think this could raise some questions among investors. We note that Larry

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J.C. Penney's (JCP) stock got clobbered yesterday after the company announced the sudden departure of its president, Michael Francis.

Yesterday's drop only added to the woes of J.C. Penney's shareholders, who have seen the value of the company nearly cut in half over the last three months. The stock has also hit the lowest level it has seen since Apple's former retailing guru, Ron Johnson, joined the company last fall.

A day after Francis's departure, Ron Johnson is publicly throwing him under the bus, blaming him for the failure of J.C. Penney's marketing message to connect with consumers. Johnson is now taking over responsibility for that marketing message himself.

At the same time, Johnson is standing behind his larger strategy for J.C. Penney, which is to offer "everyday low prices" instead of constant sales and discounts and other gimmicks designed to get cost-conscious customers into the stores.

And believe it or not, according to Morningstar

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Microsoft (MSFT) startled everyone yesterday by announcing that it is going to make and sell its own version of the iPad, which is called the "Surface."

This new tablet, which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demo-ed in Los Angeles yesterday, will be made entirely by Microsoft--hardware and software.

This strategy, selling an integrated device, is a 180-degree turn from the strategy that Microsoft has employed with PCs and smartphones for the past three decades. The decision will certainly startle and possibly anger the hardware vendors that buy Microsoft's operating systems--Hewlett Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL), etc.--all of which will likely have their own tablets. Now, instead of being a partner and supplier, Microsoft will be a direct competitor. That likely won't sit well.

So, why is Microsoft doing this? And does it have any chance of success?

Microsoft is doing this, I would argue, because it has realized that Apple (AAPL) is right: There are

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Sunday's Greek election saw a narrow victory for the "New Democracy" party, which wants to try to continue to work with the rest of the euro zone on a bailout-plus-austerity plan.

Thus, Greece and world markets dodged a potential bullet in the form of an aggressive new government that might have led to bank runs and forced the rest of Europe to kick Greece out of the euro zone.

That withdrawal, many analysts think, would be catastrophic for the already demolished Greek economy. And, more importantly for the rest of Europe, it would likely hasten the spread of panic to Spain, Italy, and other European countries that everyone assumes will soon be the beneficiaries of another round of bailouts.

But the Greek election can also be looked at differently: The revolutionary party almost won. And now that the "status quo" has been preserved, the situation in Greece is likely to get worse. So when the next election comes around--and it could be soon if the tenuous majority in the Greek government fails to hang together--the more aggressive party may well win.

Meanwhile, the only solution to the broader problems in the euro zone is either true fiscal integration, in which a central authority is given the ability to issue Eurobonds, tax individual countries, and control spending in those countries, or a breakup. The current system, in which all the euro zone countries use the same currency but still have to borrow and spend as separate entities, just is not working.