Amazingly, liberals staunchly opposed leveling the playing field in the tug of war (for corporate cash) between shareholders and their "fat cat" agents in management. And they did as they were being "shocked" when they found out that some of the fat cat agents had squandered the cash in unproductive acquisitions or in pumping up the value of their stock options by share buy-backs. And yet, this is what double taxation suggests you should be doing with excess cash...

Moe-

You said it. The tax regulations are plain out stupid. No relation to the reality of markets or economic incentive. Taxing earnings twice is criminal, arbitrary and inefficient. The law, particularly tax law, is truly an ass. Market or economic collapse, whether recessionary or flat out depression is, 95% of the time, the result of state ignorance fuled by demogoguery. The double taxation of corporate earnings, along with the limitations placed on the tax treatment of capital losses is positively un-American. The fact that the people put up with it is amazing.

Not that I disagree with the above, but, um...Microsoft, anybody? $32 billion out of the $203 billion total--take them out, and it's actually a decline of...

OK, color me stunned. The article is a forecast for 2005, compared to the 2004 total, which includes the extraordinary $32 billion from Microsoft that won't be repeated. Take that out, and the growth is clearly far in excess of 12.2% for 2005...amazing. If only S&P's forecast turns out to be correct...