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Marc Rich, the trader known as the "King of Commodities" who was pardoned in 2001 by President Bill Clinton just hours before he left office, has died in Switzerland. He was 78. Rich's Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay says Rich died Wednesday and will be buried in Israel on Thursday. Rich fled the United States to Switzerland in 1983 after being indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than $48 million in income taxes Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/26/financier-marc-rich-who-fled-to-switzerland-in-183-and-was-pardoned-by-clinton/#ixzz2XK1P5Jvd

A new Congressional Budget Office report shows that the rich get most of the benefit from various deductions and credits in the tax code, music to the ears of the soak-the-rich crowd. But since the wealthy pay nearly all the nation's income taxes, this is hardly a sign of unfairness. According to the CBO report, the government "spends" about $900 billion through deductions, exclusions, special tax rates and tax credits, with more than half going to the wealthiest 20% of households, while just 8% goes to the bottom fifth. Democrats, who ordered the report, celebrated the news, since it appears...

WASHINGTON—Wealthier households benefit significantly more than lower earners from big tax breaks such as deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving, the government said in a study Wednesday. More than half the benefits of 10 major tax breaks go to the one-fifth of U.S. households at the top of the income scale, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The top 1 percent of earners reaps 17 percent of these tax breaks, which also include preferential treatment of investment income and the deduction for sales and income taxes paid to state and local governments. Other breaks, such as the per-child tax...

In the aftermath of 9/11, many young, strong Americans enlisted, willingly agreeing to sacrifice their lives if necessary to protect our countryÂ’s interests. TodayÂ’s wealthiest Americans have the same opportunity to put their countryÂ’s interests before their own. Politicians should not shy away from asking them to put forth not their lives but what are, for them, their modest Social Security checks. The philosophy of the investment management firm I founded 15 years ago focuses first on a companyÂ’s balance sheet and second on its income statement. This approach has served our clients well. The current debate over entitlement reform...

Obama’s big money corporate donors included: AT&T--$4.6 million Microsoft--$2.1 million Boeing--$1 million Chevron--$1 million Genentech--$750,000 Deloitte--$500,000 FedEx--$500,000 Coca Cola--$430,000 Bank of America--$300,000 Xerox--$250,000 ExxonMobil--$250,000 Northrup Grumman--$100,000 Verizon--$100,000 Obama also hauled in $250,000 checks from each of the following unions: The International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the National Education Association.

When President Obama first ran in 2008, he claimed his economic policies would "foster economic growth from the bottom up and not just from the top down." He said he'd put in place "an immediate rescue plan for the middle class" and would end the "tired, worn-out, trickle-down ideologies we've been seeing for so many years." Obama got all he wanted in his first two years in the White House, when Democrats had solid control of Congress — a massive stimulus, auto industry bailouts, temporary middle class tax cuts, vast new regulations on businesses and ObamaCare. But his policies produced...

Business majors who admitted they'd jump at the chance to take a $2 million insider trading tip still were willing to stop and help a victim in need. Investment bankers raking in the dough on Wall Street may get a bad rap for being selfish, but a desire to make boatloads of money won't automatically turn you into Scrooge McDuck, according to new research. A study published in the April issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that many people primarily driven by a desire for wealth are still willing to help someone in need. Previous research has...

One of the first things you learn when living in New York is that what qualifies as wealthy somewhere else seems barely middle-class here. On the Upper West Side, where I live, it’s hard not to feel as if Manhattan is impossibly expensive for young professionals. The average nondoorman, one-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood rents for about $2,500 a month. Oatmeal-raisin cookies at Levain Bakery cost $4 each. A pair of sensible, unstylish walking flats from Harry’s Shoes can set you back $480. I suppose, by comparison, that the $198 chef’s menu at Jean-Georges doesn’t sound so ridiculous. New Yorkers...

Determining whether they're rich may be almost as difficult for taxpayers as paying their higher taxes this April. President Obama's first term ended with one new definition of who's "rich," but his second term began with many conflicting ones. Five major new tax provisions just kicked in just this year at least ostensibly aimed at making "the rich" pay more taxes. Even the tax hike enacted over New Year's has no single definition of who "the rich" are. Soaking the rich is not a new exercise. Decades ago, Washington adopted one landmark effort to make sure "the rich" didn't escape...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — President Barack Obama says his administration is working with Congress to provide Jordan with an additional $200 million in aid this year.

Bill Maher made a comment Friday that his benefactor and hero Barack Obama should sit up and take notice of.

Many people think that the rich are able to weasel their way out of taxes, but they actually pay an overwhelming majority of the taxes in the United States. What's more, their share of the tax burden is increasing. The top 10 percent of taxpayers paid over 70% of the total amount collected in federal income taxes in 2010, the latest year figures are available, according to the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank. That's up from 55% in 1986. The remaining 90% bore just under 30% of the tax burden. And 47% of all Americans pay hardly anything at...

Although Washington is gridlocked again over whether to raise taxes on the rich, wealthy families are already are paying some of their biggest federal tax bills in decades, while the rest of the population continues to pay at historically low rates. A new analysis shows that average tax bills for high-income families rarely have been higher since the Congressional Budget Office began tracking the data in 1979.

As Democratic leaders push for wealthy families to pay higher taxes as part of a budget deal comes some startling news: The rich are actually paying federal tax bills approaching 30-year highs. The average tax payment for a high-income family has rarely been higher, according to data going back to 1979, when the Congressional Budget Office started tracking the information. The report comes from the Associated Press, which cites projections from the liberal-leaning Tax Policy Center. Families in the top 20% will pay an average of 27.2% of their incomes in federal tax this year, according to the research organization,...

An embattled former Obama administration appointee -- who was part of a group of attorneys accused of being terrorist sympathizers for defending "enemy combatants" -- has been hired for a post at the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, officials confirmed today. Tali Farhadian was one of several private attorneys who created a rift between Republicans last spring when the Obama Administration assigned them to posts within the Justice Department. Although Farhadian was handling unrelated matters in Attorney General Eric Holder's office, a political watchdog group accused Obama of overloading the agency with officials sympathetic to enemy combatants. Their appointments even...

For years, many economists agreed, arguing that economic growth doesn’t generate more well-being for ordinary folk, a conclusion which came to be known as Richard Easterlin’s paradox, after the academic who first described it in the 1970s. Yet it turns out that once again the economics establishment got it spectacularly wrong. Economic growth – and the higher gross domestic product (GDP) per person and improved wages that usually accompany it – does actually improve happiness and well-being, according to several recent papers by top economists, drawing on far more data than their predecessors ever had access to and using novel...

What do the despised rich, smart kids, and fallen heroes have in common? They are all victims of the progressive movement. When being rich is finally made synonymous with undeserved privilege, individual achievement in other areas will be targeted. When success is considered unfair, then being unsuccessful will be called unfair and undeserved. And those of means and ability who reject this burden will be demonized. Progressives have turned society against conservatives who are successful through business; they claim that the rich have hoarded the profits that they made on the backs of the public. "Spread the wealth around" and...

Spend most of the year in St. Pete, pay the government in St. Paul. You may have heard it can get cold in Minnesota in January, or for that matter in April. Last week the temperature dropped to seven below zero in the Twin Cities, which is one reason many Midwesterners head to Florida or Arizona for the winter. But now Governor Mark Dayton wants to tax the snowbirds even if they are no longer legally state residents. "There is a snowbird tax—absolutely," the Democratic Governor told reporters the other day. . . . Details are sketchy, but the idea...