Paul Krugman: Gilded Once More

Paul Krugman looks at the return of the Gilded Age:

Gilded Once More, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: One of the distinctive features of the modern American right has been nostalgia for the late 19th century, with its minimal taxation, absence of regulation and reliance on faith-based charity rather than government social programs. Conservatives from Milton Friedman to Grover Norquist have portrayed the Gilded Age as a golden age, dismissing talk of the era’s injustice and cruelty as a left-wing myth.

Well, in at least one respect, everything old is new again. Income inequality — which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power — is now fully back to Gilded Age levels.

Consider a head-to-head comparison. We know what John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in Gilded Age America, made in 1894, because ... he had to pay income taxes. ... His return declared an income of $1.25 million, almost 7,000 times the average per capita income ... at the time.

But that makes him a mere piker by modern standards. Last year, ... James Simons, a hedge fund manager, took home $1.7 billion, more than 38,000 times the average income..., and the top 25 combined made $14 billion. ...

The hedge fund billionaires are simply extreme examples of a much bigger phenomenon: every available measure of income concentration shows ... levels of inequality not seen since the 1920s. The new Gilded Age doesn’t feel quite as harsh and unjust as the old Gilded Age — not yet, anyway. But that’s because the effects of inequality are still moderated by progressive income taxes, which fall more heavily on the rich...; by estate taxation, which limits the inheritance of great wealth; and by social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which provide a safety net for the less fortunate.

You might have thought that in the face of growing inequality, there would have been a move to reinforce these moderating institutions — to raise taxes on the rich and use the money to strengthen the safety net. ...

But... Taxation has become much less progressive: ... average tax rates on the richest 0.01 percent ... have been cut in half since 1970, while taxes on the middle class have risen. In particular, the unearned income of the wealthy — dividends and capital gains — is now taxed at a lower rate than the earned income of most middle-class families. ...

Meanwhile, the tax-cut bill Congress passed in 2001 set in motion a complete phaseout of the estate tax. If the Bush administration hadn’t been too clever by half, hiding the true cost of its tax cuts by making the whole package expire at the end of 2010, we’d be well on our way toward becoming a dynastic society.

And as for the social insurance programs..., the Bush administration tried to privatize Social Security. If it had succeeded, Medicare would have been next.

Of course, the administration’s attempt to undo Social Security was a notable failure. The public, it seems, isn’t eager to return to the days before the New Deal. And the G.O.P.’s defeat in the midterm election has put on hold other plans to restore the good old days.

But it’s much too soon to declare the march toward a new Gilded Age over. If history is any guide, one of these days we’ll see the emergence of a new Progressive Era, maybe even a new New Deal. But it may be a long wait.

_________________________
Previous (4/23) column: Paul Krugman: A Hostage Situation
Next (4/30) column: Paul Krugman: Another Economic Disconnect

Comments

[reason]

I wonder why PK wrote this now? It is not a new theme with him, and he doesn't seem to have much new to say on it. Is he on holiday (or with a heavy teaching load) and pulled it out of a drawer?

Slow news day!

[Farrar Richardson]

Maybe there's no new infor in this column, Reason, but it's always useful to put it in a different context - give it a new slant, in the hope that it will give more people a flash of understanding of what's going on. Also, it gives PK's progressive fans more useful discussion points in our encounters with the other side.

[anne]

Paul Krugman's column is especially important, but then the columns are almost all so. The importance rests in the emphasis on policy as a driver to inequality. As policy can and does drive infant mortality in the South, so policy drives increasing inequality. The changes in tax structure alone these last years mean that wealth and income inequality will increase strikingly indefinitely. The idea that the rise in inequality is policy driven is regularly ignored, not denied but simply ignored.

[anne]

Also, I have sadly been too low on the amount of our direct spending for the occupation of Iraq. The amount is running above $15.8 billion a month given the appropriation bills passed so far. The President will veto the latest appropriation bill, but from the spending set down we can surely expect the final appropriation to run about $190 billion in all for the fiscal year.

[anne]

What we have then is a mix of fiscal policy that is astonishing, a host of tax laws that have made the tax structure not flat but regressive for the wealthiest while social benefit spending has been limited and spending on the tragic insanity of Iraq is limiting what we will be spent on social benefits in the future. Fiscal policy is playing to the wealth and income of the wealthiest at the very cost of life in terms of lost domestic services.

[anne]

So that we understand the indirect material cost of Iraq, and why we are in a war and occupation that will astonishingly cost more than $2 trillion, simply understand how many soldiers are variously wounded in Iraq and what that will entail. Military researchers have just found that 17.8% of returned soldiers have suffered a traumatic brain injury. This has been a war and occupation that the middle class are profoundly paying for but we have had little sense of that.

[ilsm]

The working class finances their own social insurance and the lower classes, the OASDI taxes' surplus funds the deficit keeping interest rates and cash requirements down so hedge funds can speculate while Bush borrows from the OASDI fund to do things that do not pay for themselves much less set a production base for social insirance in the not so roaring '20's ahead.

Unearned income well it should not pay for national security either. The middle class, who send their kids to fight Bush's war, should make sure the troops are well equipped.

PK is being too nice.

[save_the_rustbelt]

krugman again fials to recognize the role of his free-trade-at-all-costs mantras in causing inequality.

But gee, we all get to shop at Wal-Mart.

[ken melvin]

Thanks ilsm for saying what needed be said and doing so so very well.

[Turbo]

I completely agree that income distribution is becoming more unequal and is likely to become a real economic problem in the not to distant future. However, top marginal tax rates are still in the 50% range in most states, so I disagree that taxation is the root of the problem. The root of the problem is non-existent corporate governance that is allowing executives and hedge fund / private equity managers to pillage corporate balance sheets and increase their compensation exponentially, at the expense of long-term stakeholders, read basically everyone else.

[anne]

"However, top marginal tax rates are still in the 50% range in most states, so I disagree that taxation is the root of the problem."

Say what? Where? When? How? Huh?

[reason]

I saw one commenter (incognitus) at big picture who made a case (not one I heard so well elucidated before) that credit expansion is part of the issue.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/04/which_is_wrong_.html

Interesting thesis.

Turbo - just a question is that 50% Marginal rate the EFFECTIVE marginal rate for the very rich and not just the theoretical marginal rate. I understand that rates on investment income are substantially lower in the US.

[anne]

As for shareholders, the top 1% of American households owned 57.8% of corporate shares in 2004 and they are these shareholders are evidently getting precisely what they wish as shareholder supportive voting patterns are telling us.

[anne]

Investment income includes a number of major tax favored categories including long term capital gains, dividends, which are taxed at a maximum of 15%, and international investment income which can be essentially tax deferred for 10 years. Unrealized capital gains are indefinitely tax deferred. Somewhere above $300,000 in income a year, taxes become flat then regressive. The idea of the wealthiest paying a marginal tax rate of 50% is simply comical.

[cm]

anne: Federal 35%, California state 9.3%. Actually the picture is slightly more complicated as there are deduction/exemption limitations, so there may be income ranges where the "effective" marginal rate on the last dollar is slightly higher than the "nominal" one. In reality many high income receivers (to avoid the term "earners") are likely to employ various dodges, bringing the Federal marginal rate to 28% (AMT).

[cm]

That would bring the total max marginal tax rate to some 44%. I'm hearing New York City residents have an additional city income tax, but I'm too rushed to look up the numbers right now.

[Jim in Chicago]

cm and Turbo seem to assume that the rich get most of their income from salary, not dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate. Their calculations also assume the rich don't take advantage of all the deductions and credits (i.e., tax loopholes) they can. These assumptions would be FALSE. To quote President Bush, "The rich will always find ways to avoid paying taxes..." Of course, his solution is to lower their taxes anyway when the real solution should be to close loopholes and enforce a REAL alternative minimum tax that actually affects the rich instead of the middle class (right now we have the opposite).

[MF]

Waaaaah, some people are making a lot of money and they're not paying 90% tax rates.

I sure wish the world wasn't a zero-sum game. Oh wait, it's not.

[Outside the Box]

To level the playing field a bit, why not eliminate all regressive taxes, such as the property tax and sales tax?

[anne]

No; a favorite trick of tax complainers is to add taxes, so

federal -
state -
local -
property
sales;

but, above the $300,000 yearly income, taxes tend to be about 22%.

[David]

Why don't we just get rid of all income tax deductions? It would make taxes easier to complete and would be more fair in many ways.

[David]

I'm conflicted about sales taxes. They are regressive (though necessities can be, and often are, excluded), but they encourage saving and are hard to avoid (more so for a national sales tax).

[ECONOMISTA NON GRATA]

"Income inequality — which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power — is now fully back to Gilded Age levels."

There is no such thing as income inequality. However there is "injustice and cruelty" and that's not a left wing myth it's fact. You don't have dig to deep to find this. Take a close look at the criminal justice system and healthcare.

With wealth comes great responsibility and obligation. Our government is responsible for holding those that neglect these obligations accountable. Without serious and Draconian campaign finance reform, our politicians will remain the proxy of the rich. There is a long and excruciatingly painful history of this as it relates to civilization. It is unfortunate that we continue to build a society on such poor foundations as capitalism which breeds the seeds of it's own destruction. The Post War American experience is too short a time frame within the context of human history to claim victory for capitalism as defined by Milton Friedman and Grover Norquist.

It's a damn shame that this nation has lost it's path in such miserable blind greed,lust and vanity. Like an alchoholic, this nation will soon find it'self at a crossroad and like an alchoholic it will have to make a very difficult choice.

"The Rich Stand Accused!"

My best regards to all,

Econolicious

[kthomas]

For the wealthy, a new gelded age cometh.

[Outside the Box]

"Why don't we just get rid of all income tax deductions?"

They do distort the market, which can cause people to make decisions that make little economic sense.

"...they encourage saving..."

This would make gov policy fight itself. The main justification for constant inflation is to promote spending, otherwise know as discouraging saving.

[robertdfeinman]

In the prior gilded age the winners were the captains of industry like Rockefeller and Carnegie.

These days the big winners are financial manipulators. The difference is important; the earlier group built up US industry and infrastructure which had a lasting effect on US productivity and competitiveness.

The current group adds nothing to our productive capacity. Merging companies or taking them private/public leaves them in the same position as they were before.

Today Floyd Norris's NY Times column (behind firewall) asks why companies aren't reinvesting their profits. He takes it as a sign that they see few opportunities. In the case of IBM, which he uses, the firm has been borrowing money in order to buyback stock. This, of course, artificially boosts the earnings per share, but has negative long term implications.

The only people who can win from this game are short term traders and those getting stock options and bonuses related to these manipulated financial measures.

At some point all these hollowed out companies will have to pay back the loans or suffer a decline.

Perhaps people like Krugman should spend a bit more time looking at the games that the financial markets are playing and not just at those dealing the cards.

[James Killus]

Turbo and cm,

Do either of you believe that James Simon's $1.7 billion income last year was taxed at "nearly 50%?"

If so, can I get you guys into a poker game? Seriously.

Robert Feinman, please look up the names of Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan, Albert B. Fall, Joseph Kennedy, Russell Sage, Colis B. Huntington, and Jay Cooke before you go touting that "Captains of Industry" rather than "financial manipulators" were those who flourished in the Gilded Age. I know I've included a few from the early 20th Century, but the 1920s differed from the 1890s mostly in the quality of the gin, or so I've heard.

[cm]

Jim Chicago, James Killus: In my comment I made explicit allowances for tax dogdes, and non-earned income categories, if you would have chosen not to just cherry-pick which I find rather disappointing. As a well though not extravagantly (pretty sure of that part) paid couple of professional-class individual contributors whose income is mostly W2 and who do not (and arguably, cannot) avail themselves of various big deductions and tax shelter schemes, I can assure you that we are paying the "real" marginal tax rates that apply at our AGI (which is not 35% federal just so you don't get this idea).

But then I would not put us anywhere near the "rich" category.

I'm not very familiar with AMT provisions, but I know that there is a large list of deductions even for that, which leaves ample room for constructing business situations where one's (non-earned) income is sheltered.

[cm]

anne: I don't know about you, but I do have to pay both federal and state taxes on my income. I wasn't aware that pointing out the max marginal tax rates wasn't cool. My marginal rate isn't quite there, and I didn't suggest either that it was close to the effective tax rate.

[pzykr]

Paul Krugman said:
But it’s much too soon to declare the march toward a new Gilded Age over. If history is any guide, one of these days we’ll see the emergence of a new Progressive Era, maybe even a new New Deal. But it may be a long wait.

A long wait indeed as long as the media are controlled by large-monied interests. i think people underestimate the pervasive and pernicious power and control the media have over our thoughts, culture, and society. Individuals are not particularly predictable, hence aren't easy to control. Groups, aggregates, are predictable and thus are susceptible to control. Read Jerry Mander's _Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television_ or do some googling (or use ask.com or dogpile.com--why always google?).

[robertdfeinman]

James Killus:
You are right that those that you mentioned were in financial services and/or manipulated markets, but several of them did actually establish productive firms along the way.

I still think there is a difference between a Morgan and the guys running the hedge funds these days. What is happening now is similar to the frenzy leading up to 1929 as more effort was spent on manipulation than on building up firms.

I find the parallels disquieting, especially as there are very few commentators sounding any warnings.

[sk]

cm,

There is indeed such thing as NYC/Yonkers city income tax in New York.

By the way, any state/city income taxes are duductible for federeral tax purposes, which is not a complicated calculation at all, I guess. For example, if the marginal federal tax rate is 35% and the local rate is 10%, you just can't add up those two to arrive at the total marginal rate. It should be like this: .35 + .10 - (.35 X .1)=.415, not .45. Probably somebody mentioned this above, I just didn't see it....

[cm]

sk: Fair enough, at least as long one doesn't run into deduction/exemption phaseouts. One pet project I have been having on my backburner (where it is in good company) for some time is plotting the actual (effective) tax rate by (W2) income. The principal stumbling block is that the tax figuring rules, at least in the regular 1040 etc. instructions, are fairly complicated, and even small simplifications can make figures unrealistic as you point out, so it's not a matter of programming a few dozen or even hundred lines of code. An approximate version of this is perhaps to run various input numbers through some tax preparation software.

Nonetheless I was surprised at the rather stiff wind blowing my way in response to what I consider fairly innocent, and largely factual, statements.

[Bruce Wilder]

cm: "I was surprised at the rather stiff wind blowing my way in response to what I consider fairly innocent, and largely factual, statements."

I cannot read minds, of course, but my guess is that some people may have read you as associating the highest tax rates or highest marginal tax rates, with the largest incomes. turbo may have helped to create confusion on this score.

Obviously, this is pretty complex business, and generalizing is tough sledding, but, in practice, the highest marginal tax rates are realized on labor income somewhere in the vast middle. At the very top, especially when capital income tends to predominate, effective tax rates can be quite modest. And, of course, FICA's cap imposes a regressive backslide.

[cm]

Bruce Wilder: I agree. In accordance with what you say, I'm inclined to believe the sweet (sour?) spot of paying the highest marginal rates is somewhere in the area where you have just enough income to look into tax shelters, but the baseline overhead of paying fees to various middlemen for setting up and administering the schemes (unless you want to make it your moonlight job) compensates for or outweighs the tax "savings", even though I have no idea what size of income that would be.

Engaging in all those dodges probably only pays off when keeping all those lawyers, accountants, advisors, etc. on retainers becomes pocket change. In that sense those "business costs" are also regressive.

[cm]

All of that is hypothetical on my part of course. If I were in the position, I probably would have serious issues trusting all those handlers. It's probably not for no reason that a lot of crime stories/movies involve cheating and embezzling money managers.

[James Killus]

cm,

There is a thing called a "topic sentence" in a paragraph. It is usually the first sentence (more accurately, it should be the first sentence). What you did was the paragraphic equivalent of "burying the lead."

Even there, your highest noted tax rate was the AMT 28%, with a vague reference to "dodges." Proper loopholes, like taking compensation offshore:

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/hedge-funds-big-tax-vacation/

can create still greater reduction. True dodges do exactly that, dodge taxes using dodgy methods, and can virtually eliminate taxes unless caught (hence the term "dodge"). And tax enforcement has been systematically and deliberately detuned for influential individuals, though I'll admit that high profile types who show up on lists usually don't go that route. Still, I would truly like to see what James Simons' tax bill really is. I would make a small wager that it isn't even a quarter of his putative compensation, and that it has sizable (and lucrative) delays built into it.

[sk]

cm,

You are right in saying the local income tax deduction rules are more complicated when the deduction phaseout kicks in for high income taxpayers. Although my "simple" formula was not quite accurate, I believe it is still more relevent when we talk about the total marginal tax rate . I had a feeling that rich people's tax payment was being inflated in a few comments here.
Speaking of the highest federal/local marginal tax rate while not mentioning the effective rate may be misleading.
Btw, for those of you who want to save a minute or twoo in googling for effective rate, here is one link.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p03s01-usgn.html

[anne]

Again, this is simply nonsense:

"However, top marginal tax rates are still in the 50% range in most states, so I disagree that taxation is the root of the problem."

The comment is continually made by tax complainers to distort the portion of taxes we actually do pay on income no matter how much income we have. Possibly we should pay less taxes than we do now, but that is not the issue. The issue is that adding marginal tax rates does not give us the marginal tax we may pay and even the actual marginal rate has nothing to do with what is paid.

[anne]

We are in the midst of the broadest and deepest international bull market in stocks I have record of, and wealthy people should have and have been taking advantage of this in ways that are and will continue to be astonishingly tax friendly. This has simply been an ideal investing time, and the more conservative, the more long term, the investor the better the returns should already have been.

[cm]

James Killus: Point taken, but when in a forum like this one cannot expect participants to read a whole message (that's not verbose), then I don't know what we are doing here. It's the equivalent of not listening beyond the first 3-5 seconds in a verbal discussion.

I would prefer to have my contributions regarded as more than filler for somebody's desired majority viewpoint.

This notwithstanding I have to work on my rhetorical skills, and thanks for pointing out the "burying the lead" phrase that I actually had to look up.

[cm]

sk: From your quoted article it's not clear whether FICA taxes are included, and judging by the lower than I expected bottom-quintile percentages they are not. There you can readily slap another 7% or so on to the rates for incomes below let's say 90K. Please, nobody who pays "double FICA" complain here.

What regards marginal vs. effective rates, one has to make tradeoffs. I cannot in every comment give a background introduction into the domain of our discourse, esp. considering that most are probably aware of the basics (or at least their existence). People are not even reading my shorter messages as it is.

[cm]

anne: You are right that the marginal rate is largely a numerial construct, but it can have a psychological effect for those exposed to it (those obsessing about it probably have already gotten all of the psychological effect they'll ever get from it).

Sometimes you see an approximation of marginal rates, e.g. when you get an extra year-end paycheck (if you are in some kind of bonus program, and I'm guessing there is a good chance a fair number of private-sector professional workers are). Usually you hear big words trumpeting the gross amount and how they expect further great work etc., then you compare this to the payout.

Having said that, I don't buy the argument that marginal rates even in the alleged 50% range would seriously discourage transaction volume. For one thing I believe higher-end salaries are well "grossed up" (and then some), and secondly your workload is largely set or influenced by outside factors, i.e. not largely voluntary on your part. It's more of a yes-no thing (long hours vs. no job), and I have occasionally heard higher-level managers complain about it (in private of course).

[anne]

Well, even if I am technically correct the striking overtly greedy behavior of some of the wealthiest of corporate executives tells us the marginal taxes mean more than should logically be the case. We are several years in on bizarre tax shelters being exposed and exposed again, to no real long term purpose but there they are. There we have the false dating of options even at fabulously successful companies, the evidence of which we continue to find. So, we have a problem, no matter my argument.

[jm]

Regarding the marginal tax rate issue, many who contrast their high marginal tax rates with the apparently much lower rates of those with lower wages do not consider that a comprehensive calculation should take into account employer-provided tax-free benefits (usually much higher for the more highly paid), and the "employer-paid" half of Social Security FICA tax.

Back when I was in business for myself and was about to hire a full-time assistant, I of course calculated how much it was going to cost me to employ her. Since I knew she had other job offers, and though a fresh-out was of obviously great ability, I was acutely aware that I was already -- and would continue to be -- in competition with other potential employers. Needless to say (at least it ought to be), the reason I wanted to hire her was that I thought I could have a meaningfully higher income by doing so, if I didn't pay her more than the additional revenue she'd help me make.

From my viewpoint, her "pay" was what it cost me to outbid potential competitors for her, and included the unemployment, workers comp, and FICA payments. When I added those up, along with the federal and state withholding and the FICA explicitly "paid by the employee", I was dismayed by how much was going to these taxes, and remarked on it. I was a little surprised when she said of FICA, "but you pay half of that." I was acutely aware that was a fiction -- that my competitors for her were, like me, calculating how much they would offer based on full employment cost, and that what fractions of that would and would not appear on her pay stub was irrelevant.

When you add the sales taxes onto these hidden taxes, and add in the fractions of rent that are going to pay the landlords' real estate taxes, the tax system is much less progressive than it seems.

[cm]

jm: That's right. While I agree with your FICA/full load argument, I'm not sure whether you are not crossing "accounting boundaries" -- the FICA share that you are paying is technically a tax on you, not on the income of your employee, regardless of whether you had to offer a higher salary otherwise (and who's to say you would -- would your competitors?).

Actually I'm not sure what precisely the marginal tax rate argument is, or how many kinds are out there, other than the generic and uninspired "tax rates are too high".

One thing I have been reading consistently is that "high" (by whatever standard) marginal rates are supposedly suppressing the marginal economic activities that are subject to them, but I have yet to see the evidence at least in the case of earned income.

If I were to spend my precious and too scarce by my standards spare time to pursue nontrivial investments (or a second job), I would very well figure in the marginal tax rate on my hypothetical income to determine risk and opportunity cost adjusted return (and in that case I would probably have a fairly good idea of what that marginal rate is). As it is, my primary turn-off happens to be that I abhor the idea moonlighting doing something ungratifying without a realistic expectation of being adequately compensated by the opportunity of enjoyable pursuits.

[sk]

cm,

Are you really ready to think?
I linked the article above just to save a few minutes of googling for people willing to find out the effective tax rates. (I didn't read the whole article myself but I just tried to verify the fact I know that the effective rate for the richest 1% is just about 30% or so, which is shown on the two tables shown in the article.) Anybody who is really interested in the topic may find his or her own answer spending a little time on the net. Just to remind you, my point is that effective tax rate for the rich is not so high as you are implying by presenting highest marginal federal and local income tax rates. ( I suspect you tried to insinuate we should generally add up the two marginal rates due to the "complicated" deduction/exemption rules?)
I would not further comment because, as you indicated, most people here would understand the issue anyway.

[anne]

No; understanding things is definitely what I am poor at, but a little math, though I am poor at math too, since math takes understanding, a little math will show that the wealthiest persons pay about 22% in income taxes. Warren Buffett spoke of this a while ago, and David Cay Johnston wrote of this, and I will find the reference when I can. Simply remember that dividends and realized capital gains are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%, and understanding comes even for poor benighted me.

[cm]

sk: I don't know what you are trying to argue. I think we agree that in my initial quoting of (max) marginal rates I have failed to account for deduction of state tax. I have nowhere equated effective and marginal rates, and neither have I claimed that all or any of the "rich" are paying the rates I quoted.

I can of course look up effective rates on the net, but as your quoted article appears to show, FICA is often not accounted for, and neither is this often pointed out. And as various commenters remark, income taxes alone are not the whole truth. (And one thing I cannot help pointing out is my surprise that you quote stuff that you admit you didn't even (in your own words "fully") read.)

For reference, here the definitions with which I operate -- for a given gross income I, under the same situation as represented by tax function T(), the marginal rate is (T(I+D)-T(I))/D for a suitably sized delta D, whereas the effective rate is T(I)/I, they are clearly different, and for a tax function that is progressive and incorporates exemptions and deductions, the effective rate is accordingly smaller.

As for the effective rates quoted in the article, I suspect they don't include FICA, which I consider to be an income tax, as it is applied to (W2) income. At least that's what it looks like on my pay stub. FICA taxes often are conveniently dropped under the table when asserting how little in taxes the little people are paying.

On a more general note, I'm not quite sure what (meta-level) conclusions to draw from the exchanges in which I had the privilege to participate in this thread.

[maria]

You can ruin a company or lower its value drastically and still get a Golden Handshake, but if you make it profitable but are being blackmailed by a gay lover your Handshake turns to lead, or tin, or whatever. Moral: you can be incompetent in business and have no worries, but under no circumstances can you be gay. LOL.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23394621-
details/BP%20chief%20lied%20over%20affair%20with%
20gay%20lover/article.do