Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Companies Push for Tax Break On Foreign Cash, at the NYT:

Corporations and their lobbyists say the tax break could resuscitate the gasping recovery by inducing multinational corporations to inject $1 trillion or more into the economy, and they promoted the proposal as “the next stimulus” at a conference last Wednesday in Washington.
“For every billion dollars that we invest, that creates 15,000 to 20,000 jobs either directly or indirectly,” Jim Rogers, the chief of Duke Energy, said at the conference. Duke has $1.3 billion in profits overseas.
But that’s not how it worked last time. Congress and the Bush administration offered companies a similar tax incentive, in 2005, in hopes of spurring domestic hiring and investment, and 800 took advantage.
Though the tax break lured them into bringing $312 billion back to the United States, 92 percent of that money was returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, according to a study by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.
This money comes from overseas operations and in some cases accounting maneuvers that shift domestic profits to low-tax countries. The study concluded that the program “did not increase domestic investment, employment or research and development.”

This is such a horrifically bad idea for citizens.  The companies get a huge tax break, then continue to route their money through low-tax countries like Ireland and the Caribbean Islands, pile more money up, then ask for another tax holiday.  Lather, Rinse, Repeat.  This idea has been kicking around for a while, and you always hear the same thing, we'll create jobs.  Instead, most of the money went toward dividends and stock buybacks.  Obviously, tech companies have a lot of cash overseas, but so do pharmaceutical companies.  This is just a very bad deal for regular citizens, and a giant giveaway for multinational corporations.