To read the Times, it’s as if the only tax that went up was the payroll tax. Not a word about how the Fourth Quarter of 2012 saw the re-election of President Obama and the post-election announcement by the president that he wanted a $1.6 trillion tax increase on the incomes of Americans making more than $250,000 a year. In other words, American businesses and investors spent a lot of the Fourth Quarter of 2012 expecting a big marginal tax increase. Maybe that had something to do with the lack of growth?