European officials look set to speed up plans to recapitalize the 16 banks that came close to failing last summer’s pan-EU stress tests, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing European officials.
The report said the move would affect mostly mid-tier banks. Seven are Spanish, two are from
Germany, Greece and Portugal, and one each from Italy, Cyprus and Slovenia.
The list includes Germany’s HSH Nordbank and Banco Popolare of Italy, the newspaper said on its website.
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SWEET SPRINGS, Mo. (CBS St. Louis) –– A recent show-and-tell at a northwest Missouri elementary school resembled something out of an episode of “Breaking Bad,” leading to the arrest of a kindergartner’s mother.
Michelle Marie Cheatham, 32, was arrested on Sept. 6 after her son pulled out methamphetamine and his mother’s crack pipe during a show-and-tell for his kindergarten class, according to a felony complaint filed in the Saline County Circuit Court. Later that day, a search warrant was obtained by the Sweet Springs police to conduct a search at Cheatham’s home, which led to the police reportedly recovering a crack pipe and a butane lighter, according to the Marshall Democrat-News.
Comments »H/T @macroQmicro
The Justice Department spent more than $120 million in fiscal 2008 and 2009 to host law enforcement conferences across the country, many of which featured “extravagant and wasteful” costs for food, beverages and event planning, including spending $16 on each of 250 muffins served at an August 2009 legal conference in Washington, D.C., a report said Tuesday.
Acting Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, in an audit report that examined taxpayer expenditures incurred by the Justice Department at 10 of 1,832 conferences held during fiscal 2008 and 2009, said investigators also found that another conference featured a lunch that cost $76 per person and coffee costing more than $1 per ounce. Other costly items cited in the report included a $32-per-person snack break consisting of Cracker Jacks, popcorn and candy bars, $7.32 Beef Wellington hors d’oeuvres, $10 cookies and $5 Swedish meatballs.
The numbers are included in a report that examined expenditures incurred by the Justice Department during fiscal 2008 and 2009 following a 2007 audit by the Inspector General’s Office that also identified what it described at the time as “extravagant costs associated with food and beverages and event planning activities.” The new report said that while it found that the Justice Department had instituted conference cost guidelines since the 2007 report, individual components within the agency “are not taking all necessary steps to minimize conference-related costs and to eliminate wasteful spending.”
The report noted that the department hosted or participated in 1,832 conferences in fiscal 2008 and 2009, costing a total of $121 million. The new audit examined 10 conferences that occurred between October 2008 and September 2009 and cost over $4.4 million. It focused on the two major conference cost categories that the September 2007 report revealed as most potentially susceptible to wasteful spending – event planning services and food and beverages.
“Our audit found that two DOJ components, the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), spent approximately $600,000 in grant funds to procure event planning services for five conferences without demonstrating that these firms offered the most cost effective logistical services,” Ms. Schnedar said. “The audit also found that neither OJP nor the OVW required event planners to track and report salary and benefit costs.
“As a result, the mandated DOJ conference cost reports submitted to Congress did not include over $500,000 of the $600,000 that it spent on event planning services for the five conferences we examined where event planners were used,” she said.
The audit also identified what it called “unallowable and unnecessary event planning costs,” including the hiring of a consultant as an event planner for one conference who lived in Anchorage, Alaska, to act as the liaison with the conference hotel located in Palm Springs, California. The audit questioned as “unnecessary” nearly $3,500 in Justice Departmentfunds paid to the consultant to travel three times between Alaska and California, especially since the event had been held at the same venue three times previously. Also questioned as unnecessary in the audit were over $29,000 in travel, lodging and food and beverage costs for a face-to-face planning meeting held in Palm Springs in January and February 2008 that was attended by Justice department employees and event planning consultants.
In a response to the Inspector General’s report, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden sent a memo to all department heads saying that as the department works to accomplish its mission, “We must also make certain we do so with a focus on accountability and transparency to the American taxpayers.” He told the department heads to ensure that financial resources are utilized in the most advantageous and responsible manner.
“I want to emphasize the need to maximize our financial resources, ensure we are prudent in our spending, and avoid the fact or appearance of extravagant spending, especially during these challenging financial times,” he said.
Comments »President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.
With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.
Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.
Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.
Mr. Obama’s proposal is certain to draw opposition from Republicans, who have staunchly opposed raising taxes on the affluent because, they say, it would discourage investment. It could also invite scrutiny from some economists who have disputed Mr. Buffett’s assertion that the megarich pay a lower tax rate over all. Mr. Buffett’s critics say many of the rich actually make more from wages than from investments.
Comments »Swiss bank UBS on Sunday increased the amount it said it had lost on rogue trades to $2.3 billion and gave details of how a trader concealed his risk exposure by creating fictitious positions in its systems.
UBS stunned markets on Thursday when announcing unauthorized trades had lost it some $2 billion. London trader Kweku Adoboli was charged on Friday with fraud and false accounting dating back to 2008.
“The loss resulted from unauthorized speculative trading in various S&P 500, DAX, and EuroStoxx index futures over the last three months,” UBS said in a statement.
“The loss arising from this matter is $2.3 billion. As previously stated, no client positions were affected.”
The fraud is a disaster for the reputation of Switzerland’s biggest bank.
UBS has only just recovered from the financial crisis when it had to be bailed out by the state, prompting calls for its top managers to step down and for its investment bank to be split off into a separate unit.
UBS also said its board of directors had set up a committee to be chaired by independent director David Sidwell, former chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley, to conduct an independent investigation into the trades and their relation to the bank’s control systems.
The bank said it had covered the risk resulting from the unauthorized trades, and its equities business was again operating normally within previously defined risk limits.
It said the trader had concealed the fact the index future trades violated UBS risk limits by allegedly executing fictitious cash exchange-traded fund (ETFs) positions in the bank’s system.
ETFs are index funds listed on an exchange and can be traded just like regular stocks. They try to replicate index performances and offer lower costs than actively managed funds.
Regulators have warned about risks from some of the more complex forms of ETFs.
Comments »Bernanke, Europe hold key to aiding rally
Wall Street hopes for more Fed action and clear signs European leaders will follow through on their new urgency to tackle the euro zone debt crisis if U.S. stocks are to build on their best week since early July.
Investors expect the Federal Reserve to take steps to pull down long-term interest rates when policymakers meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to help revive the persistently weak U.S. economy.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, speaking in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on August 26, said the Fed’s Open Market Committee would meet for two days in September instead of the scheduled one day to discuss ways to boost the recovery.
But even with expectations of more intervention to boost the economy, investors will keep a close eye on developments in Europe.
Any lack of progress or backsliding on efforts to get the currency bloc’s fiscal house in order will renew worries the crisis could seriously damage the world financial system and major economies.
“The Fed is really going to dominate next week,” said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.
“But the market has been trying to work its way higher here, trying to feel if maybe the European thing won’t cascade out of control.”
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers in Poland on Friday, urged them to leverage their bailout fund to better tackle the debt crisis, but there was no agreement on what steps to take.
While the Standard & Poor’s 500 has been moving upward over the past week, the benchmark index has been stuck in roughly a 100-point range over the last six weeks.
It is likely to run into resistance near the 50-day moving average of about 1,228, with analysts also pointing to the 1,250 level as the next significant hurdle.
“This is really a consolidation phase, which is normal after the kind of early August swoon that we had. So far this trading range is developing in a very positive and healthy way,” said Gail Dudack, chief investment strategist at Dudack Research Group in New York.
“Longer term, the market is looking better but we are getting very close to that resistance at 1,250 which would be pretty surprising if we can break above that at this early juncture. It could take a little more time, people shouldn’t be disappointed.”
The week’s economic calendar includes reports on the beleaguered housing market along with weekly initial jobless benefits claims.
Housing “is dead and it will stay dead, and I don’t expect anything out of unemployment either,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey.
“The biggest event is Bernanke.”
Companies due to post earnings next week include homebuilder Lennar Corp, Nike Inc, General Mills Inc as well as technology companies Adobe Systems, Red Hat Inc and Oracle Corp.
FedEx Corp, the No. 2 U.S. package delivery company, which is seen as a proxy for how the economy is performing, is also scheduled to report quarterly results.
Though earnings have managed to hold up in the face of a lackluster recovery, analysts worry this might not last if the financial system suffered the shock of a Greek debt default.
But while many feel Bernanke has telegraphed the plans for the Fed meeting, the euro zone debt crisis remains an uncertainty that could knock the market lower.
“It’s absolutely the wild card because Europe’s problems may be similar to what we saw in 2008, but they are much more difficult to deal with because country debt is far more difficult to deal with than mortgage debt,” Dudack said.
She added that having so many countries that are part of a committee trying to solve the problem only added to the complications.
Comments »General Motors Co. and the United Auto Workers, sobered by the government bailoutand bankruptcy just two years ago, agreed on a new four-year contract without the public acrimony or strikes that have plagued the talks in the past.
Details weren’t released, but the union said the deal reached late Friday includes some of its major goals, including improvements in profit-sharing, promises of new jobs and better health care benefits. The deal will serve as a template for contracts that still must be negotiated with Chrysler Group LLC and Ford Motor Co., setting the pay and benefits for 112,500 U.S. auto workers. It also will set the bar for pay and benefits at nonunion auto companies and other industries across the country.
Comments »RENO, Nev. — Twelve people are dead and at least 30 critically injured after a plane crashed in front of the grandstands at the Reno National Championship Air Races on Friday afternoon, KOLO-TV reported.
The P51 Mustang came down at the event held at Reno-Stead airport at around 4:00pm, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.
There were 30 serious and 30 intermediate injuries initially reported, authorities told the Gazette-Journal, adding that multiple ambulances had been dispatched to the scene.
Reno-Stead airport authorities told KOLO-TV that all planes had been grounded and spectators had been asked to go home.
The plane that crashed was entered in the “Unlimited” class, which includes World War II vintage aircraft.
Since 1964 there have been 19 fatalities at the Air Races, now in their 48th year, the Gazette-Journal reported.
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PHOTO SOURCE
RENO, Nev. (AP) – A plane plunged into the stands at an air race event in Reno in what an official described as a “mass casualty situation.”
It wasn’t immediately known how many people were killed. But video of the crash showed a horrific scene of bodies and wreckage at the front of the stands.
Mike Draper, a spokesman for the air races, told The Associated Press that Jimmy Leeward was the pilot of the P-51 Mustang that crashed into the box seat area at the front of the grandstand about 4:30 p.m. He said he did not have any information on the number of injured.
The National Championship Air Races draws thousands of people every year in September to watch various military and civilian planes race.
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The Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona was on lockdown today as officials negotiated with a man believed armed and barricaded inside a building on the base.
The man was barricaded in the “old dorm,” azcentral.com reported, based upon an unnamed source. The website, affiliated with the Arizona Republic newspaper, reported that the man had taken no hostages and that SWAT teams were in position.
A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that an individual with a weapon was holed up in a building at the base.
Comments »http://twitter.com/#!/NewYorkPost/status/114781713070161921 SOURCE
(BREAKING UPDATE) Arizona Airbase Shooting. Unconfirmed reports the shooter has been captured… developing
From the NY POST Twitter Feed
Comments »A Miami businessman was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Friday for masterminding a healthcare fraud scheme that sought to bilk the U.S. government out of more than $200 million.
Lawrence Duran, 49, the owner of Miami-based American Therapeutic Corp, was arrested last October on charges that he executed what prosecutors described in court documents as “one of the largest and most brazen healthcare fraud conspiracies in recent memory.”
His prison sentence was believed to be the harshest ever for defrauding Medicare, the federal insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. He also was ordered to pay $87.5 million in restitution.
American Therapeutic was one of the nation’s largest chains of community mental health centers licensed by Medicare.
Prosecutors said the company, operating out of the southeastern city widely viewed by law enforcement officials as the healthcare fraud capital of the United States, billed Medicare for more than $205 million in claims over eight years for mental health services that were either unnecessary or never provided to patients.
Comments »A five tonne, 20-year-old satellite has fallen out of orbit and is expected to crash somewhere on Earth on or around 24 September, according to Nasa.
Nasa says the risk to life from the UARS –Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite – is just 1 in 3,200.
Hurtling at 5m (8km) per second, it could land anywhere between 57 degrees north and 57 degrees south of the equator – most of the populated world.
However, most of the satellite will break or burn up before reaching Earth.
Scientists have identified 26 separate pieces that could survive the fall through the earth’s atmosphere, and debris could rain across an area 400-500km (250-310 miles) wide.
Nasa said scientists would only be able to make more accurate predictions about where the satellite might land two hours before it enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
Re-entry
The 1 in 3,200 risk to public safety is higher than the 1 in 10,000 limit that Nasa aims for.
Comments »Mayor Bloomberg warned Friday there would be riots in the streets if Washington doesn’t get serious about generating jobs.
“We have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs,” Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show.
“That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”
In Cairo, angry Egyptians took out their frustrations by toppling presidential strongman Hosni Mubarak – and more recently attacking the Israeli embassy.
As for Madrid, the most recent street protests were sparked by widespread unhappiness that the Spanish government was spending millions on the visit of Pope Benedict instead of dealing with widespread unemployment.
Bloomberg’s unusually alarmist pronouncement came as President Obama has been pressuring reluctant Republicans to pass his proposed job creation plan.
“The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years,” the normally-measured mayor said.
Bloomberg gave Obama kudos for coming up with a jobs plan.
“At least he’s got some ideas on the table, whether you like those or not,” he said. “Now everybody’s got to sit down and say we’re actually gonna do something and you have to do something on both the revenue and the expense side.”
And everybody’s got to share in the pain.
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