They blamed weather on the earnings miss. Audio will be posted here later.

Normally i do not care to much about insider selling, but found it curious that 95% of the position was sold; turns out the executive will receive more bonus stock.

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Washington (CNN) — Hours before the official announcement that President Barack Obama had landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, for a surprise visit, the media — both social and electronic — were already buzzing with reports about the trip.

Had he indeed landed in-country? Was it just a rumor? Should it be reported anyway?

Some, including those inside the administration, were actively concerned about the safety of the commander in chief as he arrived in a war zone, while others felt any word of the president’s visit was public information and fair game in today’s competitive, instant news cycle.

Before the day began, the administration issued what was later revealed to be a fake presidential schedule, having the president and vice president in meetings throughout the day at the White House.

Read the rest here:

“MANNHEIM, Germany (Reuters) – A court in Mannheim ruled on Wednesday that Microsoft infringed Motorola Mobility’s patents and ordered Microsoft to remove its popular Xbox 360 gaming consoles and Windows 7 operating system software from the German market.

However, Microsoft said that the ruling did not mean that its products would be taken off retailers’ shelves because a U.S. district court in Seattle has granted Microsoft a preliminary injunction against Motorola to prevent the phone maker from enforcing any German court order…”

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Read the accompanying article about Einhorn’s CC here.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – Hundreds of activists across the U.S. joined the worldwide May Day protests on Tuesday, with Occupy Wall Street members in several cities leading demonstrations and in some cases clashing with police.

In Oakland, Calif., stinging gas sent protesters fleeing a downtown intersection where they were demonstrating. It was unclear whether police fired the gas, but officers took four people into custody.

Black-clad protesters in Seattle used sticks to small downtown windows and ran through the streets disrupting traffic.

In New York, police in riot gear lined the front of a Bank of America, facing several dozen Occupy activists marching behind barricades. “Bank of America. Bad for America!” they chanted. About 50 demonstrators in Chicago rallied outside another of the bank’s branches.

Read the rest here:

Facebook will begin marketing its highly-anticipated initial public offering as early as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, if no last-minute red flags from the Securities and Exchange Commission are raised.

Under the planned schedule, Facebook shares could begin trading as early as May 16 or May 17, according to these people.

The timing could come down to the wire – with an official prospectus not being made publicly available to prospective investors until as late as Monday morning, these people added.

Read the rest here:

In a brazen criminal scheme to defraud taxpayers, one of the highest-ranking officials in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to helping embezzle more than $500,000 from the federal government.

Over three years, James Woosley and at least five other ICE employees scammed the agency by fabricating expenses for trips that were never taken and for hotel, rental car and restaurant expenses that did not exist, according to court records.

His son, also named James Woosley, and live-in girlfriend, Lateisha Rollerson — both ICE employees — allegedly ran the scam out of the elder Woosley’s two Virginia homes.

Here’s how it worked, according to court records:

Read the rest here:

“Coca-Cola has been ordered to temporarily halt production at a bottling plant in northern China, after media reports of chlorine in its products, according to a government statement.

Shanxi province ordered an investigation after reports that a batch of drinks contained water with chlorine, the province’s quality bureau said in a statement at the weekend…”

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FINRA Sanctions Four Firms $9.1 Million for Sales of Leveraged and Inverse Exchange-Traded Funds

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2012-80

Washington, D.C., April 30, 2012 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a mother and daughter along with their attorney in a scheme to unlawfully acquire and sell billions of shares of penny stock in unregistered transactions.

The SEC alleges that Christel S. Scucci and her mother Karen S. Beach, who live in Florida, used alter ego companies (Protégé Enterprises LLC and Capital Edge Enterprises LLC) to make more than $1.5 million from selling approximately 3.3 billion shares of purportedly unrestricted stock that they acquired in so-called debt conversion “wrap around” transactions. They were able to sell most of this stock only because Florida-based attorney Cameron H. Linton issued baseless legal opinions for them stating that the stock could be issued without restrictive legends and that their re-sales were exempt from the registration requirements of the federal securities laws.

“This case shines a spotlight on unlawful profiting from transactions designed to circumvent the registration requirements of the federal securities laws,” said Stephen L. Cohen, an Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “This should alert transfer agents, securities attorneys and other industry gatekeepers to closely scrutinize efforts to lift restrictive legends by ‘tacking’ onto delinquent debt through wrap around agreements.”

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Orlando, Fla., this scheme involving the illegal use of wrap around agreements lasted from January 2010 to October 2011. Under the wrap around agreements, affiliates or others purportedly owed money by certain microcap issuers for more than one year assigned from the issuers to Protégé or Capital Edge the right to collect the debts. The wrap around agreements also purported to amend the initial debt agreements thereby allowing Protégé and Capital Edge to convert the money owed to them by the issuers into shares of the issuers’ common stock at a deep discount (usually 50 percent) to the prevailing market price. Protégé and Capital Edge almost always elected to receive stock from the issuers shortly after execution of the wrap around agreements. None of the transactions were registered with the SEC.

The SEC alleges that Protégé and Capital Edge paid Linton to write attorney opinion letters for them stating that their sales of the stock acquired under these wrap around agreements lawfully could be issued to them without a restrictive legend and immediately sold to the public. Protégé and Capital Edge regularly sold the stock into the public market, often for large profits, merely days or weeks after they acquired the shares through the wrap around conversions.

According to the SEC’s complaint, Linton’s legal opinion letters lacked any basis. The premise of Linton’s opinion letters was that – through the wrap around agreements and debt conversion – Protégé and Capital Edge were able to “tack” the period that had elapsed from the initiation of the original debt at least one year earlier to claim a registration exemption relying on Securities Act Rule 144(d)(3)(ii). When Linton wrote the opinion letters, he lacked an understanding of the applicable legal principles and failed to substantiate the factual predicate for his opinions. Furthermore, in mid-2010, Linton became aware of an injunction issued in a separate SEC enforcement action (SEC v. K&L International Enterprises) in which two of his letters were used in a similar scheme. Without Linton’s opinion letters, Protégé and Capital Edge couldn’t have acquired most of the stock without a restrictive legend and quickly turn around and sell it publicly.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Protégé, Capital Edge, Scucci and Beach violated Section 5 of the Securities Act. The complaint further alleges that Linton violated, or aided and abetted the violation of, Section 5 of the Securities Act. The SEC seeks disgorgement, penalties, injunctions, and penny stock bars against the defendants.

The SEC’s case was investigated by Daniel Rubenstein and Adam Eisner under the supervision of C. Joshua Felker, an Assistant Director in the Division of Enforcement. Kenneth Guido will lead the SEC’s litigation.

# # #

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2012/2012-80.htm

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England serves as an example of the failures of austerity during a slow economic period. Now that elections are taking place the people are taking to the streets in protest of budget tightening.

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via NYDAILYNEWS.com

CNBC ‘freaking out’ over decline in ratings for Andrew Ross Sorkin and Maria Bartiromo

‘Their biggest attractions have become their biggest losers,’ says industry insider

Andrew Ross Sorkin is apparently not too big to tank.

The same goes for “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo.

CNBC insiders tell us executives at the cable business channel are “freaking out” because viewership levels are down essentially across-the-board, particularly with its marquee shows, “Squawk Box” and “Closing Bell.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/cnbc-freaking-decline-ratings-andrew-ross-sorkin-maria-bartiromo-article-1.1068973#ixzz1tU59xYiX

Government has become its own worst enemy when it comes to the economy, with public spending putting a damper on growth that otherwise continues at a steady if unspectacular pace.

 

Read the rest here, from CNBC’s Jeff Cox.

In cities of similar sizes, the percentage of crimes associated with guns may be shockingly disproportionate. Read about the Police Chiefs who have come together to solve the problem, here.

Things are getting bad enough in the Land of Lincoln that even Rahm is calling out his fellow Democrats for their failure to control spending:

Unless Illinois enacts reform quickly, he said, the costs of these programs will force taxes so high that, “You won’t recruit a business, you won’t recruit a family to live here.”

…

“Companies don’t want to buy shares in a phenomenal tax burden that will unfold over the decades,” the Chicago Tribune observed after Mr. Emanuel issued his warning on April 4. And neither will citizens.

 

Read the rest here.

“I’m not showing anything, you know, in the train because I really don’t feel safe,” Figueroa said.

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