Economics

The Consumerist | We've written some incredibly sad stories about homeowners trapped in the mortgage meltdown maze, and this one certainly ranks up there among the most depressing. Not just because a man is dead, but because it could have all been prevented more than three years ago.

LA Times | So much for the idea of West is best. In an annual survey, executives ranked California as the worst place to do business for the eighth year in a row.  Chief Executive magazine has only been conducting its survey for eight years. Texas has been top-ranked every year.

Business World | Spanx is word that most women are familiar with. It's a type of shapewear that helps to smooth away lumps and bumps and also leaves no trace of a panty line.  The creator of this product, Sara Blakely has been inducted to this year's Forbes billionaires list, which was released yesterday.

Reuters | The Vatican has for the first time appeared on the State Department's list of money-laundering centers but the tiny city-state is not rated as a high-risk country.  The 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report was made public on Wednesday and Washington's list of 190 countries classifies them in three categories: of primary concern, of concern and monitored.

Business Insider | At least Europe is no longer in denial about the effects of austerity in Greece, and the ability for the country to improve its economic situation via drastic cuts.  Peter Spiegel at FT has obtained a confidential 10-page memo distributed to senior officials in Europe over the last week, which lays out the truth:

NEWS.com.AU | Just days after sacking 1000 workers and raising interest rates, ANZ chief executive Mike Smith is to take 200 lucky staff on a five-day butler-serviced cruise on the "world's best" luxury liner.  At a cost of $1.75 million, the workers, rewarded as part of the bank's CEO recognition program, will sail away on the Silver Shadow to Malaysia's Langkawi Islands on March 6.

Courthouse News Service | Wells Fargo Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase charge homebuyers who go into default inflated fees and interest rates, customers say in a federal RICO class action.  Lead plaintiff Latara Bias claims the defendants, including Chase Home Finance, service almost 20 million mortgage loans, approximately 25 percent of the home loans made in the United States.

Business Insider | The Italian daily l'Unita was the first to report that the priests were being investigated for laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It's the latest in a series of investigations into Vatican finances dating back to 2010. In December of that year, Pope Benedict XVI decreed an updated anti-money laundering law for Vatican finances.

The Independent | According to the High Court, Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the spheres of finance, business and politics, is indeed "puppet master" to the Baron of Hartlepool and Foy.

Business Insider | In the preview, he does one of the many things he does best: Explaining basic investing concepts and history in a way that no one else can.  In the first section of the article, for example, Buffett explains why most investors' concepts of "risk" and "safety" are completely bass-ackwards.

CNN | Warren Buffett: Why Stocks Beat Gold And Bonds --- The Oracle of Omaha lays out some clear investment advice. "Gold has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. If you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce at its end"

TIME | It took over a year for lawmakers and state AGs to agree to the terms of the $26 billion foreclosure settlement announced this week, and it could take up to another three years for eligible homeowners to see a share of that money. But the deal does mean that, for the first time, many distressed homeowners can take steps toward getting some tangible relief.

Wall Street Journal | Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. said salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California's Silicon Valley rose 5.2% to an average $104,195 last year, outstripping the average 2% increase, to $81,327, in tech-workers' salaries nationwide. It was the first time since Dice began the salary survey in 2001 that the wage barometer broke the $100,000 barrier, said Tom Silver, a Dice senior vice president.

Wall Street Journal | As banks prepare to report fourth-quarter results and make final bonus decisions for 2011, total compensation is likely to be the lowest since 2008, when the financial crisis destroyed some firms and left many survivors on government life support.

Al Jazeera | A smattering of states, blue and red alike, have taken tentative steps to reduce their prison populations. Yet overall, the incarceration rate remains flat even as crime levels decrease and budget deficits grow. And on the federal level, the numbers of prisoners just keep growing; Congress, meanwhile, can't even manage to pass a bill to study criminal justice reforms, much less make them.

Financial Times | When 1,200 partners of McKinsey&Company – the elite of global consulting – arrived at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center, outside Washington DC, early on the morning of March 15 this year, they found themselves where they least wanted to be: at the centre of a media firestorm.

The Diplomat | 40% of Chinese are unhappy and 60% of China’s rich are emigrating or considering doing so. While each group has its reasons – farmers resent land seizures, city dwellers are victims of government abuse – it translates to a hotbed of popular discontent that could shatter China’s economic stability.

The Guardian | If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy.

Mother Jones | The Jets just won their game and I'm in a good mood. So I guess it's time to head over to the ol' computer and see what's up in the world today. I wonder what the Washington Post has for us? Just one short click and — oh crap...

Wall Street Journal |The move is a dramatic retreat following decisions by several rivals in recent days to drop customer tests of the new fees. SunTrust Banks Inc. and Regions Financial Corp. also said Monday that they will stop charging customers for debit-card transactions.

LA Times | Private equity firms are investing in chains of used-car lots, and auto loans are being packaged into securities much like subprime mortgages. They're attracted by the industry's average profit of 38% for each car sold

Think Progress | Police across the country have been violently cracking down on the Occupy protesters, leading to the serious head injury of Iraq veteran Scott Olsen. As Salon Justin Elliot notes today, New York City police are trying a different tactic to “undermine the credibility of Occupy Wall Street.”

Boing Boing | On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes.

Anti-war.com | Since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, the New York Federal Reserve has been shipping tens of billions of dollars to the government and central bank of Iraq, ostensibly for reconstruction and resumption of governmental services after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Alternet | What are the Occupy Wall Street protesters angry about? The same things we’re all angry about. The only difference is the protestors turned their anger into public action. Occupy Wall Street lit the embers and the sparks are flying. Whether it turns into a genuine populist prairie fire depends on all of us. 

Crooks and Liars | And this is why we've been screaming about regulating derivatives! I kind of think that the Occupy movement is going to have something to say about this corporate sleight of hand that came to light earlier this week. Do they really think we're going to look the other way and let them stick us with a $74 trillion bill -- just to let good old "too big to fail" Bank of America off the hook?

Reuters | A New Jersey man sued Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo on Wednesday on behalf of ATM users, accusing the banks of colluding to fix the fees they charge customers to withdraw money.

Daily Bail | This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning.  Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

Wall Street Journal | Wall Street's total price tag on settlements with U.S. securities regulators for allegedly misleading investors about mortgage bonds churned out ahead of the financial crisis surged past $1 billion with a deal by Citigroup Inc. to pay $285 million.

Business Insider | Maryland sold $595 million in new debt on February 24 taking advantage of the new Build American Bond provision in the U.S. stimulus bill and their solid credit rating, however, in contrast, California is planning on a bond issuance of $5 billion in March.

Business Insider | There are cities in Florida where foreclosures are still rising, blotting out any chance of recovery in home prices. The mayor of Detroit plans to demolish a quarter of the city to get a handle on his real estate problem. Homeless communities are growing on the outskirts of Sacramento.

Washington Post | The grim prospect of a transit agency already burdened with a system that has deteriorated after decades of deferred maintenance and yet will face significant new demand was served up Friday as a microcosm of the nation’s dilemma.

Credit Union Times | Credit unions across the land are “seizing this marketing opportunity”, as CUNA officials put it Tuesday, to take advantage of the favorable industry media coverage following the announcement of Bank of America’s $5 monthly debit fee.

The Local | The German state of North-Rhine Westphalia bought for about €3 million a CD-ROM some months ago containing information on the bank accounts held by Germans in Luxembourg, said the newspaper.

The Gaurdian | Britain's tax authorities have given Goldman Sachs an unusual and generous Christmas present, leaked documents reveal. In a secret London meeting last December with the head of Revenue, the wealthy Wall Street banking firm was forgiven £10m interest on a failed tax avoidance scheme.

Bloomberg | Mark D. Schwartz, a Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based lawyer and former head of municipal bonds for Prudential Financial Inc.’s mid-Atlantic region, said he filed the documents by fax to a federal bankruptcy court last night. The filing couldn’t be confirmed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Harrisburg.

Reuters | With large multinational companies today pressing Congress for another tax holiday, the Institute for Policy Studies reported that the last one did not fulfill its rosy promises for hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers.

MSNBC | The small group of assembled activists applaud its look. “I love the kitschiness of it. It’s so ‘Laura Ashley’ English — perfect for a protest,” one says, namechecking the British brand known for its prim-and-proper fashions.

Video | 'They would not let me get past that barricade, where those three guys are. I talked to the liutenant of the St. Louis Police Department - and he said they [customers?] don't have a legal right - but he was going to try to work out something, a symbolic gesture where eight people to pull out their money, I being one of them.'

Alternet | As the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by hundreds of protesters enters its third week — and as protests spread to other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — demonstrators have endorsed a new slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan refers to an economic struggle between 99 percent of Americans and the richest 1 percent of Americans, who are increasingly accumulating a greater share of the national wealth to the detriment of the middle class.

PC Mag | Anonymous declared "war" on the New York Stock Exchange this weekend and vowed to "erase" the NYSE from the Internet on Oct. 10 as the Occupy Wall Street protest entered its third week in New York City after a weekend that saw hundreds of protesters arrested during a planned march across the Brooklyn Bridge.

ABC News | Bank of America will start charging debit-card users $5 a month to pay for purchases. The move comes as the cards increasingly replace cash and as banks look for ways to offset the loss of revenue from a new rule that will limit how much they can collect from merchants.

End of the American Dream | Millions upon millions of young Americans have completely lost faith in the U.S. economy and are mad as hell that their economic futures have been destroyed.  The recent economic downturn has hit those under the age of 30 the hardest.  Today, there are hordes of young people that should be entering their most productive years that are sitting home with nothing to do.  Many of them have worked incredibly hard throughout high school and college. 

The Guardian | The EU has been warned that it must plan for the fallout of what it believes is Greece's inevitable default.  European Union governments will spend the next six weeks building a financial firewall to protect their fragile banking systems against what is now seen as an inevitable Greek default.

Think Progress | Today, over a thousand demonstrators began protests as a part of a campaign they are calling “Occupy Wall Street.” The protesters intend to engage in long-term civil disobedience to draw attention to Wall Street’s misdeeds and call for structural economic reforms. RT America covered the start of the campaign. Watch it:

Business Insider | Bank of America plans to cut 30,000 jobs as it re-focuses its business on international and corporate lending, it said in a company statement.  There's been word that the jobs will be cut in the U.S., but there is not confirmation of that today. The announcement simply refers to "layoffs," with no mention of whether it's globally or not.

Daily Mail | A 70-year-old woman and her terminally ill husband face losing their home because she paid her mortgage a week early.  Sharon Bullington, of New Port Richey, Florida, says that Bank of America has filed to foreclose on her and husband, James, 78.  Mrs Bullington said: 'It's like death to me. My husband is bedridden. It's almost more than I can bear.'

BBC | A US senator is demanding answers to an allegation that America's top financial regulator has destroyed thousands of preliminary investigation records.  Senator Charles Grassley has written to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to query the claims by an internal whistleblower.

Think Progress |  Has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) turned the House Oversight Committee into a bank lobbying firm with the power to subpoena and pressure government regulators? ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then quietly went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.

Wall Street Journal | In an extreme example of the frustration felt by many bankers as regulators toughen their oversight of the nation's financial institutions, Main Street's chairman, Thomas Depping, is expected to announce Wednesday that the 27-year-old bank will surrender its banking charter and sell its four branches to a nearby bank.