Personal and Business Loans

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Auditing firm Deloitte & Touche was criticized by the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on Monday for lack of quality control in audits. The industry overseer charged the firm had a culture of placing too much faith in the officials of companies it audits.

In a report, the board chided Deloitte for failure to challenge management representation in several areas. It also cited Deloitte auditors’ acceptance of management assertion that accounting was proper and consistent with accounting rules without verification.

The board wrote the report in 2008 based on audits it made of Deloitte in 2007. However, rules stipulate that the findings be kept confidential for a year and could only be released if the company fails to make sufficient progress in correcting its deficiencies.

One of the companies that Deloitte audited was involved in mortgage investments. The board observed that Deloitte failed to properly assess the value of mortgage-backed securities, accounting for delinquent loans and treatment of swaps, which are financial instruments that are a form of derivative.

The board was created by the Sarbanes-Oxley law in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom failures. It is the first time that the board released a report on a major company that audits firms listed on the stock markets. Deloitte is one of the big four firms that audit a majority of big companies in the U.S.

Deloitte Chief Executive Joe Echevarria said that the company is committed to the highest standard of audit quality. He expressed confidence in Deloitte auditors but agreed there are areas in which it can improve.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Federal Reserve reduced its forecast for the U.S. economy for 2011 and 2012 on Wednesday. For this year, the Fed estimates that the country’s economy would expand from 2.7 to 2.9 percent only.

It is lower than the U.S. central bank’s April forecast of a 3.1 to 3.3 percent rise in gross domestic product.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke attributed the lower outlook for the American economy to the impact of higher prices on consumer spending, weakness in the financial sector and the ongoing decline of the housing market.

But Bernanke added there is no precise explanation for the persistence of slower pace of growth, and admitted some of the head winds that hit the economy apparently are stronger or more persistent than officials thought.

Bernanke also warned that unemployment rate would continue to remain high until the end of 2011.

The Fed, in effect, took back its view that the economic slowdown was only temporary. However, despite the lower economic forecasts, the Fed said it will end by June 30, as scheduled, a program of purchasing large amounts of Treasury bonds and did not indicate if it will pursue new action.

Because of the weaker outlook, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee, at its 22nd meeting, voted unanimously to keep key lending rates between 0 to 0.25 percent. The rate has been at that level since December 2008 in a bid to boost the country’s GDP.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The hacker group Anonymous published internal emails between Bank of America staff that indicated improper lending procedures. The emails were leaked by a former BofA employee.

According to the emails, an employee of Balboa Insurance – a BofA subsidiary – discussed the removal of details from loan records to hide improper home foreclosures from U.S. authorities.

The move involved the removal of document tracking numbers from about 100 properties loaned by mortgage lender GMAC.

The employee warned in an email that the removal of tracking numbers may raise red flags by auditors.

A Bank of America spokesman said the emails were filched by a former Balboa staff, but maintained it is not related to home repossessions.

BofA purchased Balboa Insurance in 2008 when it bought Countrywide Financial.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The Federal Reserve has revised its economic forecast for the U.S. to reflect brighter growth prospects this year. From their November outlook of 3 to 3.6 percent growth rate, policy makers have raised the new forecast to 3.4 up to 3.9 percent growth in output and services.

But while the country’s gross domestic product is expected to move forward at a faster pace, the Fed on Wednesday kept its prediction at a 8.8 to 9 percent unemployment rate for 2011. Policy makers explained that their most optimistic GDP growth forecast, if fulfilled, would not be sufficient to cut the jobless rate by the end of 2012.

However, the economic expansion would still be the fastest yearly growth since 2004 when a 3.6 percent GDP growth was registered.

The optimism spread to Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average went up 61.53 points or 0.5 percent and the S&P 500 stock index expanded 0.6 percent.

According to the minutes of the Fed’s Jan. 25 meeting which were released Wednesday, the policy makers also backed the purchase of $600 billion in Treasury bonds to boost further the American economy. The program, launched in November and scheduled to end in June, has been criticized by some Republicans for running the risk of stoking inflation.

It would be the second round of the quantitative easing strategy aimed at bringing down long-term interest rates to ease credit and encourage growth. However, rates actually rose since the Fed started the initiative.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – More teeth have been added to the ongoing global efforts to curb excessive executive compensation and bonuses. Amid plans by European Union regulators to curb bankers’ bonuses, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Tuesday new rules that grant stockholders a say on company officials’ salaries, bonuses and retirement packages.

On a 3-2 vote, SEC commissioners allowed shareholders of publicly traded firms to vote at least once a year on executive compensation. However, the vote is non-binding.

Republican commissioners Kathleen Casey and Troy Paredes cast the dissenting votes on the ground that the changes would be too costly for smaller firms.

The new rules, however, won’t be in effect until 2013. It will apply only to companies where stockholders hold less than $75 million of shares. SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro said the two-year deferral is sufficient time to ensure the new rules would not unduly burden smaller companies.

The new rules are a result of the Dodd-Frank Act, the regulatory overhaul enacted in July as a response to the 2008 credit crisis. Fat paychecks and compensation packages were blamed for the risky trading that lead to the collapse of major American financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers Holdings and Bear Stearns.

Law experts said that although the shareholders’ vote is non-binding, rejection by investors of executive pay would be big news and be embarrassing to a company’s board, which could prompt the directors to respond to stockholders’ opinion.

The SEC vote came a week after Wall Street paid millions of bankers their 2010 bonuses, even as the rest of the nation copes with the harder times caused by the global financial crisis.

View full post on Labor Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. president’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is struggling in a critical condition at George Washington University hospital after admission on Friday morning.

“This morning, doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. He is in critical condition and has been joined by his family,” said PJ Crowley, the State Department spokesman said in a statement on Saturday.

Earlier on Friday, at the regular briefing, Crowley refused to elaborate on Holbrooke;s condition, saying, “All I can tell you is that the ambassador is at the hospital at the present time, and beyond that I will — we will let you know, as we find out more.”

Crowley also refused to confirm media reports that Ambassador Holbrooke collapsed at Secretary Hillary Clinton’s office, saying on Friday, “It happened on the seventh floor,”

View full post on Politics Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment compensation dropped to 421,000 for the week ending Dec. 4, a decrease of 17,000 claims from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Not all jobless workers are insured by the unemployment compensation program. The advance seasonally adjusted rate of insured unemployed workers was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, which was a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.4 percent, the DOL said in a statement.

The DOL also released the figures for the week ending Nov. 27 for the advance number of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, which was 4,086,000. That was a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week’s revised number of 4,277,000 insured unemployed.

Advance unadjusted figures for the week ending Nov. 27 showed the percentage of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment compensation was 3.3 percent. However, the unemployment rate during that week was 9.6 percent.

Figures for the number of unemployed Americans claiming benefits under all unemployment compensation programs was from a week earlier, or the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938.

Extended unemployment compensation benefits, for jobless Americans who are covered by that insurance program, were available in 35 states and the District of Columbia for the week ending Nov. 20.

Those states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

View full post on Labor Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – In an attempt to prevent President Barack Obama’s plan to bring terror suspects to the United States for trial, the House voted 212-206 on Tuesday to curb the government’s expenses in the fiscal year. The measure targeted funds aimed at transferring inmates from a military holding facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to prisons in the U.S.

The move hurts Obama’s efforts to close the controversial detention camp by next year or his attempts to transfer 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in America.

“None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the U.S., its territories, or possessions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee held at Guantanamo Bay as of June 24, 2009,” the bill explains.

The bill will be presented to the Senate for approval and would be sent to Obama to sign into law.

Upon assuming power in 2008, Obama had pledged to close down the notorious facility within a year but failed due to unyielding opposition from the U.S. Congress.

Currently, the prison, which is in Cuba’s Guantanamo naval base, holds nearly 170 detainees, including 58, who have been put into indefinite detention without trial.

View full post on Politics Stories

East Jerusalem, Palestinian Territory (TML) – The Palestinian Authority’s newly formed anti-corruption commission won’t hesitate to investigate ministers that have fled the country or are serving in office and remain politically powerful, the commission’s chief has vowed.

Rafiq Natshe, head of the Palestinian Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC), said he has received 70 files from the attorney-general for investigation, including complaints of fraud, embezzlement and bribery. He said intensive investigations would begin next week, stressing that officials may even be questioned in Palestinian embassies abroad. PACC may use Interpol to pursue suspects aboard, he said.

“The president has transferred all corruption cases to us,” Natshe told the Ma’an radio station. “We have investigated, and continue to investigate, former and current ministers.”

Natshe has his work cut out for him. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index of 2005, which measures perceived malfeasance among officials and politicians, ranked the PA 108th out of 159 countries, tied with Libya. It wasn’t included in subsequent indexes for lack of sufficient data.

Since then, however, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a former International Monetary Fund official, has sought to clean up government and build transparent political structures. But the anti-corruption drive will need the strong backing of Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president and Fayyad’s boss.

“Legally, there’s no problem to investigate ministers, both in the country and abroad,” Bilal Al-Barghouthi, legal adviser for Aman, the Palestinian chapter of Transparency International, told The Media Line. “A presidential decree can annul the legal immunity these ministers enjoy.”

Observers, including Sameeh Hammoudeh, a political scientist at Bir-Zeit University, regard the commission, as well as a newly formed special court to try corruption cases, more as a way of assuaging voters who regularly point to official corruption as one of their biggest concerns.

“This court is like a rescue boat for President Abbas,” Hammoudeh told The Media Line. “Currently, with the PA demonstrating zero accomplishments on the peace track with Israel, Abbas needs to bolster his legitimacy in his party Fatah and on the Palestinian street. This step will be very useful to him.”

Popular discontent with corrupt officials is said to have contributed to Hamas’ electoral victory in the January 2006 legislative elections. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research last March showed about 68% of all Palestinians believe Abbas’ government suffers from corruption and almost half expected it to get worse in the future.

Efforts by the United States to coax Israel into extending a settlement freeze and bring the Palestinians back to peace talks failed this week. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to unveil new ideas in a speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington Friday.

In the meantime, the PA has acted unilaterally to gain recognition as a state, with Argentina and Uruguay signing on to the initiative Monday.

Palestinian Planning Minister ‘Ali Jarbawi, who met Tuesday with Cobus de Swardt, managing director of Transparency International to discuss corruption issues, told the Ma’an news agency that fighting corruption was imperative in “gaining moral international support for liberation, ending occupation, and state-building.”

PA officials are routinely suspected of corruption, but little has been done about it so far. In 2006, Palestinian Prosecutor-General Ahmad Al-Mughni described a wide investigation of public officials involving dozens of suspects and hundreds billions of dollars in stolen public funds. A year later, the cabinet approved a law for combating money laundering as well as bribery, fraud, kidnapping and embezzlement.

“People on the street have always claimed that the government only talks about fighting corruption, but doesn’t follow through. Now, when decisions will be implemented, the battle against corruption in the PA will receive credibility,” Fares Saba’aneh, a spokesman for the newly established anti-corruption court, told The Media Line.

Barghouthi said a serving Palestinian cabinet minister, who he declined to name, was currently under investigation on corruption charges. Saba’aneh said he had no information about any ministers under investigation, explaining that the Anti-Corruption Commission, which functions as a prosecutor in corruption cases before they are transferred to the courts, carries out its investigations secretly.

Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East expert at Chatham House in London, said he doubted the ability of the Palestinian legal system to try and indict ministers. He told The Media Line that rumors of political corruption were often used in the Middle East as political ammunition.

“It’s always difficult to distinguish between a legal process and political targeting of individuals,” he said. “Middle Eastern Security agencies, including Israel’s, often try to frame politicians using one of two charges: sex or corruption, which are very sensitive.”

View full post on Politics Stories

Washington – This week’s tax-cut compromise would contribute almost $1 trillion to the nation’s federal budget deficit over the next two years and add sharply to the mounting national debt, yet the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and mainstream economists cheered it.

View full post on All Stories