Archive for December, 2009:
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Yours truly GordonWebbo today wants you to read the following article, courtesy of this site:
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Entrepreneur Ideas - An Unexpected Source
Yours truly GordonWebbo today wants you to read the following article, courtesy of Top-Web-Entrepeneurs-Plan-It.com:
Entrepreneur ideas are easier to come by than you think. Especially the most viable ones! Here is why and how.
Dan Solin: FINRA: A Wily Fox Guarding Your Nest Egg
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
FINRA is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. It’s supposed to be an independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. In reality, it is a shill for the securities industry. Its unique authority prevents effective regulation of an industry that many believe has simply run amok.
In exchange for protecting its securities industry members, FINRA “regulators” are extremely well compensated.
According to the InvestmentNews, thirteen current or former employees made more than $1 million in 2008. Its former CEO, Michael D. Jones, pocketed severance and related benefits of $4.3 million. The current SEC Chairman, Mary Schapiro, was paid $3.3 million as FINRA’s chief executive. She also walked away with $7.2 million of accrued benefits.
Ms. Schapiro does not like to slum it. She received $20,000 a year for “club memberships”, $20,000 for “personal financial and tax counseling” (unlike many investors whose assets were plundered by FINRA “regulated” brokers, Ms. Schapiro had a huge nest egg to look after) and a car and driver.
FINRA has engaged in an aggressive advertising campaign, geared to persuading skeptical investors that it’s really on their side. That’s a tough sell. Its advertising agency, Doremus & Co was paid $5.5 million to make this dubious case.
FINRA’s actions belie its pro-consumer PR efforts.
The Obama administration — to its great credit — has proposed that Congress authorize the SEC to restrict or prohibit mandatory arbitration agreements in consumer contracts. FINRA has long championed these clauses, which require investors to resolve all disputes with their brokers in arbitration proceedings run by — you guessed it — FINRA! Less than 50% of investors in these proceedings prevail and those who do receive a small fraction of their claimed damages. It’s no wonder a comprehensive study found most participants felt the proceedings were rigged against them.
The Obama proposal has the support of many consumer groups, including the Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of American, Public Citizen, National Consumer Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, American Association for Justice, National Employment Lawyers Association, and National Association of Consumer Advocates.
The North American Securities Administrators Association announced its support, noting that FINRA’s system is “inherently unfair to investors.”
FINRA could eliminate its biased system by simply making a request to the SEC for a rule that would do so. Instead, it has crafted a slickly worded position which makes it appear that it’s supporting this proposal, while it continues its efforts to oppose it.
According to its press representative, Brendan D. Intindola, FINRA “does not object to the Administration’s proposal.” However, when pressed, Mr. Intindola advised me that FINRA does not support making mandatory arbitration optional or abolishing it altogether. It simply believes that Congress or the SEC should make this determination. That, of course, is not the issue.
Nothing illustrates FINRA’s anti-investor bias more starkly than its lack of candor on this issue.
Don’t believe for a moment that this wily fox is really guarding your nest egg.
Dan Solin is the author of The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read.
The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein. Furthermore, the information on this blog should not be construed as an offer of advisory services. Please note that the author does not recommend specific securities nor is he responsible for comments made by persons posting on this blog.
US Slaps China With Another Trade Penalty
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
The U.S. Commerce Department said on Tuesday it has set preliminary anti-dumping duties of up to 145.18 percent on steel grating imported from China to offset unfairly low prices.
Christine Dougherty: Taco Bell’s New Spokesperson Claims She Lost 54 Pounds Eating Fast Food (PHOTOS)
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
Has Taco Bell found their own Jared? Christine Dougherty, a new spokesperson for the company, says she lost 54 pounds in two years by eating “Fresco” menu items at Taco Bell instead of her normal fast food choices. Of course if you read the fine print in the commercial it also says Christine was limited to 1,250 calories a day, only 50 calories above what most doctors will tell you is the minimum amount a woman should eat daily.
Taco Bell shields itself repeatedly in their new ads and Website by saying “These results aren’t typical,” these are “not low calorie foods,” and the “Drive-Thru Diet® menu is not a weight-loss program” but it is after all called the “Drive-Thru Diet” so the intent is clear: Taco Bell is trying to rebrand itself as a healthy alternative. Going back to the fine print we see that the Fresco Menu “can help with calorie reductions of 20 to 100 per item compared to corresponding products on our regular menu.” 20 calories off a fast food meal doesn’t seem like much help, but each menu item is below 350 calories–a far cry from their 1,000 calorie “Volcano Nachos.”
Jared Fogle, the Subway weight-loss spokesman who helped make the company millions, was recently caught looking less than skinny. This both makes room for Christine and casts doubt on these types of diets.
Entrepreneur Success Story Of Claude Jollet
Yours truly GordonWebbo today wants you to read the following article, courtesy of Top-Web-Entrepeneurs-Plan-It.com:
Anyone telling you their entrepreneur success story should support it with verifiable facts. Here is my story and the facts to prove it.
Raymond J. Learsy: Taxing Wall Street’s Bonuses Should Focus On CLAWBACKS
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
The New York Times in its editorial “Taming the Fat Cats” 12.20.09 called on President Obama to impose Britain’s special 50% tax on all bank bonuses over $40,00 this year. Concurrently Senator Charles Schumer (Dem.N.Y.) was voicing his outrage that AIG executives have not returned the major portion of the $45 million they agreed to return by the end of the year in spite of the $183 billions they received from taxpayers in order to keep their company afloat.
In the meanwhile Goldman Sachs has set aside a bonus pool of $23.000,000,000 for 2009. This after receiving billions in Tarp funds (which it has since paid back to the government, much in the manner of a rescued drowning man returning a life preserver to the ships crew after it had served its purpose), and after having been given a free pass to change its corporate moniker from ‘Investment Bank” to ‘Bank Holding Company’ with all its attendant access to Federal programs and to near costless money, and after having been showered with ‘give away’ billions of government counterparty funding permitting Goldman to be made whole on credit derivative bets which otherwise would have been worth next to nothing. As pointed out in the NYTimes’ editorial this catalog of excess is the result of “the way America’s voracious bankers leveraged hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailouts to line their pockets with multibillion-dollar bonuses while American businesses starve for credit.” Not to speak of the millions unemployed and the millions who have lost or will lose their homes.
The rage is widespread and to the financial community’s great relief, it is grossly misdirected. Focusing on bonuses to come has taken the public’s, the media’s, Congresses’ and the President’s eye off the ball. To the bankers the issue of primary concern is the spectre of ‘clawbacks’ of the hundreds of billions of bonuses and salaries paid out these past years against illusionary profits trading value destroying derivatives, opaque market instruments, accounting practices bordering on the spurious, off the book entities, vastly inflated balance sheets altogether resulting in bonuses that were largely based on erroneous information, erroneous calculations, if not outright fraud. Being taxed on or reducing this years bonuses is but an irritant if the hundred’s of billions paid out over the past few years can be held free and clear by their recepients in the financial world. To be kept in spite of bringing the economy to the brink of catastrophe through “their foolhardy bets that tipped the world into the worst economic crisis since the great depression.”
Had these banks/financial institutions gone bankrupt, as indeed many technically would have been without the government’s bailouts, the trustee in bankruptcy would have deemed the bonuses paid out as “fraudulent transfers” and would have forced their repayment to the estate in bankruptcy, namely the myriadf banks and financial institutions that received government help both directly and indirectly. Certainly given the billions it is costing the public purse it is incongruous in the extreme that those who caused the disaster should retain the spoils of their irresponsibility and mismanagement.
Back in March Senator Schumer minced no words. In a letter dated March 17, 2009 to then AIG Chairman Edward Liddy:
“We write today to express our outrage at American International Group’s recently revealed multi-million dollar bonus payments. In these perilous economic times, it is unconscionable for the American taxpayer to find out that the very employees responsible for running the company into the ground have now received “performance based” awards that are hundreds of time as large as average American’s yearly salary. If these contracts are not renegotiated immediately, we will take action to make American taxpayers whole by recouping all of the bonuses that AIG has paid out to its financial products unit, which, by all accounts, is primarily responsible for the near-failure of the company and the devastating impact on the global financial markets.”
Senator Schumer was on the right track, but why limit the focus to AIG? The same could be said for just about all of the entities that received assistance from the Fed and Treasury over the past 16 months. It has crippled the national budget, and the economy both here and throughout the world. In the spirit of Senator Schumer’s admonition it is past time to right a great wrong perpetrated on the American taxpayer and to demand the recapture of all bonuses derived from trading in such financial instruments as CDS’ and CDO’s or derivatives per se, designating the bonuses paid out from the illusionary ‘profits’ in trading these financial products as ‘fraudulent transfers’.It is time for Congress to act. As the New York Times pointed out in its editorial that the ‘constitutional ban of bills aimed to punish a specific group- so called bills of attainder- is unlikely to apply because a tax would not be aimed to punish named people but an economic class.”
Congress should now forcefully take the matter in hand and act to remedy one of the great con games ever visited on the American public. Forceful action on this issue would restore in large measure the nation’s confidence in its financial markets and their governance, restoring a level of confidence that has been shaken as never before.
AP: Ponzi Busts Nearly Quadrupled In 2009
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
(AP — CURT ANDERSON) - It was a rough year for Ponzi schemes. In 2009, the recession unraveled nearly four times as many of the investment scams as fell apart in 2008, with “Ponzi” becoming a buzzword again thanks to the collapse of Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion plot.
Tens of thousands of investors, some of them losing their life’s savings, watched more than $16.5 billion disappear like smoke in 2009, according to an Associated Press analysis of scams in all 50 states.
While the dollar figure was lower than in 2008, that’s only because Madoff — who pleaded guilty earlier this year and is serving a 150-year prison sentence — was arrested in December 2008 and didn’t count toward this year’s total.
In all, more than 150 Ponzi schemes collapsed in 2009, compared to about 40 in 2008, according to the AP’s examination of criminal cases at all U.S. attorneys’ offices and the FBI, as well as criminal and civil actions taken by state prosecutors and regulators at both the federal and state levels.
The 2009 scams ranged in size from a few hundred thousand dollars to the $7 billion bogus international banking empire authorities say jailed financier Allen Stanford orchestrated, as well as the $1.2 billion scheme they say was operated by disbarred Florida lawyer Scott Rothstein. Both have pleaded not guilty.
While enforcement efforts have ramped up — in large part because of the discovery of Madoff’s fraud, estimated at $21 billion to $50 billion — the main reason so many Ponzi schemes have come to light is clear.
“The financial meltdown has resulted in the exposure of numerous fraudulent schemes that otherwise might have gone undetected for a longer period of time,” said Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal division.
A Ponzi scheme depends on a constant infusion of new investors to pay older ones and furnish the cash for the scammers’ lavish lifestyles. This year, when the pool of people willing to become new investors shrank and existing investors clamored to withdraw money, scams collapsed across the country.
“Some portion of the investors in the Ponzi scheme always get the short end of the stick and do not get paid,” said Elizabeth Nowicki, a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney who now teaches law at Boston University.
Even those who say they did their homework before investing ended up losing everything.
A retired Air Force sergeant, Tom Annis searched the Internet for red flags like complaints or lawsuits involving Minneapolis-based host Patrick Kiley after hearing about his investment on a weekly Christian radio show called “Follow The Money.”
Finding none, the 63-year-old from Jacksonville, Fla., invested his $270,000 nest egg — money that has since evaporated after federal regulators shut down what they’ve called an elaborate, $190 million Ponzi scheme.
“I tried to do my level of due diligence,” Annis said. “How could I be duped like this after years of investing?”
Ponzi schemes, named for infamous swindler Charles Ponzi, are extremely simple: Investors attracted by promises of high profits are paid with money from an ever-increasing pool of new investors, with the scammer skimming off the top. Sometimes the investments are at least partially legitimate but more often are completely fictional. There’s no reserve fund for lean times, or for when droves of investors start demanding their money.
Ponzi himself was an Italian immigrant who concocted a scheme in 1919 involving bogus investments in postal currency. He cheated thousands of people out of $10 million, eventually going to jail for wire fraud before being deported back to Italy in 1934.
Eighty years after his scheme, federal statistics paint the picture of a Ponzi nation:
_The FBI opened more than 2,100 securities fraud investigations in 2009, up from 1,750 in 2008. The FBI also had 651 agents working in 2009 on high-yield investment fraud cases, which include Ponzis, compared with 429 last year.
_The SEC this year issued 82 percent more restraining orders against Ponzi schemes and other securities fraud cases this year than in 2008, and it opened about 6 percent more investigations. Ponzi scheme investigations now make up 21 percent of the SEC’s enforcement workload, compared with 17 percent in 2008 and 9 percent in 2005.
_The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed 31 civil actions in Ponzi cases this year, more than twice the 2008 amount.
Many of the 2009 cases have yet to head to trial. In its tally, the AP counted schemes in which prosecutions were initiated or in which regulators filed civil cases in 2008 and 2009.
The Justice Department does not have totals of how many people were convicted in Ponzi schemes for either year, or for previous years.
Experts believe the recession was the main reason for the collapse of so many Ponzi schemes, though the Madoff case brought greater regulatory scrutiny and heightened public awareness. More people are inclined to raise questions when things don’t look right.
“We do get a lot more questions from investors now,” said Denise Voigt Crawford, Texas Securities Comissioner. “They are really worried about Ponzi schemes. That’s a good thing.”
Lisa Earle McLeod: Emotions Count: Five Tough Leaderhip Lessons For 2010
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
We’ve all been told not to bring our emotions to the work. But the idea that feelings don’t belong in the office is one of the biggest myths in business today.
If you want passionate customers, excited employees and motivated managers, how are you going create them if you don’t engage with people on an emotional basis?
Like it or not, feelings count. The way people feel affects everything that they do.
As we wrap up what Time Magazine referred to as “The Decade from Hell,” here are a few tough lessons we need to take into 2010.
1. Face Fear
Fear is a paralyzing emotion. But you can’t make it go away by ignoring it or stuffing it down. It’s time to get the fear on the table and deal with it. Leaders have to acknowledge the angst in the air if we’re going to move past it. Speaking the truth about fear doesn’t make it worse; it enables people to deal with it.
2. Make Peace with Ambiguity
The reality is, you can’t promise bonuses next year. You don’t know how the market may turn. We don’t even know what’s going to be invented in the next decade. You’ve got to be able to function in the face of uncertainty, and you’ve got to teach your people the discipline of doing the same. People still need goals, but the organizations that succeed in 2010 and beyond will be ones that are nimble, flexible and can turn on a dime.
3. No Secrets
It’s a transparent world. You can no longer hide information about your compensation plan, a bad product or even a single bad customer or employee experience. Thanks to the Internet, the Sarasota grandma who thinks your CEO makes too much money and that your customer service people are rude is now empowered to create a YouTube video about her grievances and tweet it out to all her peeps. Lest you think your texts or e-mails are safe, ask Tiger Woods how much losing Gatorade cost him. Save yourself a scandal; don’t do anything you’ll need to cover up later.
4. Connectivity Is Key
You’ve got to communicate authentically (and kindly) with everyone in your organization and outside it. Customers now know your product or company, warts and all, thanks to technology, so you need to learn to use it to your benefit. The Internet didn’t de-personalize the world; in many ways, it personalized it more. Companies can no longer treat the general public like one big, slobbering uber-consuming mass. You’ve got to make interpersonal connections with people if you want them to buy into you or your organization.
5. The “L” Word
In the end, it all comes down to love. If you want your customers to love your product, your employees to love their jobs and the market to love your organization, you’ve got to be the one putting the love in before you can expect to get any back out.
The situation we’re living with today is a direct result of the emotional climate we’ve created over the last 10 years. Choose greed, you get this. Choose love, and you’ll start creating something much better.
Lisa Earle McLeod is an author, syndicated columnist and inspirational thought-leader. Her newest book is The Triangle of Truth: The Surprisingly Simple Secret to Resolving Conflicts Large and Small. (WATCH VIDEO) A popular keynote speaker, Lisa is principal of McLeod & More, Inc., a training and consulting firm specializing in sales, leadership and conflict management. www.TriangleofTruth.com
Internet Entrepreneur? Nothing To Sell?
Yours truly GordonWebbo today wants you to read the following article, courtesy of Top-Web-Entrepeneurs-Plan-It.com:
Do you know a lot about *something*?
People are looking for what you know, every day, on the Web.
Reward them by sharing your knowledge and know-how.
Learn how to draw them to you.
They will reward you for your help.
Trust me. I know from experience.
Need proof? I would hope so!
Look into how I do it. Use the link below.
Claude Jollet
Owner and Editor
