Palin Warns Bernanke Not to Pal Around With Inflation
November 8, 2010
(ChattahBox Business News)—Famous economic expert Sarah Palin is demanding that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “cease and desist” from continuing with his new monetary policy of purchasing long-term debt, called “quantitative easing.” Why? Because the conspicuously unintelligent, half-term governor, Fox News contributor and reality TV star, believes Bernanke’s actions to maximize employment would plunge America into a “permanently higher inflation” that would raise the price of nacho chips and oil. And also, Germany doesn’t like the idea, so that settles it. Palin continues with her nonsensical fearmongering by channeling the words of Ronald Reagan, who once compared inflation to hit men and robbers. If none of this makes any sense to you, join the club. Read more
Bernanke Finally Remembers Fed’s Duty to Maximize Employment
October 27, 2010
(ChattahBox Business News)—With the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is finally ready to take steps to stimulate the economy with the aim of reducing the unemployment rate. It’s long been known that another stimulus effort is needed, as President Obama’s too-small, but successful stimulus program nears its end. But congressional Republicans have blocked any attempt to stimulate the economy with new spending, instead calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that would only further add to the deficit and do little to stimulate the sluggish economy. Now, Bernanke is poised to abide by the Fed’s legal mandate to maximize employment. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Fed could announce a massive purchase of U.S. Treasury bonds as early as Wednesday. It’s about time. Read more
Judge Orders LimeWire to Halt File Sharing
October 27, 2010
(ChattahBox Technology News) – Going up against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) proved to be too much for LimeWire, the popular file sharing service. On Tuesday, a Manhattan judge told LimeWire to turn off the music after determining that the company had been violating copyright laws, the New York Times reports. Read more
Google Pays Only 2.4 % Tax Rate, Hoards Profits in Cayman Islands
October 21, 2010
(ChattahBox Political News)– Bloomberg Reports has a must-read piece today, on the billions lost in U.S. revenue to legal tax loopholes that permit companies to transfer its profits around the globe in offshore accounts where it ends up in a Cayman Islands account. The “transfer pricing” tax scheme known by the colorful names of “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” has reduced Google’s tax rate to 2.4 percent, saving the search engine giant $3.1 billion for the last three years alone. When you hear corporations complain they pay too much in taxes, it’s not true. And besides depriving the United States of an estimated $60 billion in lost revenue every year, companies hoarding profits overseas in a “transfer pricing” scheme don’t use that money to invest in research and development and hiring workers here at home. Our broken tax system not only encourages the outsourcing of jobs, but also of profits. Read more
TARP Makes Cash
October 21, 2010
Wikimedia Commons
(ChattahBox Op/Ed News) – I almost missed this but thanks to our crack staff at Chattahbox.com I was able to read the good news. We the American people made fat cash thanks to President Obama and those who had the courage to make the right decisions by passing TARP two years ago. The TARP program has “earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.” Read more
Problems Continue for Toyota: Over 1.5 Million Cars to be Recalled
October 21, 2010
(ChattahBox Business News) – Toyota has announced the recall of more than 1.5 million vehicles worldwide as a result of brake and fuel pump defects. The recall consists of more than 740,000 cars in the US, 600,000 in Japan and 17,000 in the UK. This comes only months after heavy media coverage of many Toyota vehicles being recalled for having faulty accelerators. Read more
Bank Of America announces being nice better than being mean.
October 19, 2010
(ChattahBox Op/Ed News) – If someone were to offer you a choice between an ice cream cone (Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia of course) or a whack with a stick, which would you choose? It’s easy right? Most of us would choose the ice cream. For those who chose the stick there’s always therapy or a dominatrix. It seems we’re not the only one’s who have come to the conclusion that people prefer something pleasant over something hurtful. Bank of America announced today in an AP report, published in the Washington Post “a change in its consumer banking strategy to focus on providing customers with incentives to do more business with the bank instead of generating revenue through penalty fees such as overdraft charges. The bank is already starting to implement some changes, and has cut overdraft fees on small amounts that customers charge to their debit cards.” Read more
Foreclosure Fraud: Who Owns Your House? Where’s the Note?
October 16, 2010
(ChattahBox US News)— The Service Employees International Union is sponsoring a website to help homeowners protect themselves from fraudulent foreclosures, by providing an easy online form to request that their mortgage lender produce the original note. Who Owns your house? Do you really know which bank or mortgage company holds the original note for your property? It turns out that the banks don’t know either. During the years that Wall Street sliced and diced your mortgages and repackaged them into bonds to be resold over and over again, the bank notes didn’t make the trip into the void of exotic instruments. So, now that the banks are foreclosing on these homes, they don’t have the legal authority to do so. Why? They don’t hold the original note. And they know it. That’s why the major banks hired a crop of so-called “robo-signers” to hurriedly sign off on the avalanche of foreclosure documents before their fraudulent practices came to light. Well, now the gig is up and as the light shines brighter on these sleazy big bank scammers, their greed begins to look more like criminal activity. Read more
Wells Fargo continues foreclosures full speed ahead despite testimony of dubious practices
October 15, 2010
[ChattahBox] – In troubling news out of Washington D.C., Wells Fargo has announced it has no plans to halt foreclosures, despite sworn testimony from one employee that she signed 300-500 foreclosure orders a day – without even reading them.
In a deposition given by the employee, Xee Moua, in March she states that while based at the firm’s central offices in Fort Mill, South Carolina she recalls signing 300-500 such documents every day, checking only her name and job title. Read more
AOL Considers Making Bid for Struggling Yahoo
October 14, 2010
(ChattahBox Technology News) – Neither Yahoo nor AOL is the internet giant it used to be—but if the companies joined forces, the resulting corporation could be better suited to compete against today’s internet behemoths. That appears to be the thinking behind AOL, Inc., which is working with private equity firms to potentially make an offer to buy Yahoo, Inc., according to the Wall Street Journal.
With competition from companies like Google and Facebook, which have chipped away at its display advertising revenue, Yahoo’s current market value stands at $20.56 billion. That’s in contrast to AOL’s market capitalization of $2.68 billion, making an AOL takeover of Yahoo a long-shot unless AOL either finds private equity partners, or Yahoo sells its 40 percent stake in Chinese business Alibaba Group back to Alibaba. Read more