What "Really" Causes Bankruptcy

Three bills remaining for governor
ALBANY -- As he winds down his tenure, Gov. David Paterson has just three remaining bills that he can sign or Veto -- and all of them were sponsored by the state's next Attorney General, state Sen. Eric Schneiderman. One measure would increase protections for those filing for Bankruptcy, or who are being sued by creditors. The two other bills would expand prevailing wage laws. The timetable for Paterson to either approve or Veto the bills hasn't gone unnoticed. They must be acted upon by Monday,...

Advocates to Paterson: Dont be a Scrooge
Consumer groups and lawyers have launched a last minute push for passage of a bill that would give debtors and people filing Bankruptcy in New York some more rights and the ability to keep a bit more equity in their homes and cars when they get in trouble and the Debt Collectors come calling. “We don’t want to get this lost in the shuffle,” NYPIRG’s Russ Haven said of S7034 and A8735 which would need to be signed, allowed to pass into law or vetoed by Dec. 28. Advocates...

Economics for Dummies (and Politicians)
The political debate is lately putting a lot of focus on the Bush Tax Cuts and the Unemployment Rate. I think these issues are overemphasized. We’re frantic in addressing symptoms, but we ignore the underlying disease. Consider the simplest economic model (and of course this will be an oversimplification, but we’ve got to start somewhere). There’s consumption and production. Goods can’t be consumed unless they’re produced. Therefore, the world is necessarily balance...

FYI: Citi changing its lineup of credit cards
Citi is simplifying its lineup of rewards Credit Cards. The new offerings streamline an array of cards into four versions of its ThankYou rewards cards: basic, preferred, premier and prestige. The revamped cards are already available for new customers. Existing customers will start getting notifications next month about the changes. Those who agree to switch over will get their new cards by May. Customers currently holding one of about 10 types of Citi cards—including the Simplicity Rewar...

House Passes Sweeping Food Safety Bill
The House has passed a sweeping bill aimed at making food safer following recent contaminations in peanuts, eggs and produce, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The Legislation passed Tuesday would give the government broad new powers to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stricter standards for imported foods. The $1.4 billion bill would also require larger farms and food manufacturers to prepare detailed Food Safety plans and tell the Food and Drug Administ...

House sends food safety bill to president
WASHINGTON -- The House has passed a sweeping bill aimed at making food safer following recent contaminations in peanuts, eggs and produce, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The Legislation passed Tuesday would give the government broad new powers to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stricter standards for imported foods. The $1.4 billion bill would also require larger farms and food manufacturers to prepare detailed Food Safety plans and tell the Food an...

House sends food safety bill to president
The House has passed a sweeping bill aimed at making food safer following recent contaminations in peanuts, eggs and produce, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The Legislation passed Tuesday would give the government broad new powers to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stricter standards for imported foods. The $1.4 billion bill would also require larger farms and food manufacturers to prepare detailed Food Safety plans and tell the Food and Drug Administ...

House Sends Food Safety Bill to President
Like this Story? Share it: The U.S. Senate voted to give the FDA a sweeping overhaul. As Nancy Cordes reports, the bill is the most significant change to the FDA since the 1930s. (AP) The House has passed a sweeping bill aimed at making food safer following recent contaminations in peanuts, eggs and produce, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The Legislation passed Tuesday would give the government broad new powers to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stri...

Treasury Department launches small-business lending fund
The Treasury Department has launched a new program designed to provide loans to small businesses struggling to obtain credit.  The Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF), part of Legislation enacted in late September that provides Tax Breaks and incentives to businesses, creates a $30 billion account that community banks can draw upon to spur lending to smaller businesses.  The addition of the program to the small-business bill created a contentious debate, with opponents of the fund calling it ...

5 Ways to Prepare for Rising Interest Rates
With the Fed keeping Interest Rates at zero, Interest Rates have nowhere to go but up in the future. Here are five investment moves you should consider before the rates change. [See 10 Key Retirement Ages to Plan For.] Examine all your investments in closed-end funds . While they have probably done great lately, many closed-end funds use leverage to increase their returns, making them more sensitive to interest rate changes. A fund might be able to make money borrowing at 2 percent and getting...

"The Effect of Falling Home Prices on Small Business Borrowing"
I didn't realize how much small businesses depend upon home equity to finance their business operations: The Effect of Falling Home Prices on Small Business Borrowing, by Mark E. Schweitzer and Scott A. Shane, Economic Commentary, FRB Cleveland: Small businesses continue to report problems obtaining the financing they need. Because small business owners may rely heavily on the value of their homes to finance their businesses (through Mortgages or home equity lines), the fall in housing pri...

Special report: Overselling the American dream overseas
By James Kelleher, Karin Matz and Melanie Lee Shanghai/Chicago | Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:40am EST Shanghai/Chicago (Reuters) - In a conference room in an Office Building in downtown Shanghai, Jason Lee is literally selling the American Dream. Lee runs Maslink, a firm that connects cash-hungry American businesses with Chinese investors keen to move to the United States. His company is part of a global cottage industry that has popped up in recent years to profit from a program that allows foreigne...

Analysis: Decline in home prices impacting small business borrowing
by CalculatedRisk on 12/20/2010 02:16:00 PM From Mark Schweitzer and Scott Shane at the Cleveland Fed: The Effect of Falling Home Prices on Small Business Borrowing The researchers analyze small business borrowing, and note that homes equity borrowing is an "important source of capital for small business owners and that the impact of the recent decline in housing prices is significant enough to be a real constraint on small business finances." Here is their conclusion: Everyone agrees that sm...

Uncle Sam Will Help Buy You an Alpaca
I often bash government. I say it can't do anything better than people in a Free Market. But the government is unequalled in producing one thing: negative Unintended Consequences. Show me a government activity, and I will show you bad results that even the program's advocates probably don't like. Here's one example. Congressmen say our government should "support and strengthen family-based agriculture." Abstractly, supporting family-based agriculture sounds good. Government policies often ha...

Spanish Christmas lottery hands out $3 billion
Madrid — Spain’s beloved Christmas lottery sprinkled €2.3 billion ($3 billion) in holiday cheer across the country Wednesday, winnings eagerly welcomed by a nation facing 20 percent Unemployment. The lottery billed as the world’s Richest has no single jackpot but operates a complex share-the-wealth system in which thousands of five-digit numbers running from 00000 to 84999 win at least something. It is known as "El Gordo" (The Fat One) and dates back to 1812. Tax-free wi...

Spanish Christmas lottery hands out $3 billion
MADRID (AP) - Spain's beloved Christmas lottery sprinkled euro2.3 billion ($3 billion) in holiday cheer across the country Wednesday, winnings eagerly welcomed by a nation facing 20 percent Unemployment. The lottery billed as the world's Richest has no single jackpot but operates a complex share-the-wealth system in which thousands of five-digit numbers running from 00000 to 84999 win at least something. It is known as "El Gordo" (The Fat One) and dates back to 1812. Tax-free winnings range fr...

SNL Spoof of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks
RSSSubscribe now! Edward Harrison is the founder of Credit Writedowns and a former strategy and finance executive with twenty years of business experience. He started his career as a diplomat and speaks six languages, a skill he uses to provide a more global perspective. Edward holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College. He is a regular contributor at Seeking Alpha, Naked Capitalism, and Roubini Global Economics. Edward has often spoken on telev...

Former William Morris Agency chairman sues to recover millions allegedly lost in Kenneth Starr Ponzi scheme
Former William Morris Agency Chairman and CEO Jim Wiatt has gotten caught up in Kenneth I. Starr's Ponzi Scheme, and is suing Starr to recover the $2 million invested with the financial advisor whose clients included many top Hollywood celebrities. The suit, filed in Federal Court in New Jersey, alleges that Starr and Jonathan S. Bristol, a former partner in the Winston & Strawn Law Firm, conspired to defraud Wiatt and his wife, Elizabeth. It accuses the l...

Making Sense of Minimum Distribution Rules
It's that time of year again—when the IRS wants its pound of flesh from you. If you're approaching Retirement, you'll eventually need to make serious decisions about when to begin taking withdrawals from your retirement accounts (known as distributions), how to receive the money, and how to calculate the taxes you'll owe.* Fortunately, the rules governing required minimum distributions (RMDs) have been simplified in recent years. Still, you should exercise caution to ensure that you're f...

Steamship embezzler sentenced to year in prison
Hyannis — A Mashpee woman accused of embezzling more than $144,000 from the Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority must pay back the money and spend a year in Prison. Armine Estelle Sabatini, 46, was the Steamship Authority’s bookkeeper when she fraudulently processed 381 Credit Card refund transactions to 20 different cards from October 2001 through September 2009, according to a Press Release from the agency. U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf sent...

Tim Chen: The Dangers of no Preset Spending Limit Cards
While most people understand that using all of their available credit can be detrimental, they don't understand why it affects their Credit Score. It can be summed up in two words: Credit Utilization. Credit utilization is the amount of credit that a consumer has consumed versus the amount of credit that consumer has available. It is this ratio that FICO uses as part of the formula for a consumer's "amounts owed" section. This section makes up 30% of a person's FICO score. As FICO is the larg...

Entrepreneur magazine names U-M student College Entrepreneur of the Year
The honor comes from Entrepreneur magazine. Kim and his company, Bebarang, were featured in the Detroit Free Press in August. The company was originally called Bebaroo. He launched the company last year with U-M graduate Student Luis Calderon. The company is a baby clothes rental company that allows parents to rent clothes at a fraction of the original cost. “I am still in a state of disbelief,” Kim said in a U-M news release. “All the finalists were...

Mideast's Abraaj to buy stake in Dubai bank unit
Mideast Private Equity firm Abraaj Capital says it's buying 49 percent of a Credit Card processing division of Emirates NBD bank for $545 million. Dubai-based Abraaj says the deal will help speed the expansion of the division, known as Network International. The companies say Network International handles transactions for about 45,000 Credit Card machines in the Middle East and Africa, and manages a network of more than 700 ATMs. Emirates NBD is based in Dubai and is majority owned by the govern...

U-M student wins entrepreneur award for baby-clothes rental company
"I really can't believe it," said Kim of Ann Arbor, who created a company called Bebarang, which he describes as similar to Netflix because it allows parents to rent baby clothes. "On the one hand, I'm extremely proud of our team and what we've accomplished in the last year." But then, he said, the normal realities of operating a business, such as dealing with an unsatisfied customer, keep things balanced. "We have so much work that's laid out in front...

Dad to City Councilman: Show Me the Money
We know that we certainly love airing our dirty laundry in the press and it seems that Democratic City Councilman Vincent Gentile's dad does too. The elder Gentile turns to the Post today for the second time this year in an attempt to get a few hundred thousand bucks out of his son. "He should be ashamed of himself! Let people read that!" Frank Gentile complained to the Post after his son didn't imm...