Eric T. Schneiderman: Honoring Labor Day By Rooting Out Wage Theft

Eric T. Schneiderman: Honoring Labor Day By Rooting Out Wage Theft:
Imagine a restaurant dishwasher who is robbed on payday while riding the bus home. A pickpocket steals all of his wages, leaving him with nothing to show for a week of hard work. If the thief were caught, he or she would be arrested and would surely face criminal charges.

Now imagine that same dishwasher, also deprived of his week of wages, except there is a different culprit: his boss. After six long days in a hot restaurant kitchen the boss refuses to pay him because "business is bad" or this was a "try-out week" or because two dishes broke, or for no apparent reason at all. If this culprit were caught, typically he would face only civil charges. He would have to pay the wages owed, and maybe a small penalty as well.

Because civil penalties for wage theft are paltry, employers often treat them as simply a cost of doing business. A 2010 study by the National Employment Law Project found that 21 percent of surveyed low-wage workers in New York City were paid less than the lawful minimum wage, and 77 percent of those who worked over 40 hours per week did not receive legally required overtime pay.

Lawmakers and prosecutors must reverse this trend by treating wage theft as what it is -- theft, and pursuing criminal charges accordingly.

Criminal convictions mean more accountability. And, these employers will have to note the conviction on applications for government aid and licensing forms. Simply put, criminal penalties are a serious deterrent to wage theft; small fines are not.

Some states do treat wage theft as a serious offense. In New York, failure to pay proper wages is a misdemeanor; we also criminalize retaliation against employees for reporting violations. Other states have followed New York's lead. In May of last year, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law the "Wage Theft Bill," which strengthened the state's theft of services statute in relation to nonpayment of wages. It's a felony in Texas to steal services worth more than $1500.

Even where there are no laws directly criminalizing wage theft, prosecutors can use other statutes to target unscrupulous employers, because these firms often violate a host of laws. After all, how likely is it that a construction company using underpaid day labor will be diligent about paying taxes or following building codes? Or that a food processing company with workplace safety and health violations will be meticulous about food safety for the public?

Lawless employers harm not only workers; they endanger the public, deprive schools, parks, and police of needed funds, and undermine honest employers who can't compete with bottom feeders.

Just this year, my office has arrested employers in a range of industries: a car wash operator, the founder of a tortilla factory, a restaurant owner, a construction firm performing public work. Many have pled guilty to a range of charges including false filings, theft of services, falsification of business records, and schemes to defraud. Some of them will be going to jail.

To be sure, not all labor law violations should be treated as criminal cases. Some infractions are inadvertent or minor. But criminal charges are appropriate for employers who stiff their workers altogether or who pay far below the minimum wage; for those who file false tax documents or otherwise commit fraud; for repeat violators who refuse to follow the law, or wrongdoers who obstruct justice by firing employees who testify about violations.

In this time of deep political divisions, there should be nothing controversial about the notion that working people who do their jobs should be paid for their work.

An employer who knowingly violates labor laws is not an upstanding businessman saving a few bucks. In the end, he is hardly any different from the pickpocket, and the law should treat him as such.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Please tweet at #AceFinanceNews or email us at Ace News Desk - News & Views 

Mary Pritchard: Money Fears - How to fight financial stress

Mary Pritchard: Money Fear: 12 Ways To Fight Financial Stress:
In the past couple of weeks, I've been blogging on how to cope with stress. Why? Because let's face it, we are one stressed out bunch of people. The scary fact is that, in the American Psychological Association's study "Stress in America," the majority of American adults surveyed reported that their stress had increased during the past five years. And respondents fully realized that their stress levels were taking a toll on their health. In fact, 88 percent of women and 78 percent of men surveyed reported that their stress level had a strong or very strong impact on their physical health.

When asked, "Which of the following, if any, have you experienced in the last month as a result of stress?" Americans responded:

• Irritability or anger (42 percent)

• Fatigue (37 percent)

• Lack of interest, motivation or energy (35 percent)

• Headaches (32 percent)

• Upset stomachs (24 percent)

• Change in appetite (17 percent)

• Change in sex drive (11 percent)

This begs the question: What are we so stressed out about? You name it, it was probably on the list, but the top ten reported stressors among American adults in 2011 were:

• Money (75 percent)

• Work (70 percent)

• The economy (67 percent)

• Relationships (58 percent)

• Family responsibilities (57 percent)

• Family health problems (53 percent)

• Personal health concerns (53 percent)

• Job stability (49 percent)

• Housing costs (49 percent)

• Personal safety (32 percent)

Notice any common themes here? Financial issues (money, housing costs)? Check. Work issues (could be work-related stress and/or job stability concerns and/or money-related issues)? Check. Insecurity about the economy, which relates to both money and work? Check. Relationship issues? Check. Health issues that often connect to relationship or work issues? Check.

But since the number-one reported issue is money, let's start there. Three-quarters of adult Americans are worried about money, and I'm guessing they're not worried about having too much.

If you find yourself among that 75 percent, what should you do? First, identify exactly what you are stressing out about. According to personal finance expert and "Money Girl" podcaster Laura Adams, there are 4 primary reasons people freak out about money:

1) They consistently spend more than they make, living under the threat of ever-present bill collectors.

2) They spend exactly what they make, living paycheck-to-paycheck.

3) They have a huge amount of debt (e.g., student loans) and are finding it hard to make any progress on reducing it.

4) They don't understand how to manage their finances and feel lost or overwhelmed about how to do so.

Getting back to my last blog, as a stressor, money concerns may be both controllable and uncontrollable at the same time. Thus, you should take a twofold approach when coping with them:

Problem-Focused Approaches

Regardless of why you got into debt in the first place, there are a number of things you can do to make your debt more manageable:

1. Seek the help of a professional. You're probably thinking, "If I don't have any money, how can I afford to pay a professional?" Rest assured, a lot of professionals offer free consultations or reduced/sliding rates for their services. Just type "debt services" or "debt consolidation" into Google and see what comes up. Just make sure the company seems reputable.

2. Plan. Make concrete, yet achievable, goals for yourself to get out of debt. If you don't know where to start, talk to a financially savvy friend or financial advisor.

3. Create a budget. The first step is to figure out what you actually spend your money on over the course of a week. You might be surprised at what you can cut out. For example, do you really need to eat out every day, or can you save money by taking your lunch to work? Do you really need premium cable or satellite TV? If you've never done a budget before, there are a number of software programs and apps available for low or no cost to get you started. If you need more ideas, check out these debt-reduction tips.

4. Clip coupons and stock up on bulk and sale items. It may seem like a simple strategy, but there are countless ways to save significantly on your weekly grocery bill. Sure, you may have to try a different brand, but every penny counts when it comes to savings and debt reduction. Plus, you might even find that you like the new brand better.

5. Learn how to cook. Americans spend nearly $400 billion a year on eating out. It's usually much cheaper to buy and cook your own meals. Don't know where to start? Go to the library and check out a cookbook or go to YouTube and watch cooking demos. Culinary adventures await!

6. Shop at secondhand stores. You can usually find good quality, slightly worn (and sometimes even brand new) clothes at Goodwill, the Salvation Army and other secondhand or consignment stores. Since Americans spend nearly $200 billion a year on apparel (not including jewelry), buying used clothes can add up to significant savings.

7. Go green. Find ways you can save on household expenses.

8. Leave your credit cards at home and pay in cash. It's much easier to avoid temptation and racking up even more debt if you leave the credit cards at home. "Don't spend what you don't have" should be your motto for a while.

Emotion-Focused Approaches

1. Try hypnosis. Don't laugh or roll your eyes at me. There's actually some evidence that hypnosis is a valid way to cope with stress -- including financial stress.

2. Vent. Talk to your friends, family, neighbors, pastor, counselor, dog -- just get this off of your chest. Who knows? Whoever you talk to might actually have some helpful suggestions.

3. Take care of yourself. Now is not the time to neglect your physical and mental health. Maybe for financial reasons, you need to cut out that biweekly yoga or tae kwon do class for a little while, but that doesn't mean you can't practice at home on your own.

4. Try to see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. Don't make your situation out to be worse than it is. This can lead to the "what-the-hell effect," causing you to spend more than you might have otherwise.

Hopefully you're feeling a little less afraid of your financial situation right now. Leave me a comment and let me know what works and what doesn't work for you. Please also leave some ideas of things that have worked well for you in the past. If we put our heads together, we should be able to get out of debt, one penny at a time.

Stayed tuned for next week's installment on coping with work stress.

For more by Mary Pritchard, click here.

For more on becoming fearless, click here.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Please tweet at #AceDebtNews or email your News & Views to our Ace News Desk

Merkel Calls For Solidarity With Euro Nations

Its too little too late for put the Euro Zone back on course! As German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday stresses solidarity with other euro nations while her finance minister expressed scepticism about the European Central Bank’s ability to combat the regional debt crisis, media reports said only a short while ago!

The posts l provide are my views of good recipes and also are shared from a number of contacts, news and blogging services. They are not always tried and tested by me unless it states that l have cooked any myself,whereby it will be noted on the post accordingly.

Please tweet at #AceFinanceNews or email News & Views

Thank you, Ian [Editor]

Georgia's ethics commission: A sad tale of dysfunctional state government

Perhaps no state illustrates the political perils of ethics enforcement better than Georgia, where the ethics commission has been the nexus of more infighting, vitriol and litigation than a Univision novella.
Keeping track of all the resignations, firings, accusations and countercharges there has challenged even the most knowledgeable observers of Peach State politics. Three executive directors have resigned or been fired since 2006. Two other employees collected $405,000 in damages for allegedly wrongful termination.  Lawmakers stripped the agency of 40 percent of its funding, its power to make new rules, even its name.
Today, as public pressure builds for ethics reform in Georgia, the agency faces a host of other challenges:

• Two former top-ranking officials allege the commission fired them for investigating suspected campaign abuses by Gov. Nathan Deal.
• Thousands of candidate disclosures swamp the agency’s online filing system, paralyzing it at peak periods for many users.
• Violators continue to avoid stiffer penalties because the commission has not devoted the resources to formally notifying them.
• Thin staffing keeps the staff from reviewing even 10 percent of the tens of thousands of filings it receives each year.

Much of this has come to pass, critics say, because the commission answers to the very politicians it’s supposed to regulate and investigate. Legislative leaders set its budget, control its powers and, along with the governor, decide who its five members will be.
In the view of many of the body’s critics, that system has failed. An independent commission, says former commission chief Teddy Lee, is essential.
“It’s got to be set up in a way that it can’t be manipulated,” says Lee, “by people who have no desire to be overseen or second-guessed.”

Pinching pennies

Tight funding has hobbled the commission as far back as anyone can recall.
The agency, created in 1974 to enforce Georgia’s new campaign finance law, gradually assumed lobbyist oversight and other responsibilities as well. Sometimes lawmakers ponied up more money to help carry out the new duties, but ethics advocates say it was rarely enough.
When Lee took over in 1990, he had just two employees, two typewriters and a photocopier so old that the manufacturer wouldn’t even offer a service contract.
The commission got a modest budget bump with passage of the 1992 Ethics in Government Act, Lee said. The law imposed Georgia’s first limits on campaign contributions in local races and forced lobbyists to register with the state and disclose their frequently lavish gifts to government officials.
Still, Lee said, he and an assistant had to juggle their time just to give ethics complaints a basic once-over. Budget-writers, he said, refused to add money to hire even one full-time investigator.
“If you ever wanted to raise eyebrows on a legislative committee, you asked for an investigator position,” Lee said. “That was a non-starter.”
Lee avoided possible reprisals for sensitive cases over the years even as he watched peers in other states “walk the plank” in similar circumstances. “Sometimes all they’ve got to do is get the drop on you and it’s over,” he said.
After the 2002 election, it appeared Lee’s luck might have run out.­ ­Gov.-elect Sonny Perdue, the first Republican to win the office since Reconstruction, asked Lee and other department heads to resign to make room for his own leadership team.
Lee refused, keeping his job after the commission’s chairman rebuffed Perdue in a strongly-worded letter. Georgians’ trust in the agency’s integrity, Lee said, depended on its independence from the political process.
But over the years, politics has cast an increasingly large shadow over the panel’s composition. The governor, initially allowed one appointment, won the power to name a second in 1975 and a three-member majority a decade later. In 2005, the Senate’s new Republican majority took a fourth appointment away from the lieutenant governor, a Democrat. (The speaker of the House selects the fifth member.)
Political pressures continued to bubble up, Lee said. When lawmakers’ personal financial disclosures were first posted online, the commission’s chairman urged him to take them down. “He said, ‘I’ve gotten two calls from two legislators from different parties, and they are really upset,’” Lee recalled. The commission, at its next meeting, agreed unanimously to keep the disclosures online.
By January 2006, though, Lee’s time had come. Two commissioners asked him to step down. They “wanted me to resign and say it was my idea, that I wanted to pursue other opportunities,” Lee said.
Lee refused, and the commission fired him a day later, as members said they needed a “fresh approach.” Steve Farrow, the commission chair at the time, declined to comment in a recent telephone interview.
“If you are doing your job with a state ethics commission, there are people who sometimes have the power to get you back,” Lee said recently. “They are people who want what they want and are used to always trying to get it.”
Commissioners denied widespread speculation that they were doing the bidding of Perdue, who’d recently paid $20,000 in fines and restitution for accepting excess campaign contributions. All three of the governor’s appointees voted to dump Lee, who had overseen the Perdue investigation.
Political considerations factored into Lee’s firing, though, even if the governor’s influence did not, a former commission member said recently.
After a decade and a half of ethics cases against state lawmakers, Lee had “no rapport at all” with them on budgetary matters, said the former commissioner,  who asked not to be identified. “Certainly, we have to have some relationships with legislators.”
The friction, he acknowledged, may have been inevitable. “There’s always this dynamic when you have influential legislators who may or may not be happy with what you’re doing,” he said.

Dashed hopes

Despite supporters’ concern about Lee’s ouster, 2006 opened with the promise of being a banner year for ethics enforcement in Georgia.
A new law expanded lobbyist oversight and barred campaign fundraising while legislators were in session. Fines were increased and financial disclosure requirements tightened.
To help with enforcement, lawmakers beefed up the commission’s budget by 68 percent. Flush with funding for the first time, the agency upgraded its online presence to make all candidates’ and lobbyists’ disclosures accessible with a single mouse-click.
Rick Thompson, Lee’s replacement, also created an investigative unit — hiring six veteran police officers who were expecting to use arrest powers the commission had never before employed.
They would be the first full-time investigators at the Ethics Commission, as well as the last. Lawyers and auditors later investigated cases along with other duties, until budget cuts did away with virtually all of those positions as well.
Thompson said he hoped investigators with law enforcement backgrounds could quickly close a backlog of hundreds of pending complaints. Instead, he said, cases bogged down as he sent their reports back over and over for revision. “They didn’t have any strong writing skills,” Thompson said.
The constant rewrites exasperated the investigators, who complained they were being held to unrealistic standards. “We write like cops. We don’t write like attorneys,” former investigator Robert Bentivegna said.
Some of the investigators believed the campaign finance laws were riddled with ambiguities. The rewrites, they said, soft-pedaled their findings and deleted their conclusions.
“In criminal law it’s black and white. You either did it or you didn’t,” investigator Phillip West later testified. “And this was convoluted.”
Within a few months, Thompson fired his new director of investigations, Bill Thompson (no relation), saying he missed deadlines and failed to follow direction. Bill Thompson responded with a whistleblower lawsuit, charging that the real reason for his dismissal was his insistence on pursuing sensitive cases.
In a sworn deposition, Bill Thompson said his former boss initially told him to pursue criminal cases that would send a message to politicians statewide.
“I want to scare the bejesus out of those guys under the Gold Dome,” Bill Thompson said Rick Thompson told him.
But Rick Thompson’s resolve soon wavered, Bill Thompson said, amid worries about the commission’s funding. “Rick … painted almost every politician as a powerful politician that could affect his budget,” he said.
Others blamed the Thompsons’ conflict on personalities more than politics. “Bill … tends to rub on people the wrong way because he wants to do so much and to bring things to light,” Bentivegna said recently.
Several investigators, in depositions in the whistleblower suit, cited potential criminal cases that were never prosecuted.The first case, they said, was to have been against a former legislator suspected of spending tens of thousands of campaign dollars on personal expenses.
“Every time we started to do it, they would pull back on the bridle and say, ‘No, we don’t want to do that,’” West testified in 2008.
Previously, an outside investigator had told commissioners she found no evidence that Rick Thompson manipulated cases for political reasons. The state’s lawyers, while denying wrongdoing, settled the whistleblower complaint in June 2008 for $125,000.
The settlement marked the end of the investigative unit. By then, its remaining members had grown disheartened and already left for other law enforcement jobs.
Bentivegna, now a suburban Atlanta police detective, laments the unit’s demise.
“I’m just a cop at heart,” he said. “I believe if you did something wrong, you should pay the price for it.”
Rick Thompson, for his part, disputes any notion that he showed political favoritism at the commission.
“I was aggressive with Democrats and Republicans both,” he said. “No one in their right mind could say, ‘Rick pulled punches,’ because I went after everybody.”
In depositions, though, some investigators said they believed the commission did indeed pull punches by dismissing solid cases or issuing weak penalties. “It was a joke,” West said.
Rick Thompson noted that Georgia law gives commission members that prerogative.
That, Bill Thompson said in 2007, was the core of the problem. “When you have a commission of five political appointees,” he said, “you’re going to have political decisions.”

An end to rule-making

That wasn’t the end of conflict for the commission. In 2009, the panel ran into another roadblock over new rules that could curtail politicians’ use of private aircraft provided by lobbyists and campaign supporters.
“There were an awful lot of free planes flying around,” former Senate Majority Leader Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, said recently. “There had been some abuses.”
After Johnson asked for clarity, the commission enacted rules in December 2008 on how to calculate the value of those flights. Previously, candidates could estimate as little as they wanted; some didn’t report them at all. The new rules, fashioned after federal election guidelines, set a market value for such flights based on the type of plane and the distance traveled.
But some legislators were annoyed by the regulations, which became the last the commission would write. In April 2009, House leaders pushed through a bill stripping the agency of the power to make any more rules unless the Legislature specifically allowed them.
House leaders also tried to slash the commission’s budget by two-thirds, but never said why. One key Senate budget-writer, though, offered his own assessment of the proposed budget cut.
“Unfortunately, it happens a lot,” longtime Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, said recently. “They’re called ‘grudge cuts.’”
The Senate negotiated the budget reduction down to 30 percent, which still forced layoffs, a 60-percent cutback in office space and an end to subscriptions, maintenance agreements and new office supplies.
Rick Thompson announced his resignation a few months later, in August 2009. Now a consultant primarily to Republican candidates, he says that “no one told me that I had to go.” At the time, though, associates said he complained that political pressures and his frustration over weak ethics penalties led to his departure.

Wheeling and Dealing

Stacey Kalberman, a lawyer transitioning from a career in insurance regulation, took over as executive director in April 2010 but fared no better than her predecessors. She is now embroiled in a dispute over what she regards as her forced departure in 2011.
The falling out revolves around a case Kalberman inherited involving Gov. Deal’s actions while still a congressman. In March 2010, a complainant alleged that Deal’s gubernatorial campaign had misspent money in several ways, including payment for legal fees to defend him in a congressional ethics probe. A half-dozen related complaints followed as Deal won the 2010 Republican primary and general election for governor.
When Deal’s attorneys ignored her request that summer for campaign documents, Kalberman said, she notified the commission and prepared subpoenas. But once Deal became governor and the draft subpoenas were ready for review, she said, commission Chairman Patrick Millsaps refused to sign them.
Millsaps says he doesn’t recall briefings on the Deal probe and denies being asked to sign subpoenas. “That’s something I would remember,” he said.
Millsaps, a Republican whom Deal had just reappointed, “seemed uneasy” when she briefed him about the Deal case, Kalberman later told the state inspector general’s office. Deputy director Sherry Streicker said she too met resistance from Commissioner Kevin Abernethy who, after a similar briefing, “turned white and said he didn’t want any part of this.”
Abernethy, now the commission’s chairman, declined to comment. He has previously denied Streicker’s account.
Millsaps and Kalberman agree that he emailed her in May 2011 with his concern that the commission might run out of money before the year ended.
“Before we jump into ANY grand campaign, I think we need to look at this more closely,” he wrote.
When the two met to discuss the matter in June, the chairman told her commissioners planned to cut her pay by 30 percent and eliminate Streicker’s position altogether.
Kalberman walked out of the meeting. While she insists she did not quit, Millsaps emailed her the next day to accept her resignation.
A few days later, Deal’s executive counsel called Kalberman to suggest another state job might be available — a gesture Kalberman later described as an effort to “keep me quiet.” Deal’s lawyer said he simply wanted to help identify other opportunities.
Cutbacks in the commission’s spending — enacted a week later — eliminated Streicker’s slot and trimmed the director’s pay, potentially saving $120,000 a year in salaries. Much of the projected savings evaporated, though, with the hiring of a staff attorney to perform many of Streicker’s duties and a contract attorney to draft advisory opinions. Streicker, who was still looking for work, said she applied but couldn’t even get a job interview.
Kalberman and Streicker have both filed suit, contending the budget crisis was fabricated to force them out and disrupt the Deal investigation.
Millsaps flatly denies that allegation. The Georgia inspector general’s office, which reports to Deal, conducted a preliminary inquiry and dismissed a charge last November that the governor orchestrated the terminations.
Millsaps contends political pressure on the commission is rare because the targets of ethics complaints fear repercussions if they try to intercede.
“Once they put you on the Ethics Commission, nobody wants to talk to you,” he said. “It really is more isolating than anything else.”

An uncertain future

Today, the commission’s funding has somewhat stabilized. Lawmakers added $200,000 to its $1 million budget for more staff and for computer upgrades designed to allow the online filing system to handle more traffic.
But the years of internal turmoil — combined with an increasing workload and a staff shrunk from 31 employees in 2006 to just 11 — have taken their toll.
The commission found violations in 78 cases over the course of 2008 and 2009 but just 28 in the two-and-a-half years since then, based on analysis of orders posted on the commission’s website. In that period, the average fine fell from more than $2,900 to less than $700.
The agency remains unable to meet one of its statutory mandates — checking all campaign disclosures to be sure they’re filled out properly. Budget-writers this year funded a second auditor, but the commission plans instead to hire support staff to help manage the increased workload. With one auditor, the commission expects to review fewer than one in 10 filings.
Lawmakers continue to resist calls to restore the panel’s rule-making authority — with one exception. Just hours before lawmakers adjourned for 2012, a proposal to let the commission waive late fees was inserted into an unrelated bill on fishing licenses.
A second provision would have allowed the agency to seal closed cases if no significant violations had been proven. That measure sailed through the Senate with no discussion and nearly passed the House until detractors questioned its intent. House Ethics Chairman Joe Wilkinson, who defended his proposal as a way to protect candidates from “frivolous” complaints, says he’ll try again next year as part of a larger proposal to restore full rule-making authority.
Several months after the legislative flap, in July, the commission closed the  investigation into Deal’s campaign money that had ignited so much turmoil — dismissing two complaints and negotiating settlements in three others. The governor paid $3,350 in fees and acknowledged minor “technical defects,” a classification that could allow sealing of those files if Wilkinson’s proposal passes in 2013.
Ethics reform seems likely to be a major issue when legislators reconvene in January.
Advocacy groups made a proposed $100 cap on lobbyists’ gifts to lawmakers a signature issue in this year’s legislative races. In non-binding ballot questions, voters from both major parties overwhelmingly backed a gift cap in July.
House Speaker David Ralston upped the ante recently by proposing a ban on all lobbyist gifts. He’s also suggested giving the ethics commission more money and autonomy “so that they are truly independent.” No details have been released on how that might be accomplished.
Advocates such as Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, working with activists ranging from Common Cause to local Tea Parties, are putting together their own ethics agenda. That may well include more transparency for political action committees and broader revolving-door restrictions on ex-state officials who want to become lobbyists.
Even more ambitiously, some talk about applying sunshine laws to the Legislature for the first time.
Whether activists’ ideas will be considered remains an open question. In 2010, House leaders introduced a bill to rename the commission, hike fines, ramp up lobbyist oversight and require thousands of local candidates to file disclosures directly to the commission. A bipartisan coalition of legislators had already signed on to their own ethics reform bill but couldn’t get a hearing, nor could they amend the leadership’s bill, effectively shutting them out of the discussion.
Johnson, the former Senate majority leader, believes the time has come for Georgia to have an independent, well-funded enforcer of campaign finance laws. The trick, he says, will be choosing the enforcers and insuring their impartiality.
“Do you pick them out of the phone book?” he asked. “Do judges do it? Judges have been political appointments.
“Somebody always has a political agenda. …. You still have to figure out how to take the politics out of politics.”

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Daily Disclosure: NRA goes after Democrats in contested Senate races

Until recently, the National Rifle Association’s primary involvement in the 2012 election has been limited to renting booths at state fairs and circulating flyers and bumper stickers, plus the occasional low-budget TV or radio buy.
But thanks to the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, the powerful gun rights group has stepped up its game. A $420,000 ad buy last week followed by a $358,000 buy reported Tuesday shows the NRA is ready to invest in more than just convincing fair- and rodeo-goers to vote against President Barack Obama.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s new ads, released Monday, attack the records of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who are both running for U.S. Senate — and Federal Election Commission filings indicate Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is the next target.
“Bill Nelson Needs to Go” notes the Florida senator’s approval of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said in a 2004 ruling that gun ownership is “not a fundamental right.”
“You can’t be a pro-gun senator when you back anti-gun judges,” the ad says.
“Stand for Freedom, Stand against Tim Kaine” says that Kaine received a grade of “F” from the NRA for making gun control part of the Democratic National Committee’s agenda when he was chairman.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action is the lobbying arm of the NRA, according to its website. The institute was established in 1975 both to pursue the group’s legislative agenda and to educate the public.
The organization is a nonprofit and does not reveal its donors. However, the Center for Responsive Politics discovered that conservative nonprofit Crossroads GPS, founded by Republican operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, contributed $600,000.
Because Crossroads GPS is itself a nonprofit, the source of the donation is unknown. The Institute operates primarily on contributions, not membership dues, according to its brochure.
The group is not to be confused with the NRA Political Victory Fund, a traditional political action committee operated by the Institute. The PAC has been making the more modest campaign expenditures. Unlike the Institute, the Political Victory Fund is subject to contribution limits.
The maximum allowable contribution to the PAC is $5,000. The NRA’s PAC has taken in some $11.1 million in the 2012 election cycle and spent $5 million, according to FEC records.
In other outside spending news:

• Americans for Prosperity, another conservative nonprofit, released its second ad in two weeks critical of Rep. Joe Donnelly, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Indiana. “Stop Spending Away Our Future,” released Tuesday, follows “Washington-Style Reform,” released last week. According to a press release, the pair of ads is running for two weeks at a cost of $700,000. Donnelly faces tea party candidate Richard Mourdock, who ousted longtime Sen. Richard Lugar in the state’s first competitive GOP primary in decades.
• Americans for Prosperity also reported spending $2.5 million on Web, radio and TV placement for its anti- Obama ads “Tick Tock” (posted as “A One Term Proposition”) and “New Ideas,” which were released earlier this month.
• A super PAC opposing Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from the state, reported spending $215,000 on TV and radio advertising. End the Gridlock has raised a total $252,000, but only 10 percent of that has come from within Nebraska. The super PAC’s biggest contributor is billionaire film producer Sidney Kimmel, who gave $100,000.
• The Susan B. Anthony List Inc., an anti-abortion nonprofit, reported spending $165,000 on TV ads opposing Obama. Tuesday the group released an ad critical of then-Illinois state Sen. Obama’s votes on “born alive” bills, the Daily Disclosure reported.
• The Susan B. Anthony List Inc. also reported five independent expenditures for… parking tickets? According to the FEC reports, the group paid $100 for tickets related to its opposition of Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Rep. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Tim Kaine in Virginia, Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, U.S. House candidate Christie Vilsack in Iowa and the president.
• The union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees released an online ad called “Wisconsin Workers Say ‘We’re More Than Just Paul Ryan and Scott Walker.’” The ad opposes Rep. Paul Ryan, the running mate of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
• New super PACs: America Forever in Chatham, N.J.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Transparency test: Grading the super PACs

Throughout the course of the 2012 election, the Consider the Source team will continue to write profiles about the major super PACs and nonprofits that are spending heavily on political advertising.
In addition to providing basic information about the origin of the organizations and their spending history, today we add a letter grade to each group, indicating how much they reveal about their donors.
Super PACs, which are required to report donors to the Federal Election Commission, generally receive good grades. But they may be marked down if major donations come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
Nonprofit outside spending organizations, which are not required to report their donors, receive a failing grade.
The grades are tabulated by the Consider the Source staff and are subjective. Any organization that would like to dispute its grade or provide a list of donors to the Center, please contact project director John Dunbar via email at jdunbar@publicintegrity.org.

Transparency Grading Scale

A – Excellent: All or nearly all donations of $200 or more are fully disclosed.
B – Good: All donations of $200 or more are disclosed but a small percentage may come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
C – Fair: Majority of donations of $200 or more are disclosed, but a substantial percentage may come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
D – Poor: Majority of donations of $200 or more are NOT disclosed or may come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
F – Fail: Donors are not disclosed.

Transparency Grade: A

• Revolution super PAC
• Santa Rita
• Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow
• Cain Connections
• 9-9-9 Fund
• Red, White and Blue
• Leaders for Families
• Strong America Now
• Make Us Great Again
• Our Destiny
• Winning Our Future
• Endorse Liberty
• House Majority PAC
• Priorities USA Action

Transparency Grade: B

• Restore Our Future
• Majority PAC
• American Crossroads
• American Bride 21st Century
• Ending Spending Action Fund

Transparency Grade: C

No super PACs or nonprofit groups received this grade.

Transparency Grade: D

• Citizens for a Working America
• FreedomWorks for America

Transparency Grade: F

• Americans for Prosperity
• Americans for Tax Reform
• Crossroads GPS
• 60 Plus Association
• American Action Network
• American Commitment
• American Future Fund
• Ending Spending Inc.
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

GOP platform at odds with public on defense spending

In May, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center unveiled the results of a major poll on defense spending. Our poll found wide consensus among the public and across party lines that the defense budget could use some trimming — around three-quarters of those polled thought there should be cuts for air power, ground forces, and naval forces, and over eighty percent said there is “a lot of waste” in the defense budget. In fact, respondents preferred far deeper cuts than those suggested by either the Obama administration or the Republicans.
During the conventions, we decided to take a look at what the party platforms say, and how that measures up to public opinion. First up: the GOP and presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Romney has made it clear that he intends to expand defense spending if elected in November, having already called for spending a minimum of four percent of the GDP on national defense.
But Tuesday afternoon, as Romney was being officially nominated at the Republican National Convention, his party unveiled the official GOP platform for 2012. Included in the party platform was a thirteen-page section on “American Exceptionalism,” laying out the Republican view of defense and the future of the military.
While the document is light on specifics and heavy on rhetoric, there are some clues for what would be the Romney administration’s national security priorities. And in some very expensive cases, they don’t match up with public sentiment.
For example, the platform includes a call to strengthen American’s nuclear arsenal. “We recognize that the gravest terror threat we face – a nuclear attack made possible by nuclear proliferation – requires a comprehensive strategy for reducing the world’s nuclear stockpiles and preventing the spread of those armaments,” reads the platform.  “But the U.S. can lead that effort only if it maintains an effective strategic arsenal at a level sufficient to fulfill its deterrent purposes, a notable failure of the current Administration.”
This line echoes calls from prominent Republican Congressmen who wrote a letter in February calling proposed cuts by the Obama administration a “deep concern.” At the time, the Center reported how campaign finance records show that since 2009 the signers received $1.12 million from the employees and political action committees of the four large defense contractors with a major stake in the nuclear weapons industry. (Spokespeople for House members and companies alike deny there has been any quid pro- quo.)
But the public would prefer that the nuclear arsenal be reduced, not expanded. In fact, respondents on average favored at least a 27 percent cut in spending on nuclear arms — the largest proportional cut of any in the survey. Overall, two-thirds of those polled — 78 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans, and 57 percent of independents — expressed a desire to cut spending on nuclear arms.
In another part of their platform, the GOP claims the Obama administration has “systematically undermined America’s missile defense” and calls for a recommitment to America’s missile shield.  However, a pair of recent studies by the Government Accountability Office have called into question the costs and effectiveness of the missile defense program. In one case, as the Center has previously noted, a missile defense system has been cancelled for inefficiency but is still set to cash in on $250 million in taxpayer dollars.
According to the Center’s poll, the public favors cutting 14 percent of missile defense spending. At the same time, 74 percent of those polled believe that pursuing missile defense is important for the country’s national security, which means that Americans want a missile shield- just one that costs less money.
While discussing foreign aid, the GOP insists on relying more on private sector work than government-run programs that are a “proven breeding ground for corruption and mismanagement by foreign kleptocrats.” Corruption and waste in Afghanistan and Iraq is a long-standing problem that has haunted both the Bush and Obama administrations. In July, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction told the Center he believes  $6 billion to $8 billion of taxpayer money has been lost to waste and abuse in Saddam Hussein’s former fiefdom; later that month the IG for Afghanistan reconstruction reported to Congress that millions of lost funds have been sunk into construction projects.
While the Center’s poll did not specifically ask about foreign aid, respondents were very clear about their views on Afghanistan: it’s time to get out. 85 percent of respondents expressing support for a statement that said in part, “it is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority of respondents backed an immediate cut, on average, of $38 billion in the war’s existing $88 billion budget, or around 43 percent.
The platform also delves into social issues, calling for an enforcement of the “Defense of Marriage Act in the Armed Forces,” a reference to President Obama’s support for gay marriage. The GOP also pledged that “a Republican Administration will return the advocacy of religious liberty to a central place in our diplomacy” while calling for increased security against human traffickers on the border.
At the very end of the platform is a paragraph about Iran. ”A continuation of [the Obama Administration’s] failed engagement policy with Iran will lead to nuclear cascade,” warns the GOP. “American must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear weapons capability.”
The need to contain Iran, a major focus among the “Neoconservative” wing of the Republican party, has also driven the U.S. to increase arms sales to friendly Middle Eastern countries, most notably to Saudi Arabia, which last year purchased $33 billion in arms from America.
And, of course, not all Republicans are locked in with their party on military spending. In recent weeks some noted Republicans have begun calling for a Romney presidency to consider cuts to military spending as a necessity facing the country.
Stay tuned next week when we take a look at the Democratic party platform.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Third-party candidates may hurt Romney in key states

Dark-horse presidential candidates Gary Johnson and Virgil Goode may not be household names, but with a little help from super PACs, they could peel away precious support from Republican Mitt Romney and possibly even President Barack Obama in some key state races.
The conservative Constitution Party, which seeks to “restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations,” has nominated Goode, a former congressman from Virginia, for president, potentially taking votes away from Romney in what has become a presidential swing state.
Meanwhile, Johnson, a former two-term GOP governor of New Mexico who failed to win the 2012 Republican presidential nod, has been nominated by the Libertarian Party — a perch from which he could throw a wrench in the plans of both Obama and Romney in several swing states.
Already, at least three pro-Libertarian super PACs have registered with the Federal Election Commission to support Johnson. And former Nixon administration operative Roger Stone, famous for sporting a tattoo of the disgraced president on his back, has touted a pro-Johnson super PAC.
Super PACs are allowed to collect unlimited contributions from individuals, unions and corporations to produce political advertisements that are not coordinated with any candidate. They were made possible in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
Goode, a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment and vocal opponent of abortion, served six terms in Congress — first as a Democrat, then as an independent and finally as a Republican, until he was unseated in 2008. Third-party candidates like Goode have no chance of winning the White House, but one only need look to the 2000 presidential election to be reminded of their potential impact.
When consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran as the Green Party’s candidate, he infamously garnered more than 97,000 votes in Florida, where Democrat Al Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush by just 537 votes. Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes secured the presidency for Bush, even though Gore won the national popular vote.
One recent poll showed Goode drawing 9 percent of the vote in his home state of Virginia, whose 13 Electoral College votes are being sought by both Romney and Obama.
Similarly, a recent poll showed Johnson — an anti-war candidate who supports marijuana legalization and smaller government — receiving 5.3 percent of the national popular vote. That makes him an afterthought as a presidential candidate, but he may still have an impact in battleground states like New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire and even North Carolina.
Third-party candidates aren’t always suggested as options in polls. But one survey earlier this summer showed Johnson winning 12 percent of the vote in New Mexico, a state that Obama carried handily in 2008, but where Bush eked out a narrow victory in 2004.
Johnson garnered 7 percent of the vote in a May poll in New Hampshire, which Obama won easily four years ago but Bush carried in 2000. Earlier this month, Public Policy Polling showed Johnson pulling 7 percent of the vote in Colorado where Obama was the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to win the state. Johnson is also polling at 3 percent in North Carolina, another swing state.
Super PAC spending on behalf of minor-party candidates like Johnson or Goode “definitely could happen,” said Rob Richie, executive director of the nonprofit FairVote, which advocates for increased ballot choice.
“Most people have made up their minds between keeping Obama or going to Romney,” Richie continued. “Some people, though, […] if they realized that there was another candidate running, might abandon one of the major-party candidates.”

Super PACs lead to more choices?

Officials with both the Obama and Romney campaigns declined to comment about whether they were concerned about the role super PACs touting third-party candidates could play in the presidential race.
Some third-party activists, though, are keen to harness super PACs — and their ability to raise unlimited funds, which they argue could increase the visibility of their preferred candidates.
“I wish we had super PACs out there supporting our candidates,” said Jim Clymer, who was the national chairman of the Constitution Party until April. He is now Goode’s vice presidential running mate.
“A couple of people who believe deeply in what we’re trying to promote could put us on the map in a way that we haven’t been,” he added. “The reality is that getting your message out takes a lot of money.”
His sentiments are echoed by Libertarian Party activists.
“A libertarian candidate like Gary Johnson doesn’t have the infrastructure behind him that the major-party candidates have,” said Austin Cassidy, the treasurer of the pro-Johnson Libertarian Victory Committee super PAC, which was formed in May.
“If voters have the chance to compare him on an even playing field that could really spark something,” Cassidy continued.
Cassidy’s Libertarian Victory Committee raised only $200 — all from Cassidy’s own pocket — before throwing in the towel earlier this month, but the pro-Johnson Libertarian Action Super PAC has raised $107,500 as of the end of June. The bulk of that money — $100,000 — came from wealthy entrepreneur Joe Liemandt, the Stanford University dropout who founded and runs the software company Trilogy.
Notably, Liemandt's wife Andra has bundled more than $200,000 for Obama's re-election efforts, and the couple alone has donated $107,400 to the Obama Victory Fund, which benefits Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Together, they have also donated more than $130,000 to the Libertarian National Committee since 2009.
Wes Benedict, the former executive director of the Libertarian Party who is now the treasurer of the Libertarian Action super PAC, stresses that $100,000 in receipts is “significant,” even if it’s dwarfed by the tens of millions of dollars raised by the pro-Obama and pro-Romney super PACs.
“In Libertarian terms, this is a big step forward,” he said. “We’re in new territory running this super PAC,” he continued. “I hope we make a difference.”
Since it was launched in April, Libertarian Action, which promotes “low-cost, high-quality Gary Johnson materials” such as yard signs, bumper stickers and door hangers on its website, has reported making more than $16,000 in independent expenditures.
Another pro-Johnson super PAC, called Freedom and Liberty PAC, has also raised $100,000, though it has yet to make any expenditures touting Johnson or criticizing his rivals. The group was founded by one-time Johnson aide Kelly Casaday, and its sole donor is Chris J. Rufer, the founder of the Morning Star Company, a California-based agribusiness and food processing company.
The super PACs file their campaign finance reports with the FEC on a quarterly basis, so it’s unknown how much money they have raised since the second quarter ended in June. A few wealthy donors could easily make them more flush with cash. At least one million-dollar contribution has been given to a pro-Johnson super PAC, according to Jim Gray, the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee.
Not all third-party activists, though, think embracing super PACs is a good thing.
“[Super PACs] are squashing competition,” said David Cobb, who was the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2004. “When the wealthy elite can buy microphones and amplifiers and drown out the rest of us, it is supremely ridiculous to say that that somehow increases the competition of ideas.”

Good things or dirty tricks?

One person with the potential to make a large super PAC splash for a third-party candidate is long-time Republican operative Roger Stone.
Stone was the youngest staffer on Nixon’s infamous Committee for the Re-election of the President, the group that financed the Watergate break-in. He later went on to work with the late Lee Atwater, the strategist who managed Republican George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis. And during the contentious Florida recount between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, Stone was dispatched to supervise the process.
Yet, in February, Stone, who did not respond to requests for an interview, said goodbye to the GOP and registered as a Libertarian after casting a vote for Ron Paul in the Florida GOP presidential primary.
In June, the Huffington Post reported Stone was constructing a pro-Johnson super PAC.
“The American people have never been offered a candidate who is fiscally and economically conservative but socially tolerant,” Stone has said. “With Gary Johnson, you can have the best of both.”
In his writings online, Stone stresses that Johnson has the potential to perform well in many battleground states, particularly in the West — and that Johnson has the potential to win over both supporters of Obama and Romney.
Stone’s name has not yet appeared in any FEC super PAC filings, and so far, his new Libertarian Party allies are cautiously optimistic about his planned endeavors.
“Hopefully he’s up to good things and not dirty tricks,” said Benedict, the former Libertarian Party executive director.
Most political observers argue that outside groups are unlikely to change the fundamental calculus that makes a third-party presidential bid an uphill battle.
Americans Elect is a prime example, according to political science professor Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. The organization launched in 2010 with the hope of getting a centrist political candidate onto the ballot in all 50 states. The group raised more than $35 million — including $5.5 million from billionaire hedge fund investor Peter Ackerman — but it failed to find a willing candidate and has since retreated from the limelight.
“A super PAC can only sell a candidate if there's a market for him or her,” Sabato said. “I don't think there is one in this highly polarized year.”
But as Democrats learned in 2000, a third-party candidate need not be a threat to win to have an impact.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

One Person View On:Bank of England Interest Rate Policy - As Consumers Struggle

One persons comment and opinion of how they feel about this policy:Extract as written 

 My savings are intended firstly to help in eventual retirement and secondly, to allow me to spend some of it now.

 The former is being made very uncertain by this pronounced and prolonged savers/debtors imbalance - in effect, negative rates eroding the pensions pot. If I had the sort of money mpc members have, then it wouldn't be a problem.

 The latter is not possible because of inflation. There's no slack to spend. I have to try to preserve what I have by keeping it in fixed term accounts to get the best rate in order not to fall too far behind inflation.

 Rates ought to keep pace with inflation. If house prices fell (it's not certain they would by much), then they will recover after the short term.  After 4 years of bountifully low rates few mortgagees should be in potential difficulty - savers shouldn't be expected to cover current debtors risks.

 Wish I was a debtor.

Ace Debt News: says that as we are getting deeper into an imbalance in our economy we are reaching a tip over point, at which time we will be unable to put our economy back on kilter! Their last comment about wishing to be a debtor is most unnerving and should be making alarm bells ring with our government! The fact is they are so involved with their own " self importance" they fail to notice the man/woman in the street!

Anyone like to comment on this comment or my reply please use the Disqus box provided and we can start to gauge peoples opinion alternatively tweet your opinion at #AceDebtNews or email me at News and Views.with your story?              

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Credit card lending sees biggest drop in six years

Net credit card lending fell by £147 million in July, according to figures released today by the Bank of England.

Ace Debt News: Says 

This is one good thing that comes out of any crisis that people start to cut-back on spending!As the advent of a downturn in the fortunes of people and as austerity measures start to bite this will be only a good thing.

We cannot borrow ourselves out of debt! We can only manage debt with good financial advice!
        
For  more information on managing debt email me at Ace News Desk with your details and l will try to help and share your opinions at #AceDebtNews

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Osborne 'Will Fail To Stop Rise In Public Debt'

The government is "most unlikely" to meet its target to eliminate Britain's structural deficit by 2015, a think-tank has warned.

Chancellor George Osborne will also fail in his economic goal to stem the increase in public debt before the next general election, according to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).

In a report released today, the CPS said: "The coalition came into office in 2010 with the stated aim that it would eliminate the current structural deficit within five years and stem the increase in public debt as a proportion of GDP. It is not achieving these aims.

"Though it correctly asserts that the deficit has fallen by around a quarter since 2010, the cyclically-adjusted current deficit (the part it said it wanted to eliminate within five years), had only fallen by 13.2% by the end of 2011/12."

The study found that the the majority of the reduction in the deficit has come from cuts to investment spending and tax increases rather than public spending cuts.

It said that only 6% of the Coalition's planned cuts to current expenditure had so far been implemented.

The right-leaning think-tank's report also said that official national debt is forecast to rise by £605 billion over the course of this Parliament, or from 53% of GDP in 2009/10 to 76% of GDP in 2014/15, despite the deficit falling.

"This week's growth and borrowing figures make it all the less likely that debt will be on a downward path until the next Parliament, meaning the Coalition's hard mandate will not be met on unchanged policy," the study added.

The Government's problems are exacerbated by the fact that the difference between "deficit" and "debt" is still widely misunderstood by the public, added the CPS.

A poll conducted by the think-tank as part of the report found that 47% of people believe that public debt will actually fall by around £600 billion by 2015.

Only 39% of people also correctly identified that the budget deficit has fallen since 2010.

Ryan Bourne, one of the report's authors, said: "It's becoming increasingly probable that, on current policy, neither of the Coalition's original fiscal mandates are going to met.

"With the recent dreadful borrowing figures, now would be a good time for the Coalition to restate the scale of our fiscal problems, and to set out how they will be addressed."

He added: "Only by having a clear knowledge of the problems and solutions on offer from the different parties will the electorate be able to make an informed choice in 2015."

The Treasury rejected the CPS analysis.

"The Independent Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) most recent assessment is that the government is broadly on track to meet its debt and deficit targets," a spokesman said.

"The OBR will update its forecasts in the autumn."

The posts l provide are the views from a number of contacts, news and blogging services. They are not always tried and tested by us unless it states.

Please tweet your opinion to #AceNewsServices or email me at News & Views  

Thank you, Ian [Editor]

Alistair Darling Warns Germany: Don't Go Back To The 1930s

Alistair Darling Warns Germany: Don't Go Back To The 1930s:
Alistair Darling has strongly criticised the German government's policies towards recovery in the eurozone, suggesting a failure of leadership by Angela Merkel and other European politicians risks political upheaval similar to that seen in the 1930s.

In an interview with The Huffington Post UK the former Labour chancellor expresses his fears that European politicians will continue to kick the can down the road, despite predictions that the Greek debt crisis will come to a head in September.

Building on comments at the weekend in which Darling attacked George Osborne and the coalition's economic policies, he now turns his fire on the German government, suggesting only an "extraneous shock" will spur them into taking substantive action.

"If we carry on like this, the only thing that's going to change people's minds is another severe shock," he told us. "It could be a banking crisis, a default, it could be that someone wakes up one morning and decides to have a real go at one of the larger economies in Europe. And people will find the fund they have works for small countries, but if Spain had problems it would hoover it up in a few hours.

Darling dismisses predictions that next month will see a denouement to the eurozone crisis, despite speculation that the ongoing uncertainty surrounding Greece's future in the single currency will come to a head in September.

Next month is likely to see both Greece and Spain having to go cap in hand to Europe for bailouts, and while concerns about the eurozone have been subdued over the summer the next few months are expected to see further negotiations as Greece struggles to meet the austerity requirements of its rescue package from the European Central Bank. The eurozone psychodrama is likely to resurface by the end of this week, as talks on Greece's austerity timetable are expected to resume.

Darling believes the current debt management plan for Greece is untenable.

"You've got to have a settlement than is credible," he says. "One that leaves the Greeks with more debt in 2020 than they started with is not credible. Their prime minister [Antonis Samaras] is not a firebrand, he won the election saying there was no alternative.

"And it's not just him," Darling goes on. "Spain, again a right of centre government, one that is following almost to the letter Mrs Merkel's prescription, is saying this is not working. [Italian prime minister] Mario Monti, who is more mainstream if you like, could only persuade Italians to take the pain if there is some gain.

"What you see in Europe at the moment is policies being pursued that are manifestly not working," Darling concludes, "And this is like the 1930's, they carried on pursuing policies which weren't working. How much is it going to take to make them change their minds?

"Does Germany remember the history of the 1930s, when people claimed it was high inflation that brought in fascism? It wasn't. It was the depresssion that brought in the despair into the then-Weimar Republic that allowed people who were absolutely vile to take over," Darling told HuffPost on Thursday.

"If you take the economic lessons of the 1930s, the prescription that is being advocated now is not disimmilar to the prescriptions that were being advocated by the British and US treasuries in the early 1930s, and it didn't work."

"It took a new deal and ultimately re-armament. I think people have forgotten it."

In a broadside against the coalition, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, Darling suggested leaders were creating the impression that they've given up, and that this was politically dangerous.

"I am more despairing now than I've been since this crisis started," he says. "If you go back to 2008, people are now openly saying we were right. I recently saw one of the present government's chief backers who said that to me, as if he'd never said anything different.

"Our influence is much reduced, and we need to co-operate with the eurozone," Darling insists. "Politicians will get it wrong from time to time, but at the moment everybody looks like they've given up trying, and that creates disillusionment, and that's what you've got to worry about. People feel that no-one's showing the lead, they become open to ideas that most people would normally want to give a wide berth to."

Asked whether he thought European geopolitics are still more malleable than people commonly assumed, he replied: "It is. People forget 2008, never mind the 1930s, or the 1920's. It really is very depressing.

"I think the best we can hope for is a continued muddling through for a few more crises, but there will come a time when something will happen, and my guess is it will happen in a way they weren't expecting, and they'll be caught with their trousers down.

"The one thing they are agreed on is that they're not going to agree. It will take some extraneous shock to the system that will achieve that."

In terms of Labour's response to the economic crisis, Darling stuggests that Ed Balls needs to "put down markers" at the Labour Party conference. "Both Eds will be aware of it," he told us.

"You can spend your first year looking back, your second year taking stock, but in the third year Ed Balls will want to develop that, and I think he will."

But Darling counsels the current generation of frontline politicians to stay their hand in terms of bashing the banking industry.

"What we have to do is find that fine line between putting things right without trashing something, because there are people in other parts of the world who'd dearly love to get their hands on it," he says.

Darling referred to the attacks on Standard Chartered by regulators in New York state earlier this month, which the former chancellor described as "political", in line with other Labour politicians.

"Bashing banks can be superficially good politics, and bashing other people's banks cleary is very attractive. It looked like a classic American pose, to accuse the bank of all sorts of things, and get them to settle.

"If I was an American politican or regulator, I'd say be careful. One thing that's terribly important in fiancial services is certainty. You don't want a degree of arbitrariness about how it goes.

"It's a difficulty place to occupy, but I think because I'm no longer in frontline politics I can better occupy it than if I was," he concludes.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider. Tweet your opinion at #AceNewsServices or email me at News & Views 

Thanks Ian [Editor]

Former Tory Treasurer: Give Back 'Tainted' Asil Nadir Money

Former Tory Treasurer: Give Back 'Tainted' Asil Nadir Money:
The man who was Tory treasurer when the party received hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from Asil Nadir's Polly Peck business empire has called on David Cameron to hand back the "tainted" money.

Lord McAlpine said the Prime Minister was under a "moral duty" to return the political gift after the former fugitive tycoon was jailed for 10 years yesterday.

The sentencing of Nadir, who donated £440,000 to the Tories during the 1980s, came a day after he was convicted of stealing £28.8 million from the global business he built from an east London textile company.

Urging the governing party to return the money, Lord McAlpine told The Daily Mail: "It is tainted money and it shames the Conservatives if they hang on to it. They have a moral duty to give it back."

He said the money should be paid to Nadir's creditors, some of whom lost their life savings when Polly Peck International (PPI) crashed leaving debts of £550 million.

Nadir, who was once 36th on the Sunday Times Rich List, was found guilty of 10 counts of theft from the Stock Exchange high performer between 1987 and 1990.

The 71-year-old fled Britain for his native Northern Cyprus in May 1993 but returned voluntarily in August 2010 to face trial.

The amount he stole is the equivalent of £61.6 million today. The prosecution had alleged it was part of £150 million taken from the company.

Old Bailey judge Mr Justice Holroyde said Nadir stole the money out of "pure greed" and that his behaviour had contributed to PPI crashing. Investors who lost money included large institutions, small investors and pension funds.

Lord McAlpine, who was Tory Treasurer from 1975 when Margaret Thatcher became leader until her fall in 1990, added: "The moment he (Nadir) fled the country in 1993, to avoid criminal charges, it was obvious to me he was a complete conman.

"Frankly the Tories should have given the money back in 1993. But today the case is even clearer.

"There is a moral imperative for the money to be returned. The money was not Asil Nadir's to give although we thought it was at the time. Therefore the Tory Party has a duty to return it."

The peer added that he was certain that Lady Thatcher would have ordered the party to return the money immediately if she was still leader.

The Conservatives have insisted the donations were made by Polly Peck, rather than by Nadir, and had seen no evidence the money was stolen.

However, Labour backbencher Simon Danczuk pointed to press reports from the 1990s which stated that a report by accountants Touche Ross in 1993 warned the Tory Party that £365,000 of the £440,000 it received in donations came from money defrauded from Polly Peck.

In a letter to Tory co-chairman Baroness Warsi, Mr Danczuk said: "The Touche Ross report raised serious issues about the donations received.

"The conviction of Asil Nadir on charges of theft has brought this issue back into the public eye but it also presents the Conservative Party with an opportunity to finally put this matter to bed."

A Conservative Party spokesman said they were not aware of the Touche Ross report and questioned whether it ever existed.

Tweet at #AceNewsServices or email your News & Views 

Even Adam Smith Would be Appalled by Romney's Tax Evasions

Even Adam Smith Would be Appalled by Romney's Tax Evasions:

Mitt Romney says “every year I’ve paid at least 13 percent [of my income in taxes] and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent.”
This is supposed to be in defense of not releasing his tax returns.

Assume, for the sake of the argument, he’s telling the truth. Since when are charitable contributions added to income taxes when judging whether someone has paid his fair share?

More to the point, Romney admits to an income of over $20 million a year for the last several decades. Which makes his 13 percent — or even 20 percent — violate the principle of equal sacrifice that lies at the core of our notion of tax fairness.

Even Adam Smith, the 18th century guru of free-market conservatives, saw the wisdom of a graduated tax embodying the principle of equal sacrifice. “The rich should contribute to the public expense,” he wrote, “not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more in proportion.”

Equal sacrifice means that in paying taxes people ought to feel about the same degree of pain regardless of whether they’re wealthy or poor. Logically, this means someone earning $20 million a year should pay a much larger proportion of his income in taxes than someone earning $200,000, who in turn should pay a larger proportion than someone earning $50,000.

But Romney’s alleged 13 percent tax rate is lower than that of most middle class Americans who earn a tiny fraction of what he earns.

At a time when poverty is increasing, when public parks and public libraries are being closed and when public schools are shrinking their offerings and their hours, when the nation’s debt is immense, and when the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together — Romney’s 13 percent is shameful.

Sun, 08/19/2012 - 05:18
Tweet at #AceNewsServices or email your News & Views and get your article printed.
These posts and articles are not always our views but the views of the writer.  
Need to email me leave a comment and use our new Disqus box and share.
Thank you, Ian Draper [Editor]

BofA: 'CODE RED..RISK OF SELL-OFF IS HIGH' (SPY)

BofA: 'CODE RED..RISK OF SELL-OFF IS HIGH' (SPY):

Yesterday, BofA's top North America economist Ethan Harris penned a bearish note on the the U.S. economy, writing that it "is in the eye of the storm" and that a number of troubling headwinds loom on the horizon.
BofA strategists Arjun Mehra and Cheryl Rowan have a warning more precisely aimed at the stock market. In a note to clients entitled Code Red, Mehra and Rowan claim there is "limited upside from here" and the "risk of a sell-off is high."
The strategists point out that stocks have managed to rally even in spite of one of the worst earnings seasons in years and growth slowing in the U.S. and around the world. They think the explanation is the "Bernanke Put;" in other words, investors are expecting more monetary easing in the form of QE3.
But in spite of the dovish language from the Fed this past week, Mehra and Rowan are concerned that the central bank may disappoint.
From the note:

Risk of a sell-off is high

Economist Michael Hanson points out an interesting circular relationship between the stock market and Fed policy. There are some who believe the Fed will not launch QE3 so long as stock prices remain high, yet the stock market is high because it anticipates QE3. Should the Fed disappoint at the September 12-13 FOMC meeting, the risk of a stock sell-off is high. S&P 500 support on a correction is in the 1360-1325 area. Additional support is at 1300-1250. Attention will be on the Jackson Hole symposium next week to get a feel for the Fed’s tone.

Macro catalysts increase the risk of a correction

Our strategists see an unusually high number of macro catalysts over the next 3-6 months that could take markets lower. We expect economic growth to disappoint in the second half of the year in anticipation of the fiscal cliff. This would exacerbate any slowdown from the deepening recession in Europe and decelerating growth in emerging markets. There is also the ongoing tension in the Middle East, the potential for a US credit downgrade and accelerating downward analyst estimate revisions. To top it off, September is seasonally the weakest month of the year for stock price returns.

The BofA strategists conclude that with the VIX at record low levels, those looking to hedge against a correction should buy put options on stocks while they are cheap, echoing a message several Wall Street analysts have relayed on television and in client notes over the past week.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.Tweet your opinions at #AceFinanceNews or email your news and views  to us for inclusion in our blog? 

So, Mitt Romney, What Do You Really Believe?

So, Mitt Romney, What Do You Really Believe?:

Too much about the Republican candidate for the presidency is far too mysterious
WHEN Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favoured keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35% to 28% for the richest Americans.
All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see "Mitt Romney’s chances: The changing man"). And that is a pity, because this newspaper finds much to like in the history of this uncharismatic but dogged man, from his obvious business acumen to the way he worked across the political aisle as governor to get health reform passed and the state budget deficit down. We share many of his views about the excessive growth of regulation and of the state in general in America, and the effect that this has on investment, productivity and growth. After four years of soaring oratory and intermittent reforms, why not bring in a more businesslike figure who might start fixing the problems with America’s finances?

Details, details

But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper. The convention offers Mr Romney his best chance to say what he really believes.
There are some areas where Mr Romney has shuffled to the right unnecessarily. In America’s culture wars he has followed the Republican trend of adopting ever more socially conservative positions. He says he will appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court and back the existing federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA). This goes down well with southern evangelicals, less so with independent voters: witness the furore over one (rapidly disowned) Republican’s ludicrous remarks about abortion and "legitimate rape" (see "The Todd Akin affair: Grenades and stilettos"). But the powers of the federal government are limited in this area; DOMA has not stopped a few states introducing gay marriage and many more recognising gay civil partnerships.
The damage done to a Romney presidency by his courting of the isolationist right in the primaries could prove more substantial. He has threatened to label China as a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. Even if it is unclear what would follow from that, risking a trade war with one of America’s largest trading partners when the recovery is so sickly seems especially mindless. Some of his anti-immigration policies won’t help, either. And his attempts to lure American Jews with near-racist talk about Arabs and belligerence against Iran could ill serve the interests of his country (and, for that matter, Israel’s).
Once again, it may be argued that this will not matter: previous presidents pandered to interest groups and embraced realpolitik in office. Besides, this election will be fought on the economy. This is where Manager Romney should be at his strongest. But he has yet to convince: sometimes, again, being needlessly extremist, more often evasive and vague.
In theory, Mr Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, "The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs" is like "Fifty Shades of Grey" without the sex). Mr Romney began by saying that he wanted to bring down the deficit; now he stresses lower tax rates. Both are admirable aims, but they could well be contradictory: so which is his primary objective? His running-mate, Paul Ryan, thinks the Republicans can lower tax rates without losing tax revenues, by closing loopholes. Again, a simpler tax system is a good idea, but no politician has yet dared to tackle the main exemptions. Unless Mr Romney specifies which boondoggles to axe, this looks meaningless and risky.
On the spending side, Mr Romney is promising both to slim Leviathan and to boost defence spending dramatically. So what is he going to cut? How is he going to trim the huge entitlement programmes? Which bits of Mr Ryan’s scheme does he agree with? It is a little odd that the number two has a plan and his boss doesn’t. And it is all very well promising to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care plan and the equally gargantuan Dodd-Frank act on financial regulation, but what exactly will Mr Romney replace them with--unless, of course, he thinks Wall Street was well-regulated before Lehman went bust?

Playing dumb is not an option

Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?
It is not too late for Mr Romney to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it. But he has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.


Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »




All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider. Tweet your views at #AceFinanceNews or email your news and views on the article and we will post it?