Mortgage Fairs

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Given the last year’s trend, is there an end in sight to new record-low interest rates? For example, on July 22, Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which provides a snapshot of national average mortgage rates, reported a national average rate of 4.56% with 0.7 points on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. At the same time… Read more »

Bank of America: It Depends On How You Define Materiality

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Bank of America incorrectly classified as much as $10.7 billion in short-term lending and repurchase deals for mortgage securities as sales. This claim surfaced in a May 13 letter to the SEC where the banking corporation alleges that the transactions were immaterial and that it would be beefing up its internal accounting controls.  This letter… Read more »

Scrushy Back in the News

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new review of the convictions in the government corruption case against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and ex-HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. Questions: 1. What is the “honest services” fraud law? 2. What is a “quid pro quo” agreement? 3. A judge issued a $2.9 billion civil judgment… Read more »

Barry Minkow in the News

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Barry Minkow was the famed entrepreneur who started ZZZZ Best in the 1980’s, only to have it collapse in 1987 under the weight of a discovered Ponzi scheme.  Minkow was convicted of fraud, among other charges, and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but only served 7 years. Minkow now is head of the Fraud… Read more »

Small Discrepancies Grow Into a Giant Fraud

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Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that served more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, was at the heart of a huge 2009 fraud perpetrated through the significant inflation of earnings and falsification of accounts and assets for a number of years.  Chairman, Ramalinga Raju, resigned  in January 2009 after revealing that… Read more »

Donated Inventory

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Over the next five years, Wal-Mart plans to donate about 1.1 billion pounds of food to food banks and provide $250 million to help them buy refrigerated trucks, improve storage and develop better logistics. The plan to contribute $2 billion in cash and food to the nation’s food banks is considered to be one of… Read more »

Bond Rating Under Fire

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E-mails and other documents were presented as evidence at a hearing examining the causes of the financial crisis on Capitol Hill on April 23, 2010.  This hearing is part of an 18-month investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Senator Carl Levin. Subcommittee assertions are that the rating agencies were well aware… Read more »

Frequent Flyer Miles

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If the merger is approved, United Airlines and Continental Airlines will also be merging their frequent flyer programs.  But what is their track record in terms of rewarding the miles versus actual requests?  Consulting group, IdeaWorks Company, said Continental awarded free tickets 71 percent of the time in response to requests, and United 69 percent… Read more »

Reform Bill Targets Credit Raters

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On Thursday, May 13, 2010, the U.S. Senate  took steps to overhaul the credit-rating agency business, which is widely maligned for its role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis.  An amendment by Democratic Senator Al Franken passed for a government clearinghouse to be set up to assign debt rating duties to agencies, with federal regulators developing… Read more »

“Deadbeat” and proud of it?

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When you hear the word “deadbeat,” you automatically think bad things.  According to former MBNA employee, Jerry Young, a credit card deadbeat is the insider term used by credit card company executives, that refers to credit card users who pay off their bills promptly and in full each month. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? By doing… Read more »