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Monday, May 31, 2010

Proposed law gives hope to uninsured IndyMac depositors

Note: A previous version of this story said more than 6,400 depositors lost $233 million when IndyMac failed. This version corrects that those people were in California only and adds another 2,300 underinsured depositors in other states and countries. It also increases the total loss to $266 million, per FDIC records.


Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said last year that underinsured depositors would need an act of Congress to recover money lost when IndyMac Bank went under in the mortgage meltdown.

Distraught then, the depositors were hopeful Friday after two Southern California members of Congress introduced a bill to repay much of their losses.

"I am walking on a cloud," said Gina Martelli, who lost $63,000 -- money from a disability settlement -- that was above the FDIC's $100,000-per-depositor limit when IndyMac was seized July 11, 2008.


FDIC data show that former IndyMac customers have losses totaling more than $266 million after receiving payment from the federal agency of 50 cents for every uninsured dollar in addition to 100% of their insured deposits.

IndyMac was an early catastrophe of the financial crisis, having specialized in issuing high-yielding certificates of deposit to fund stated-income home loans. The Pasadena thrift became a ward of the FDIC, which eventually sold its remains to a group of hedge-fund billionaires and wealthy investors, including George Soros and Michael Dell.

Indylineup More than 6,400 IndyMac depositors in California lost money because it was only later that year that Congress raised the FDIC insurance limit to $250,000, Reps. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Jane Harman (D-Venice) said in a statement.


Another 2,300 depositors in other states and countries also were underinsured, said Lisa Marshall, a leader of a group of former IndyMac customers who have pressed Bair and Congress to recover their funds.


The bill introduced Thursday by Dreier and Harman would retroactively extend the $250,000 ceiling to deposits at banks that failed beginning Jan. 1, 2008. The largest of those by far was IndyMac.

?Their losses were no less difficult and no less tragic than those that occurred later that same year," Dreier said in a statement.

The legislation also would help depositors burned by the failures of five smaller financial institutions earlier in 2008: Hume Bank of Hume, Mo.; ANB Financial of Bentonville, Ark.; First Priority Bank of Bradenton, Fla.; Columbian Bank and Trust of Topeka, Kan.; and Silver State Bank of Henderson, Nev.

In an interview, Harman declined to predict the chances of the legislation but said she hoped it would be added as an amendment to the massive financial overhaul bill that is nearing final passage by Congress.

A similar measure, which she and Dreier tried to attach to the legislation that created the Consumer Financial Protection Agency in December, was voted down.

Steve Adamske, a spokesman for House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, said Frank supported the measure and had worked to help shape it with assistance from the FDIC.


?The FDIC's support in this helped their cause,? Adamske said, adding that it wasn?t clear whether the measure, drafted as stand-alone legislation, would become part of the overhaul package.

The repayments would come from the FDIC deposit insurance fund, which raises money by charging banks premiums for insurance.

Because IndyMac depositors already have gotten back 50 cents for every dollar of uninsured deposits, a person who had $200,000 in an account would already have received $150,000. If the measure becomes law, the additional $50,000 would be refunded.

A depositor who had $300,000 in an account would already have been repaid $200,000 -- the $100,000 in insurance, plus half of the uninsured funds. If the measure becomes law, an additional $50,000 would be refunded, bringing the total to the $250,000 limit and leaving the depositor $50,000 short of full recovery.

One of the contentions of underinsured IndyMac depositors was that bank employees misinformed them about insurance limits, how to set up multiple accounts under different combinations of names, and who could be named a beneficiary of trust accounts.

Many of the depositors set up multiple accounts, and the losses of some exceeded $1 million, FDIC officials said.

The Dreier-Harman legislation would only enable each depositor to recover a maximum of $250,000, said Harman and the FDIC.


-- E. Scott Reckard


Photo: IndyMac customers lined up outside the Encino branch after the bank failed in July 2008. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times




Full story at http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/MoneyCompany/~3/xiydQGGSgTc/indy-mac-depositors-fdic.html

Regulatory Capture Underground and At Sea

A

Full story at http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/30/regulatory-capture-underground-and-at-sea/

The Future of Personal Computing, Part 2

A

Full story at http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/30/personal-computing-apple-google-2/

Entrepreneur's Journal: Hire Your Spouse or Your Kids?

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Some highly successful businesses are husband-and-wife teams. Or, may even involve the hiring of the kids. Yes, the proverbial family business can be a powerful thing.


What's more, there may be some attractive tax benefits.


But of course, you need to know the rules (which, no doubt, can get complicated). So here are some things to consider:

Continue reading Entrepreneur's Journal: Hire Your Spouse or Your Kids?

Entrepreneur's Journal: Hire Your Spouse or Your Kids? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 30 May 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Business - Small business - Entrepreneur - BloggingStocks - Networking and Peer Support

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Disney's 'Prince' Turns Out to Be a Frog

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Last week, I said DreamWorks Animation (DWA) bombed with Shrek Forever After. This week, it's the Mouse's turn to fail miserably. Disney (DIS) was supposed to have a blockbuster on its corporate hands in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a project that was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the same man who turned Pirates of the Caribbean into a major film franchise.



After looking at the Friday-through-Sunday estimates, I can see that the company has nothing on its corporate hands, unfortunately. According to early numbers from Box Office Mojo available at the time of this writing, Persia settled for third place with $30 million.

Continue reading Disney's 'Prince' Turns Out to Be a Frog

Disney's 'Prince' Turns Out to Be a Frog originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 30 May 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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prince of persia: sands of time - Jerry Bruckheimer - Walt Disney - DreamWorks Animation - Prince of Persia

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"I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will...

"I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will." - Warren Buffett (as quoted by Chris Dixon)

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Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/wUkCjq4d43M/i-try-to-buy-stock-in-businesses-that-are-so-wonderful-that-an-idiot-can-run-them-because-sooner-or-later-one-will-2010-5

Chinese Bank Chairman: Small Bank Lending Is Spinning Out Of Control

Guo Shuqing China Construction Bank

The chairman of China Construction Bank (939 HK), Guo Shuqing, has serious concerns about China's financial system.


He's concerned about inflation, a risk which has been discussed substantially on this site before. The latest 31% year over year jump in M1 money is worrisome, for example.


Yet what struck us was his description of the risks created by China's small banks during just the last year:


Telegraph:


Mr Guo warned that the continuing splurge in lending also raises the risk of a sharp rise in non-performing loans among smaller Chinese banks that have funded local government infrastructure projects, often of dubious viability.


“I think that small banks last year newly issued loans grew even fast, some even doubled their liability and assets,” Mr Guo said.


“At the moment the banks seem healthy but I think that small banks, because we don’t know the structure of their assets, maybe have got more risk exposures because they are growing too fast and their risk management is not as good as big banks.


“And secondly because they are very small and their loans are going to a more concentrated number of customers, that also could definitely cause a problem.”


Read more here >

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Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/fXLNlgC8nSY/china-small-bank-lending-crisis-2010-5

BP Robots to Cut Damaged Pipe; Oil Dispersant Maker Says 'We Have Nothing to Hide'; Oil D�j� Vu

With Top Kill officially dead, BP has moved on to an option involving underwater robots to cut the pipe, followed by another funneling scheme.

Please consider BP?s Robots to Begin Next Attempt to Curb Record Oil Spill
BP Plc will use undersea robots to begin cutting damaged pipe from its leaking oil well off Louisiana as early as today, risking temporarily increasing the flow as it makes another attempt to end the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

?BP and the government have no choice but to proceed,? Jason Kenney, an Edinburgh-based analyst for ING Commercial Banking, who rates the shares a ?buy? and owns none, said yesterday in an interview. ?This is war. As in all wars, it rarely goes smooth.?

Using remote-controlled vehicles at the mile-deep well, BP plans to shear away most of the damaged pipe that once rose from the well to the Deepwater Horizon. Then it will make a more precise cut with a diamond-toothed band saw, BP Managing Director Robert Dudley said in television interviews yesterday.

That will make a clean junction for a gasket-lined cap intended to catch most of the oil and route it to the surface through a pipe, Dudley said.

The new funnel may enable BP to capture as much as 90 percent of the oil and gas escaping from the well, Dudley said on ?Face the Nation.? BP is also preparing a second blowout preventer that may be bolted on in place of the cap and used to try again to stop all leakage, he said.

The spill may cost BP $22 billion should it continue through early August, when the company expects to plug the leak with one of the relief wells, Kenney, the ING analyst, said yesterday. That compared with his estimate of $5.3 billion had the latest attempt to plug the well worked.

BP fell 5 percent to 494.8 pence in London trading on May 28 and has lost 25 percent of its market value since the blast.
Well Could Leak Until August

An aide to Obama says US Spill could last until August.
Oil could gush into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP BP.L. rig until August and the U.S. government is "preparing for the worst," Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's top adviser on energy and climate change, said on Sunday.

Speaking on the CBS TV show "Face The Nation," Browner said: "There could be oil coming up till August when the relief wells are done."

She said BP's latest effort to try to capture and contain oil would not provide a permanent solution or prevent some oil escaping into the sea even if the maneuver succeeded.

"We are prepared for the worst. We have been prepared from the beginning," she added.
Nothing to Hide

The Oil Dispersant Maker Says 'We Have Nothing to Hide'
The manufacturer of the oil-dispersing chemicals being used by BP PLC in the Gulf of Mexico said today that injecting the dispersant on a still-gushing wellhead was unprecedented and should be carried out with ample testing.

"That's a new approach," said Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Nalco, whose dispersants are marketed under the name Corexit. "Our belief is, because it is a new approach, it needs to be done with a lot of testing to make sure there are no unfavorable impacts, and we encourage that."

Scientists have compared BP's heavy use of dispersants in the Gulf to a massive chemistry and biology experiment, saying it is an exercise in environmental trade-offs. The chemicals break up oil that would otherwise float on the surface into tiny droplets that can sink and be consumed by fish, bacteria and microorganisms.

The consensus is that the 870,000 gallons of Corexit that have been either sprayed on the Gulf's surface or injected underwater at the broken wellhead has likely spared beaches and wetlands from an even worse oil slick, while contributing to the formation of massive, difficult-to-track oil plumes underwater that could have long-term ecological consequences.

Fyrwald said Nalco has disclosed the complete chemical constituents of Corexit to EPA to assist in the government's evaluation and testing of the otherwise proprietary formula.

"We've given the exact formulation," he said. "We have nothing to hide."
Hallelujah. The maker has released the exact formula. What good does it do to know the formula when no one knows if use of dispersants is the right thing to do.

The problem is everyone is guessing.

If they are supposed to be testing Corexit as the CEO suggested, then they sure as hell should not be using 870,00 gallons of it as the test.

D�j� Vu



If you have a sneaking suspicion we have been through this before, with the exact same efforts to contain the spill and the exact same failures to do so, then you are correct.

Please play the above video. It's D�j� Vu all over again. Technology has gotten a lot better at drilling deeper and deeper wells. Technology to cleanup spills has made no gains.

Is that a sign the penalties for major screwups are not big enough? I think so.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/u7EM_Xe5o7c/bp-robots-to-cut-damaged-pipe-oil.html

The Hong Kong Model for National Identity Cards

?May I see some identification, please?? asked a retail clerk in my home town Seattle taking my check. I said certainly and handed the sales woman my Hong Kong identity card. She looked at it blankly for a moment then said, ?Can I see some other kind of identification??


Sometimes when I?m feeling cranky or mischievous, I hand over my Hong Kong ID card when I need to produce some kind of identification. Why not? It is a perfectly valid document. It has my photograph on it. I know of no law that specifies that my state driver?s license has become a national ID card. At least not yet.


The United States is groping towards a national ID card system, compelled both by worries about security in an age of terrorism and the need to control immigration. In doing so it could learn some lessons from Hong Kong.


In the U. S. the driver?s license, issued by individual states, has become a de facto identity card. It is used more for cashing checks and opening bank accounts to getting on aircraft even for domestic flights.


Call me too literal-minded, but a driver?s license is for driving. Identity verification is something else. Why should citizenship be confused with a demonstrated ability navigate through heavy traffic without causing an accident?


I was reminded of the need for such a card by the controversy over Arizona?s new anti-immigrant law. That state has, if nothing else, put the cart before the horse. Before the police can check on somebody?s ?papers? one needs to settle on what ?papers? a person should be required to carry.


The U.S. clearly has a need for some kind of identification card to cash checks, to board airplanes, even to enter a federal building to pick up tax forms. But Americans instinctively balk at the idea of having to carry around a national identity card. Since strictly speaking nobody actually has to have a driver?s license, we kid ourselves into thinking it is still voluntary.


Before returning to the U.S., I lived for sixteen years in Hong Kong, where everybody over a certain age must obtain an ID card and carry it with him or her at all times. I never considered this a serious infringement on my freedom, although there certainly was a hassle having to obtain one (and to replace one when lost.)


The Hong Kong police can and do stop people at random and ask them to produce their ID cards. It is not uncommon on the streets to see a couple policemen huddled around a young Chinese man inspecting his ID. That this involves profiling is undeniable. In my sixteen years there, I never once was asked by a policeman to produce my card. It was assumed that being a Westerner I had entered on a valid work permit.


Of course, I had to produce my ID, or at least provide the number on it, numerous times during the ordinary course of living, from opening a bank account to applying for a job to voting.


It would be far better to follow Hong Kong?s example and create a national card, probably issued through the Department of Homeland Security. It would lift a burden from state motor vehicle authorities that they were never intended or are equipped to shoulder.


The advantage that the ID card has over a driver?s license, social security card or any of the other make-shift sources of identification now in use is that they can be coded to show at a glance a person?s status: citizen, permanent resident, foreign student, guest worker.


In Hong Kong, ID cards are issued to everyone, whether or not they are born there, have become permanent residents or are on short-term work contracts such as the tens of thousands of domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines. In the same way, a national identity card is also a requisite if America is to have any kind of orderly guest-worker program.


A standardized, secure national ID card issued by the federal government is essential for controlling immigration into the U.S. In short: it?s the way it?s done. Anybody who thinks a national ID card is un-American might have a valid point. But then he should stop complaining about ?securing our borders.?


Todd Crowell worked as a Senior Writer for Asiaweek in Hong Kong before returning to the U.S.



Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Newgeography/~3/re60MKJV_fw/001593-the-hong-kong-model-national-identity-cards



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