Saturday, Dec 28th
Last update09:40:32 AM GMT
Economic Glance
The attorneys general of all 50 U.S. states announced Wednesday that they are joining to probe mortgage loan servicers who are accused of submitting false affidavits, but they stopped short of calling for a national moratorium.
The multistate investigation will initially focus on whether Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Ally Financial and other large mortgage companies made misleading or fraudulent statements to evict struggling borrowers from their homes.
Hollywood film studio Metro Goldwyn Mayer has begun plans to file for bankruptcy protection in an effort to rid itself of $4bn (£2.5bn) of debts. The studio is asking more than 100 of its creditors to approve a plan that will see it enter chapter 11 bankruptcy while it restructures.
Creditors will get a 95% stake in the company as part of the deal. MGM said it would continue to operate as normal during the bankruptcy procedures.
Buffett, the billionaire investor who runs Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), said Tuesday at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington that the nation's tax code "has gotten distorted to a huge extent," by levying higher taxes on secretaries and janitors than on CEOs and private equity whiners.
In a suburban oasis amid golden hills north of San Francisco, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union are processing thousands of marijuana cigarettes a day, rolling joints in rice paper cylinders from Amsterdam.
The startup factory for a Bay Area firm called Medi-Cone is part of a commercial industry evolving to serve the hundreds of thousands of medical pot users who can legally use the drug in California, as well as marijuana dispensaries amassing an estimated $1.3 billion in annual transactions.
Economists and historians will study the so-called Great Recession for decades to come, but we already know that the deep downturn laid bare the widening income gap between rich and poor in America.
The Census Bureau reported on Sept. 16 that the number of Americans living in poverty hit a 51-year high in 2009, and income disparity has only grown more severe in economic hard times. It's led Robert Reich to conclude the time is now for tough medicine to narrow this gulf.
One in seven Americans is living in poverty, the highest number in the half-century that the government has kept such statistics, the Census Bureau announced Thursday. Last year was the third consecutive year that the poverty rate climbed, in part because of the recession, rising from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, last year.
Asians were the only ethnic group whose poverty rate did not change substantially; every other race and Hispanics experienced increases in poverty rates.
Stepping up his campaign against outsourcing, US President Barak Obama today asserted his administration would offer tax benefits only to those firms which will create jobs in the country, a move that may hit Indian IT firms in a big way.
"We believe on tax breaks for those firms that create jobs in the US. So we are beginning to do that," Obama said at a press conference here.
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