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With Maryland facing a looming budget shortfall of more than $1 billion, Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) offered a buyout plan Tuesday to state employees willing to resign by the end of next month. State workers who agree to participate in the "voluntary separation program" will receive a lump-sum payment of $15,000, another $200 for each year of service and three months of health benefits. O'Malley, who was reelected last month, said the program is intended to "cut costs in a fiscally responsible way" and help avoid layoffs in his budget proposal due to the General Assembly in mid-January. "Under this...

The deal didn’t tip after all. Chicago-based Groupon Inc. has turned down an acquisition offer from Google Inc. and is staying independent, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation said Friday. The two companies had been engaged in talks, with speculation about the marriage reaching a fever pitch over the last week. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google reportedly had offered between $5 billion and $6 billion for the daily deal start-up.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As recently as two months ago, the Federal Reserve sounded optimistic about the economic recovery. Now the central bank is clearly more worried, and economists say there's not much more it can do to help. The Fed said Tuesday that it would spend a relatively small amount of money -- about $10 billion a month, economists estimate -- buying government debt. The move is designed to drive interest rates on mortgages and corporate borrowing at least a little lower and help the economy grow faster. In a statement after a one-day meeting, the Fed said the pace...

The private equity industry has what would seem to be an enviable problem. Despite a recent history of turning solid corporations into debt-laden cripples, leveraged buyout firms are sitting on $445 billion of committed capital. That's how much private equity has raised — but not yet spent — from investors like pension funds and endowments. Sounds like $445 billion is a good problem to have. But it's not that simple.

Times buyout is back More staff cuts loom By HOLLY SANDERS WARE and KEITH J. KELLY Last Updated: 4:12 AM, September 26, 2009 Posted: 1:17 AM, September 26, 2009 More cuts coming. The job-cut knife is again being brandished at New York Times Co., as the struggling newspaper publisher prepares to launch another round of employee buyouts to further trim costs. The Times told its biggest union that it is willing to offer buyouts rather than laying off workers because members had "stepped up" to help the paper earlier this year by agreeing to a temporary pay cut proposed by...

BOSTON — Banco Santander, the Spanish company that owns a minority stake in Sovereign Bancorp Inc., has reached an agreement to buy the rest of Sovereign that it doesn’t already own in a deal valued at $1.9 billion.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the U.S. is ready to pump capital into and purchase equity stakes in banks, investment houses and mortgage lenders if that is needed to help stabilize markets, rescue banks and ease clogged credit flows. “We are developing strategies to use the authority to purchase and insure mortgage assets and to purchase equity in financial institutions, as deemed necessary to promote financial market stability,” Paulson said Friday after meeting with finance ministers from the G7 industrialized countries. “As we develop plans to purchase equity, as in the approach we are taking to broad mortgage-asset purchases,...

My Friends, We are in the greatest financial crisis of our lifetimes. Congressional inaction has put every American and the entire economy at the gravest risk. Yesterday the country and the world looked to Washington for leadership, and Congress once again came up empty-handed. I am disappointed at the lack of resolve and bipartisan good will among members of both parties to fix this problem. Bipartisanship is a tough thing; never more so when you're trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action. But inaction is not an option. If we do nothing, many businesses may fail. Sonic Corporation, a...

Many observers blame the current financial crisis on a breakdown of private markets. A more careful look shows that government policy, step by step, led to the current crisis. First, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to help provide mortgages for people who didn’t qualify for conventional mortgages. As government-sponsored enterprises (GSE), they rapidly grew to where their debt was nearly half the size of the federal government’s debt.

House Republicans, who've been swamped with your phone calls demanding that they reject President George Bush's historically huge $700 billion bailout of Wall Street and bad mortgage bankers, have come up with another idea:

On Main Street, insurance protects people from the effects of catastrophes. But on Wall Street, specialized insurance known as a credit default swaps are turning a bad situation into a catastrophe. When historians write about the current crisis, much of the blame will go to the slump in the housing and mortgage markets, which triggered the losses, layoffs and liquidations sweeping the financial industry. But credit default swaps -- complex derivatives originally designed to protect banks from deadbeat borrowers -- are adding to the turmoil. . . . The rest of the article is here and is well worth reading...

(IsraelNN.com) First it was Citibank. Now it's Barclay's and New York City's Chrysler Building skyscraper. Muslim Arabs are buying out collapsing Western banks and businesses and gaining growing international power, but some Arab investors are worried their investments may go down the drain with the American economy. The current financial crisis in the United States has spread to other countries because of a massive debt that was not backed by enough real and liquid collateral. Banks and businesses gasping for financial breath are up for sale at basement prices, but no one is certain if the basement is the bottom....

"If the Fed can extend $30 billion to help Bear Stearns address their financial crisis," Hillary Rodham Clinton argued, "the federal government should provide at least that much emergency help to families and communities to address theirs." That's a savvy appeal to Americans' strong sense of fundamental fairness - that if goodies go to Wall Street, then they also should go to Main Street. Voters, like buyers, should beware. You might think that Democrats oppose the $30 billion Bear Stearns bonanza, because it's a big government bailout that rewards bad business practices. Wrong. Like Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Clinton...

NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Monday a subordinated note and a loan in a takeover offer by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) of Bear Stearns Cos (BSC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will have a term of 10 years, and will be renewable by the New York Fed. The rate due on the loan is the primary credit rate, which currently stands at 2.50 percent and fluctuates with the discount rate, the New York Fed said. The term on the subordinated note is the primary credit rate plus 475...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has sponsored an unusual provision at the urging of the nation's banks granting them immunity against an active patent lawsuit, potentially saving them billions of dollars. The federal government would have to pay $1 billion to the owner, DataTreasury, over 10 years as compensation ....... The provision, passed without dissent by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July and inserted into legislation scheduled for a vote by the full Senate this month ....... Political action committees of financial institutions were the largest single category of industry donors to Sessions, with $52,300 in the current election cycle, the...

Ford also wants to close the books this year on 11 former Visteon Corp. plants that it took back from its former parts-making arm, which was spun off as a separate company in 2000. About 5,200 workers at the plants are eligible to take jobs at factories that Ford plans to keep, although Ford is offering incentives for them to stay with the new owners. Ford plans to sell or close the plants -- 10 in the U.S. and one in Mexico -- by the end of the year.

Chrysler LLC said on Monday it is offering buyouts of up to $100,000 each to hourly workers at 12 of its Detroit-area facilities as part of its November plan to eliminate up to 10,000 unionized jobs. The offer will be extended to about 14,000 workers represented by the United Auto Workers union at the plants which make cars, engines, axles and other parts, Chrysler spokeswoman Michele Tinson said. About 4,600 can opt for a more attractive retirement package. The buyouts could be extended to a 13th plant in Warren, Michigan, which was idled this week, and the automaker is in...

Six gulf states control sovereign wealth fund assets of some $1.7 trillion. Here are the men who manage these funds The men who manage the so-called sovereign wealth funds of the Persian Gulf for their governments are quickly becoming some of the world's most powerful money managers. They are using billions from Persian Gulf oil revenues to change the face of global finance by buying big chunks of blue chip companies, partnering with private equity firms to do buyouts, and increasingly snapping up companies on their own. As the credit crisis deepens, investment banks and buyout firms are stepping back...

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. will extend buyouts and early retirement incentives to its entire U.S. hourly work force as the automaker expects sales to fall this year in a rapidly weakening economy. The corporation will offer all of the automaker's 78,000 workers some type of buyout, GM spokesman Dan Flores said. GM's 40,800 workers now eligible for retirement will receive special incentives next month to leave the company by April. Another 5,200 workers already were offered retirement packages to leave by March. It's not known how many of the 735 hourly workers at GM's Saginaw Metal Casting Operations, 1629...

Microsoft is weighing up taking a stake in Facebook in a move that could value the social networking site at $10 billion (£5 billion) and trigger a bidding war. It is understood that the world’s largest software developer is considering paying between $300 million (£149 million) and $500 million for a 5 per cent stake in Facebook. A move by Microsoft would almost certainly trigger counter interest from a clutch of rivals including Google, the leader in search advertising, and Viacom, the media giant. Talks between Microsoft and Facebook are thought to be at an early stage and Facebook is...