Free Republic

Summary Apple has been paying a dividend since Q3 2012. The current dividend has fallen a percentage of earnings. Calculations are made to estimate what the new dividend will be. . . . Summary While Apple's dividend has remained constant over the last four quarters, it value as a percent of earnings has fallen significantly. If Apple wants to keep the earlier ratios, then it will need to raise the dividends. My estimate is that Apple is likely to raise the per share dividend to between 62 and 65 cents per share from the current 47 cents. On the other...

'The hardest thing to explain is the glaring evidence which everybody has decided not to see,' this quote from Ayn Rand describes the lackluster reaction to the prez's forged docs—as does the novel 'Scammed' listed in Amazon's Kindle Store. When the miscreant behind the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, Bernie Madoff, was exposed his name was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country and heard on television ad nauseam. But nary a sound is heard from the MSM about the current occupant of the White House's faux documents.

Andrew H. Madoff, who reported to authorities that his father and longtime Wall Street colleague, Bernard L. Madoff, had masterminded perhaps the largest Ponzi scheme in history, a multi-billion-dollar crime that Andrew described as a “father-son betrayal of biblical proportions,” died Sept. 3 at a hospital in New York City. He was 48. His lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum, told the Associated Press that the cause was mantle cell lymphoma. Mr. Madoff was diagnosed in 2003 with lymphoma and suffered a relapse a decade later. Mr. Madoff was the only surviving child of “Bernie” Madoff, a once-revered financier who is now serving...

Credit-ratings agency Moody's thinks Yeshiva, a private Jewish university located in New York City, will be broke by next year. Yeshiva lost an estimated $105 million losses with convicted Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who was also a trustee, but that's not why the university is running out of money. According to an extensive two-year investigation by TakePart's Steven Weiss and The Jewish Channel, the administration blew the school's financial future on bad hedge fund investments over the last decade. At one point before the 2008 financial crisis, the university became allocated 65% in hedge funds, which was the third-highest of...

Madoff Customers to Receive More Than $350 Million in Fourth Payout By Jacqueline Palank Bernard Madoff’s cheated customers will receive $351.6 million soon, the fourth payout in the winddown of the Ponzi-scheme operator’s investment firm. Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, on Monday began sending out checks to Mr. Madoff’s former customers, bringing the total amount of money returned to customers to nearly $6 billion. “Today’s distribution is another important step forward for our recovery efforts,” Mr. Picard said in a statement. “We are already looking ahead to additional,

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two senior officials at JPMorgan Chase & Co and predecessor companies repeatedly confronted Bernard Madoff over irregularities in his business, a new lawsuit said, suggesting that bank leaders had "direct knowledge" of his Ponzi scheme. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday on behalf of shareholders against Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and 12 other current and former executives and directors was based in part by statements made by Madoff himself during a series of interviews. "JPMorgan was uniquely positioned for 20 years to see Madoff's crimes and put a stop to them," the...

The 75-year-old mastermind behind the epic Ponzi scheme has stage four kidney cancer, meaning it could have spread to the tissue and other parts of the body.Who knew Bernie Madoff had a heart? The convicted Ponzi prince who ripped off thousands of investors is reportedly recovering from a heart attack and battling kidney cancer, according to CNBC. The imprisoned fraudster spent much of December in the hospital, the business channel reported. Madoff is now back where he belongs — in his cell. CNBC described Madoff's kidney cancer as stage four, which could be very bad news for the epic swindler...

What’s it going to take? I just finished reading Andrew C. McCarthy’s excellent article appearing in today’s National Review Online, titled “Obama’s Massive Fraud.” McCarthy points out that Martha Stewart was sent to federal prison for doing essentially the same thing Obama has done on a vastly larger scale, with his fraudulent sales pitch of Obamacare–intentionally misrepresenting a situation, knowing that the lie would harm others financially. McCarthy also describes how CEOs of various firms are routinely dragged into court, sued and prosecuted, even jailed for decades, by Obama’s own administration, for frauds based on omissions of information that utterly...

Jeremy Friehling, the 23-year-old son of Bernard Madoff’s former auditor, David Friehling, has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The younger Friehling was attending medical school at Ohio State University. Police found his body last Thursday inside his apartment in Columbus, Ohio, after his friends contacted them after some of his Facebook postings aroused concerns about his wellbeing. He was a valedictorian in his high school in New City, N.Y., and was active in sports, according to the Journal News. He graduated from Duke University. His father, David Friehling, was a partner in the New City, N.Y., accounting firm...

Media Matters for America accepted funding from at least three foundations whose money “grew” under the fraudulent stewardship of the now-incarcerated Bernard Madoff. One of those foundations was backed by a man many believe was in cahoots with the legendary financial criminal. Madoff’s Wall Street empire crumbled in late 2008 after federal authorities were tipped off to his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Among those institutions that saw their fortunes evaporate were foundations that had placed their trust and investments in Madoff’s surreal enterprise. Three of those philanthropies contributed money to Media Matters in 2008, at least one of which may have...

<p>On Christmas Eve 2008, two weeks after Bernard L. Madoff confessed to running history’s largest Ponzi scheme, he and his wife, Ruth, attempted suicide in their Manhattan penthouse.</p> <p>Mrs. Madoff said in an interview with The New York Times: “I don’t know whose idea it was, but we were both so saddened by everything that had happened. It was unthinkable to me: hate mail, phone calls, lawyers.”</p>

Well they finally did it to themselves. At least now, and at least in one state, Democrat politicians are starting to feel the effects of the type of accounting fraud they committed on the country for the last three years.  As the Obama “It’s-not-my-fault” Reelection Tour rumbles westward spewing diesel-powered and politically enhanced particulate matter, charges of fraud are overhanging the Democrats’ fall campaign in California. But the charges aren’t the familiar “I see dead people voting” scams that usually accompany left-leaning races. Instead they are fraud charges of the Madoff kind.California Democrat uber-finance guru, Kinde Durkee, apparently has been...

Imprisoned financial scam artist Bernard Madoff boasted in a jailhouse letter that he is "quite the celebrity" and treated "like a Mafia don," ABC News said on Thursday. ABC, which will feature an interview with Madoff's daughter-in-law on news program "20/20" on Friday, released portions of a letter provided by Stephanie Madoff Mack, whose husband committed suicide in the wake of his father's conviction in a massive Wall Street fraud. Mack told ABC she had written Madoff a letter detailing family events he was missing due to his life sentence of 150 years behind bars, as a way of rubbing...

There goes Rick Perry again, saying things that make liberals’ heads explode. Speaking to a crowd in Iowa this weekend, the Texas governor and GOP presidential hopeful doubled down on statements he made in his book, Fed Up!, that Social Security is essentially a pyramid scheme. “It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people,” Perry said. “The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie. It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can’t do that to them.” The left reacted,...

Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, says SEC may have destroyed documents“From what I’ve seen, it looks as if the SEC might have sanctioned some level of case-related document destruction,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, in a letter to the agency’s chairman, Mary Schapiro. “It doesn’t make sense that an agency responsible for investigations would want to get rid of potential evidence. If these charges are true, the agency needs to explain why it destroyed documents, how many documents it destroyed over what timeframe, and to what extent its actions were consistent with the law.” Agency staff “destroyed...

After 52 years of marriage, crook Bernard Madoff's wife is finally calling it quits. Ruth Madoff, 70, hasn't seen her 73-year-old hubby for more than 8 months, reports the Daily Mail. She's cutting ties with Madoff in an effort to reconcile with her remaining son, Andrew, and her dead son's family, say sources. Her son Mark committed suicide late last year on the second anniversary of his dad's arrest for massive fraud, and Ruth was turned away from his memorial by his distraught widow. "Ruth has not seen Bernie since Mark's suicide, and I think the remnants of the family...

In a remarkable development, the beleaguered Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) actually awarded the employee who botched the investigation of the largest Ponzi scheme in history with a cash bonus for a great job performance. It marks the latest of many scandals for the famously inept federal agency charged with policing the nation’s financial industry. An SEC Inspector General probe discovered that the agency rewarded an incompetent investigator who missed Bernie Madoff’s illegal, $50 billion Ponzi scheme with a cash bonus for good work. Released this week, the IG report doesn’t name the SEC investigator but confirms that he (or...

Why would anybody pay $675 for convicted swindler Bernie Madoff’s honorary diploma from Yeshiva University? The real question, exclaimed Rich Kroll, slapping his head after he got outbid for the diploma, is why anybody wouldn’t pay it. “It’s history! It’s the big thing! It’s the biggest thing of the century!” said the anguished Kroll, a North Miami online retailer. “I should have bought it — I should have kept bidding. I dropped out at $600, because I only have $500 in my pocket, but I should have found a way! I wanted it!” Kroll was just one of hundreds of...

Court-appointed trustee Irving Picard is looking to clawback monies from Madoff feeder funds........$9B from HSBC, $6.4B from JPMorgan Chase, $2B from UBS, $1B from Mets' owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, $425M from Citigroup...........among others.