Free Republic

Uncertainty over the direction of US pension reform is leading some companies to scale back their contributions despite a deficit of more than $100bn among the top 100 schemes. Milliman, a firm of actuaries, said a number of companies had privately admitted postponing voluntary payments for fear they would lose flexibility over their contributions in future. This comes as Congress considers rule changes to make companies more responsible for their pension promises to employees. Changes to accounting standards are also expected to give investors more visibility of pension liabilities. Schemes which promise a guaranteed percentage of salary at retirement are...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A bank official testified Monday that he didn't believe it was wrong for his company to have donated tens of thousands of dollars to local politicians who could help the bank get business. Douglas Pauls, the chief financial officer at Commerce Bancorp, said he considered it to be a "common practice" of big American companies. "Is there anything improper about that whatsoever?" asked Kevin Marino, a lawyer for a Commerce Bank official being tried on corruption charges. "No," Pauls said. Pauls offered his defense of the company as federal prosecutors began introducing evidence designed to portray two...

It’s so easy to say you support the troops, regardless of which side you come down on in the issue of the War in Iraq itself. Yeah, you can send care packages and put yellow ribbon magnets on your car to make you feel all warm and fuzzy that you’re doing your own small part. You can do as I do and use forums such as this one to expound the viewpoint of the folks we send in harm’s way, hoping that someway, somehow, someone who can make a difference may read your rant and actually do that something that...

Mirant's Period of Exclusivity Extended 30 DaysATLANTA, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today, Mirant (Pink Sheets: MIRKQ - News) reiterated that it would not make its out-of-market payments to Pepco unless ordered to do so by the Bankruptcy Court or the District Court. Further, Mirant sought to rectify a misperception by stating that no court has ordered it to continue with these payments under its back- to-back agreement with Pepco. On December 15, Judge Michael Lynn, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, denied a motion by Pepco that sought to order Mirant to continue making...

WASHINGTON - Medicare payments for cancer drugs will decline next year but will still exceed what doctors pay for them, congressional investigators said Wednesday. Cancer doctors and some patient advocates have said the Bush administration's planned cuts would imperil office-based chemotherapy treatments and force patients to travel to hospitals for their medicines. But Medicare payments for the drugs will exceed doctors' costs by 6 percent on average, while reimbursements for other services will be more than double, on average, what they were two years ago, the congressional Government Accountability Office said. The GAO study was based on 16 drugs that...

OPINION Published February 3, 2004 Japan just can't switch to gold - yet By ANTHONY ROWLEY WHETHER a studied statement, an off-the cuff comment or a veiled threat, Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki's suggestion last week that Japan could diversify part of its huge foreign exchange reserves into gold has had international reverberations. It has brought home once more the fact that the vast dollar reserves which Japan and the rest of Asia hold are a Sword of Damocles for the dollar and the US Treasury market. The impact of such a move on the dollar would be severe....

MEXICO CITY Nearly one Mexican in five regularly gets money from relatives employed in the United States, making Mexico the largest repository of such remittances in the world, according to a poll sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank. The pollster, Sergio Bendixen, estimated that the payments help feed, house and educate at least a quarter of Mexico's 100 million people. The poll was part of a report on Monday by the bank, which said money sent home by all Mexican immigrants would soar to $14.5 billion this year, exceeding tourism and direct foreign investment to become this country's second most...

International Perspective, by Marshall Auerback The Kindness Of Strangers Is Killing America September 16, 2003 The Fed’s flow of funds data that was released last week more than ever highlights America’s acute dependence on the kindness of strangers, particularly those of the Asian variety. Globalisation has been turned on its head. Instead of the centre lending capital to the developing periphery, capital is flowing back to the centre--that is, the United States. Even poor nations are lending the United States huge quantities of surplus capital, mainly to keep America afloat as the world's buyer of last resort. China is...

The checks are in the mailbox. Friday, the Internal Revenue Service sent out the first wave of about 25 million checks - including more than a half-million to addresses in Wisconsin - as an advance payment on the expanded child credit in the new tax law. Another wave will follow next week, with a final one washing into the nation's homes the week after that. The checks came about because the new law increased the child tax credit to $1,000 from $600. They will pump some $15 billion into the pockets of Americans in a bid to add pep to...

Mbeki awards one-off payments to apartheid victims By Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent 16 April 2003 South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, has announced a one-off payment of 30,000 rand (£2,500) each as compensation for thousands of victims of apartheid identified by the truth commission. The move is aimed at those seeking compensation from international companies that allegedly benefited under the apartheid system, which ended with all-race elections in 1994. Mr Mbeki rejected a blanket amnesty for people who committed atrocities in the apartheid era. But he said his government would not follow a recommendation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission...

<p>Matiana Perez de Valencia, 51, and her son Jesus, 14, live in Yuba City. Her late husband worked as a bracero in the 1940s and 1950s and told her he never received all the money he earned. The bracero program was instituted during World War II because of a labor shortage.</p>

GENEVA, Sep 12, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Governments should scrap existing welfare programs and provide every person in the world with a basic income to meet fundamental human needs, according to experts meeting under U.N. sponsorship here Thursday. Programs in the United States and elsewhere have shown that such payments can work, said Guy Standing, chairman of the Basic Income European Network, or BIEN, which organized the three-day conference. "When we first introduced this, we were regarded as mad, bad and dangerous to know. But we are now welcomed by many policy-makers," Standing told reporters. Around 200 government...

What will reparations do for Blacks in America? How will it make life better? How will it solve the poverty and self-destruction that has plagued the Black community for decades? What about after reparations? What then? Will out of wedlock births in the Black community suddenly drop from 70%? Will inner city ghettos suddenly disappear? What about the crime rate in the Black community? Will Blacks suddenly stop slaughtering each other? What difference will a reparation payment magically make that the billions in welfare payments have not? Rather than the so-called civil rights leaders trying to help blacks get out...

Thu Jul 18, 9:52 PM ET By BEN WALKER and RONALD BLUM NEW YORK (AP) - The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, said to be having cash-flow problems earlier this year, were more than two weeks late before making nearly $1 million in deferred payments to Steve Trachsel and Gerald Williams, several baseball officials told The Associated Press. AP Photo Trachsel, now pitching for the New York Mets, was due $428,571.43 on June 30 under a contract he signed with Tampa Bay two years ago. But the Devil Rays did not direct deposit that amount until Wednesday, according to four management...

The proposal by some in this country to have reparations paid to black Americans for slavery in the past is one of the worst and possibly most divisive proposals to come out of the liberal establishment. The idea is so obscene that even the logistics of implementing such a payment are almost impossible to comprehend. Trying to answer the questions alone could reduce one to a blithering idiot. How would you decide who gets paid? Many blacks have come to this country from Africa and other countries since slavery was abolished, how do you weed them out? What about the...

IRS Erroneously Paid Slavery Credits By CURT ANDERSON .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - The Internal Revenue Service mistakenly paid out more than $30 million to tax filers seeking nonexistent slavery tax credits in 2000 and 2001, according to a Treasury Department investigation. A growing number of black taxpayers are being misled by scams falsely claiming that, for a fee, they can get tax credits or refunds as reparations for slavery. The scams are given credence when some taxpayers actually get money. The IRS received more than 77,000 tax returns last year claiming $2.7 billion in reparations refunds, up...