Free Republic

Bernie Madoff's Victims (So Far) HSBC "has emerged as one the largest victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged fraud with potential exposure of about $1bn to the investment manager’s collapsed venture...HSBC’s exposure stemmed from loans it provided to institutional clients, mainly hedge funds of funds, that wanted to invest with Mr Madoff. HSBC’s direct exposure is believed to be about $1bn in loans provided to clients who invested some $500m of their own funds in Mr Madoff’s venture. Under the typical terms of these deals, if the US authorities recover any funds from Mr Madoff, HSBC will be paid first, with...

Both Indian and Pakistani community of Chicago and its suburbs are in a state of unrest and shock due to an unbelievable investment scam worth millions-of- dollars targeting the community and sudden disappearance of Sunrise Equities's CEO Salman Ibrahim. State regulators are considering criminal charges against a developer named Ibrahim, who fraudulently persuaded hundreds of muslims to invest in real estate deals. Some gave Ibrahim their life savings or mortgaged their homes before he disappeared in August. Investors say they may loose more than USD 50 million. Salman Ibrahim, CEO and President of the Chicago-based Shariah compliant financial services firm,...

From dreams to debt Investors say they expected to cash in on the hot real estate market when they entrusted money to a company in Murrieta. Instead, many are losing their homes and facing bankruptcy. 03:08 PM PST on Saturday, November 17, 2007 By LESLIE BERKMAN The Press-Enterprise Video: Anna Richter talks about losing money in the investment scheme Residents of Copper Canyon in Murrieta watched in astonishment as a group of investors snapped up homes in their middle-income community last year, paying $50,000 to $100,000 more than the sellers wanted. Today, the front yards are browning, overgrown with weeds....

Woodstock Creator Tells DA That Funds Have Gone Missing A $40 Million Shortfall Where did Norman Hsu get his money? That has been one of the big questions hanging over the prominent Democratic fund-raiser, as reports have surfaced about hundreds of thousands of dollars he made in political donations, plus lavish parties, fancy apartments and a $2 million bond he posted to get out of jail earlier this month. New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run...

The Teachers' Lesson: How To Scam Social Security by David Hogberg, Ph.D. How would you like to work for just one day and earn thousands of dollars for it afterwards? Perhaps that sounds like an infomercial on cable TV at three in the morning. Or maybe it sounds like another FOX TV “reality show.” In fact, it is the experience of more than a few Texas schoolteachers. In 2002, the Dallas Morning News reported that the Coleman Independent School District advertised on its website a “Temporary Employment Program” that “may include custodial work, cafeteria work, clerical work, classroom aide.”1 Most...

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) is asking whether he can take money from donors who want him to be president, then give it back later. The Federal Election Commission said Wednesday that it will look into the novel question. Obama is indicating that he wants to at least keep the option of using the public financing system for his presidential campaign if he becomes the Democratic nominee. To do so, the Illinois senator could not spend any money from contributors for political purposes, but instead use federal funding that is expected to total about $85...

Excerpt - NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Taxpayers owe more than $500,000 per household for financial promises made by government, mostly to cover the cost of retirement benefits for baby boomers, USA Today reported, citing its own analysis. Federal, state and local governments have added nearly $10 trillion to taxpayer liabilities in the past two years, bringing the total of government's unfunded obligations to an unprecedented $57.8 trillion, said the report late Wednesday. That is the equivalent of $510,678 for every household in the U.S., said USA Today. ~ snip ~

Enhanced pension deals are county's albatross... The county has the distinction of carrying more retirees (6,050) than active employees (4,631) on county health insurance. Add in 3,100 spouses and dependents of retirees, and the county is insuring more than 9,000 individuals on the retiree side. The county now pays out more in health care for retirees than for active employees. In addition to her monthly check, she was promised, and cherishes, free health insurance for the rest of her life. It is the sum of such promises to Schumann and 6,000-plus other retirees that is a major stumbling block as...

An Irresponsible President Deficits? Let the next White House worry. SHEER COINCIDENCE: Last Monday, the Social Security and Medicare trustees released their annual depressing report. On Tuesday, congressional negotiators handed President Bush a "victory" -- his assessment -- in agreeing to extend his capital gains and dividend tax cuts. Mr. Bush and his fellow tax-cuts-above-all proponents would like you to believe that the two events are unrelated. But taken together they underscore the terrible fiscal predicament that Mr. Bush has chosen to bequeath to his successor. According to the new estimates, the Social Security trust fund will be depleted in...

HOUSTON-Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay wrapped up six days on the witness stand Tuesday by saying that the company's collapse was "the most painful thing in my life.""I lived Enron very much," Lay told jurors in his federal fraud trial. "I think we built a great company. I think the most painful thing in my life was watching Enron finally have to go into bankruptcy."

In Congress today is a tax reform bill called “The FairTax.” I want to tell you a little about it and then tell you why it is important for the immigration debate. The FairTax would institute a national retail sales tax and eliminate the personal income tax, the payroll tax, and the taxes hidden in business but paid by the consumer. It replaces all of these taxes with a 23% tax on personal consumption, meaning that out of every dollar spent by consumers, 23 cents will go to the tax man and 77 cents will go to the merchant. This...

CLEARWATER - Michael Schiavo has asked a court to waive the two-year statute of limitations on filing a medical malpractice lawsuit against one or more of his deceased wife's caregivers. Terri Schiavo, 41, died March 31 after her feeding tube was removed after a seven-year court battle. Schiavo's attorney in this case, Mark Perenich, said he was not able to discuss the proposed lawsuit behind Tuesday's request for an extension of the two-year statute of limitations. By law, medical malpractice lawsuits must be filed within two years of the alleged misconduct unless an extension is granted. In October 2003, Terri...

By now, every journalist should know that you have to carefully check out any scheme coming from the White House. You can't just accept the administration's version of what it's doing. Remember, these are the people who named a big giveaway to logging interests "Healthy Forests." Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.

Prediction: The Social Security debate is going to turn pretty ugly pretty fast. It's quite civilized at the moment, with reporters and op-ed types jousting over economic assumptions and actuarial rates. But New Year's Day brought a Washington Post report that the coming campaign over Bush's privatization plan will take on the coloration of a full-fledged political war, complete with television ads. Such groups as Progress for America (which spent millions on Bush's reelection), the Club for Growth and the National Association of Manufacturers are planning big-budget campaigns, and the AARP is already spending 5 mil on full-page opposition ads...

Krugman lies about personal accounts for Social Security. If the liberal establishment is so sure that reforming Social Security with personal accounts is such a terrible idea, then why do they have to lie about it? Consider Paul Krugman’s latest New York Times column. It’s designed to scare his readers into believing that “privatization,” as he calls it, “dissipates a large fraction of workers’ contributions on fees to investment companies” and “leaves many retirees in poverty.” To prove this, he offers a smorgasbord of deceptions, errors, distortions, and misquotations about the way reform with personal accounts has failed — or...

NOVEMBER 30--A New York woman who briefly worked as a nanny for Don Imus has sued the radio host for wrongful termination, claiming she was canned for bringing a harmless cap gun and pocketknife with her during a trip last Thanksgiving to the family's sprawling New Mexico ranch. Nichole Mallette, 24, also claimed in her New York State Supreme Court lawsuit, a copy of which you'll find below, that she was defamed when Imus later announced on his program that he had been forced to "disarm" his nanny, whom he labeled as dangerous and a "terrorist." In her complaint, filed...

The Free-Lunch BunchThe Bush team's secret plan to "reform" Social Security During the 2000 campaign, candidate George W. Bush seemed particularly confident about his ability to pay for Social Security reform. Despite independent estimates that creating the kind of "voluntarily" private accounts he envisioned could cost more than $1 trillion, Bush consistently took the position that he could reform Social Security for free, without undermining promises to baby boomers anticipating retirement over the next several decades. Why was Bush so sure of himself? According to documents unearthed yesterday from the trove of 19,000 files given to me by former Treasury...

Don’t “Enron” Social Security, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) cries, attacking President Bush’s reform plans to let workers invest part of their Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) is less subtle, holding a press conference recently where he and some fellow Senate Democrats beat the Enron-Social Security analogy like a drum. But guess what, senators? Social Security is already “Enron-ed.” And personal account-based reform plans are the way to prevent all Americans from losing money as many Enron workers did. Daschle compares Bush’s personal account reform plans with the collapse of the giant energy...