Thank you Xi for the title. Yes it will continue, but what we will see more that normal American citizens are hardly affected while those problem makers and riches are trying to escape from the consequences while trying to make citizens pay the price. I hope that American citizens to wake up and stand up against their global thief political and business key people.
================== WASHINGTON – The number of laid-off workers receiving unemployment benefits has jumped to an all-time high near 5 million while new jobless claims remain well above 600,000. Both figures were worse than expected and new projections from the Federal Reserve show unemployment rising for the rest of this year. The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of people receiving regular unemployment benefits rose 170,000 to 4.99 million for the week ending Feb. 7, marking the fourth straight week those receiving benefits have been at a record level on data going back to 1967. The continuing claims figure also was significantly above the year-ago level of 2.77 million and underscored the difficulty people are having in this recession finding another job once they are laid off. An additional 1.5 million people are receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program approved by Congress last year, bringing the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits to 6.54 million for the week ending Feb. 7. In other economic news, wholesale inflation surged unexpectedly in January, according to the Labor Department. Wholesale prices jumped 0.8 percent last month, the biggest gain since July and well above the 0.2 percent increase that economists expected. The acceleration was led by a 3.7 percent surge in energy prices with gasoline prices jumping 15 percent, the biggest gain in 14 months. Even outside the volatile food and energy sectors, wholesale prices showed a bigger-than- expected increase, rising by 0.4 percent. New applications for unemployment benefits totaled 627,000 last week, the same as the previous week, according to the department. But that was still more than the 620,000 claims economists expected. It also remained near the 631,000 claims filed three weeks ago, which was the highest tally since October 1982, when the economy was emerging from a steep recession, though the labor force has grown by about half since then. A year ago, initial claims stood at 342,000. The four-week average for claims rose to 619,000 last week, up from 608,500 the previous week which was the first time the figure had topped 600,000 during the economic downturn. The cascade of layoff notices in recent weeks has heightened concerns about the current recession, already the longest in a quarter-century. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., said Wednesday it will cut nearly 5,000 jobs, or almost 7 percent of the biggest U.S. tire maker's work force, this year after it posted a fourth-quarter loss and revenue sank 21 percent. The cuts follow the elimination of about 4,000 jobs in the second half of last year. General Motors Corp. and Chrysler on Tuesday filed plans with the government more than doubling their request for aid to a total of $39 billion and announced plans for thousands more job cuts. GM alone said it would cut 47,000 jobs globally by the end of the year — 19 percent of its work force, and Chrysler said it will cut 3,000 more jobs. The Fed released a new economic forecast on Wednesday that reduced its growth forecast for 2009 and increased its unemployment rate projections. The new forecast predicts that unemployment will hit between 8.5 and 8.8 percent this year, up from the current level of 7.6 percent. And in an appearance at the National Press Club, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that "strong and aggressive action" would be able to overcome the current recession and jolt the economy back into growth. But he said "if we fail ... then the situation will continue to deteriorate. " President Barack Obama pointed to the deteriorating economy to win quick passage of an $787 billion economic stimulus program which he signed into law this week. On Wednesday, Obama unveiled a $75 billion program aimed at halting the surging level of mortgage foreclosures in the wake of the worst slump in housing in decades. For the week ending Feb. 7, the states with the largest increases in jobless applications were Kentucky and Arkansas, which blamed the jumps on rising layoffs in the mining, trade and manufacturing industries. The biggest decreases were recorded in California and Tennessee, which reported fewer layoffs in the construction, trade, service and manufacturing industries.by "Karlheinz" <austrohawk , or The HAWK as he used to be known for so many years- S1000+ ======= S1000+ ======= --- On Thu, 2/19/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Sumerian: More wolves eating wolves. To: "World-thread" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009, 5:43 AM UBS Will Disclose Names, Pay $780 Million to U.S. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0XVjooQdppA&refer=home Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, will pay $780 million and disclose the names of some secret account holders to avoid U.S. prosecution on a charge that it helped thousands of wealthy Americans evade taxes. The Justice Department accused UBS of conspiring to defraud the U.S. by helping 17,000 Americans hide accounts from the Internal Revenue Service. The U.S. will drop the charge in 18 months if the bank reforms its practices, helps prosecutors and makes payments. UBS will immediately turn over names of about 250 clients, according to people familiar with the matter. By gaining those names, the U.S. will pierce the veil of Swiss bank secrecy. The IRS, which has sought the names of all U.S. account holders since July, has met resistance from the Swiss government. The final number of account holders Zurich- based UBS must disclose will hinge on future legal battles, according to the agreement. “UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures,” Chairman Peter Kurer, 59, said in a statement after the accord was unsealed yesterday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Client confidentiality, to which UBS remains committed, was never designed to protect fraudulent acts or the identity of those clients, who, with the active assistance of bank personnel, misused the confidentiality protections.” UBS rose 30 centimes, or 2.5 percent, to 12.51 francs by 9:21 a.m. in Swiss trading, valuing the bank at 36.7 billion francs ($31.1 billion). The stock fell 16 percent this year. Settlement Estimates The Securities and Exchange Commission also reached an agreement to resolve claims that UBS acted as an unregistered broker-dealer and investment adviser to U.S. citizens who held accounts directly or in the names of others. The $780 million is lower than previous settlement estimates, which exceeded $1 billion. The U.S. government agreed to the lower amount because of the bank’s eroding financial condition, according to a person familiar with the matter. UBS said the cost of the settlement will be booked in 2008 accounts. “It is certainly a positive for the bank, that some sort of agreement has been found,” Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co., said in a note today. “In a broader context, we doubt the saga is over. The success in getting the documentation out of Switzerland with support from the Swiss authorities is likely to encourage other tax authorities to pursue claims against the Swiss more vigorously.” IRS Summons UBS has announced more than 11,000 job cuts, exited parts of debt trading and commodities businesses and raised $32 billion from investors to offset record losses at the securities unit. Last week, it posted a fourth-quarter loss of 8.1 billion Swiss francs on trading losses and leveraged loan impairments. Financial institutions worldwide have amassed $1.1 trillion of writedowns and credit losses and shed more than 274,000 jobs since the U.S. subprime-mortgage market collapsed in 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show. UBS will pay $380 million to disgorge profits from its cross-border business from 2001 to 2008, and $400 million in interest, penalties and restitution for unpaid taxes. On July 1, a federal judge in Miami approved an IRS summons seeking information on thousands of UBS accounts owned or controlled by U.S. citizens. Under the deferred prosecution agreement, UBS and the government disagree on how many names the bank must disclose. The U.S. may continue to seek enforcement of the summons, and UBS may assert legal defenses. ‘Breached’ Obligations The U.S. authorities, who have been seeking client data from Switzerland through an administrative assistance procedure, will withdraw this request, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority said in a statement today. The regulator allowed UBS to pass on some data to prevent the U.S. from filing criminal charges against the bank, it said. “Such charges could have had drastic consequences for UBS and its liquidity situation and ultimately put its existence at risk,” the Swiss regulator said. UBS had “severely breached” its obligations to “remain fit and proper as well as adequately organized,” said the Swiss market watchdog, which also investigated the case. UBS agreed only to the immediate disclosure of account holders involved in fraudulent or sham offshore account structures, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. law views tax evasion as a crime, Swiss law does not. The Swiss view tax fraud as a more serious offense. A dispute between the two governments slowed negotiations on the agreement, which was filed under seal last week and made public yesterday. It’s “extremely likely” the government will prevail in U.S. court on the summonses, said Eileen O’Connor, who oversaw the Justice Department’s Tax Division from 2001 until 2007. Civil Lawsuit “We didn’t have to sue to enforce very often, but when we did we were successful,” said O’Connor, now a partner at the Washington law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. UBS said in July it would stop providing cross-border banking services to American clients through units that aren’t licensed in the U.S. Under the accord, UBS agreed to give banking advice in the U.S. only through licensed subsidiaries and appoint an internal risk committee to oversee its “orderly and expeditious” exit from the business. Bank executives “knew that UBS’s cross-border business violated the law,” R. Alexander Acosta, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “They refused to stop this activity, however, and in fact instructed their bankers to grow the business. The reason was money -- the business was too profitable to give up.” Art Shows Since at least 1999, UBS held billions of dollars for U.S. clients in accounts in Switzerland and other overseas locations while ignoring requirements that it register with the SEC, the agency said in a civil lawsuit in federal court in Washington. The bank’s Swiss advisers traveled to the U.S. a few times a year to solicit customers at art shows, as well as yachting and other sporting events, the SEC said. To conceal their activities, advisers carried encrypted laptop computers and got training from the bank on avoiding detection, the agency said. UBS settled the probes after a series of disclosures that followed the guilty plea last June of a former private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld. The company reaped $200 million a year by helping high- income clients through such practices as setting up sham entities in tax havens including Switzerland, Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong and Liechtenstein, Birkenfeld said in pleading guilty in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. A Breakthrough The bank helped Americans evade taxes even after signing a 2001 agreement that required it to identify account holders and their income to U.S. authorities, according to prosecutors. Birkenfeld said many clients refused to disclose their assets because it would defeat the purpose of banking with UBS -- evading taxes. UBS announced it was ending its cross-border business in July at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations where the company was criticized for sending bankers to the U.S. to woo wealthy Americans. The announcement yesterday precedes another subcommittee hearing set for Feb. 24. The agreement is “a tremendous breakthrough in the national effort to combat offshore secrecy and tax abuse,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who leads the subcommittee. “Efforts to tear away the offshore cloak of secrecy are gradually succeeding.” In November, Switzerland-based UBS executive Raoul Weil was indicted in Florida on a charge that he helped rich Americans evade taxes. Weil attorney Aaron Marcu said it was “extremely disappointing” that the government did not drop its case. “Mr. Weil is an innocent victim of a political dispute between the United States and Switzerland over Swiss bank secrecy,” Marcu said in a statement. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World-thread" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
