Extra! Extra! » Business

Collateralized debt obligations fueled financial crisis

Beth — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:35:41 +0000

A report by ProPublica’s Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger “shows for the first time the extent to which banks — primarily Merrill Lynch, but also Citigroup, UBS and others — bought their own products and cranked up an assembly line that otherwise should have flagged.” These banks dealt in collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. A CDO is a collections of mortgage bonds, and each includes risky investments. The banks would then create new CDOs to sell the risky pieces creating false demand for these toxic assets.

Small Business Administration failed hurricane victims in Gulf

Beth — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:28:22 +0000

The Associated Press investigated how the Small Business Administration responded to the hurricanes of 2005, and the impact on the Gulf Coast five year later. The yearlong investigation by Mitch Weiss, Michael Kunzelman, Holbrook Mohr and Cain Burdeau found that loan officers rejected loans they should have approved, deleted loan applications for no valid reason, manufactured impossible to meet deadlines to clear a backlog of cases and made the loan process so difficult and chaotic that thousands just gave up. As a result, many people along the Gulf Coast are still struggling five years after the storms.

Thai Workers Victims of Human Trafficking In Utah

alecia — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:07:32 +0000

Lee Davidson reported how Thai workers recruited to work on Utah pig and chicken farms were victims of human trafficking. Read “A Story of Modern Slavery in Utah.”

InvestigateWest:Cruise Ships Dump Waste To Dodge Laws

alecia — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:25:52 +0000

An InvestigateWest report on the billion dollar cruise ship industry in the Washington-Alaska cruise market found that most ships avoid tougher state regulations and dump their waste in Canadian waters between the two states, despite state efforts to adopt stricter standards for sewage and wastewater discharge.

Mortgage Fraud Spawning New Scams

alecia — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:35:47 +0000

Mortgage fraud is a crime that cost an estimated $14 billion in 2009, prompting the FBI to assemble its largest ever team to fight it. But the tsunami of foreclosures is making classic scams easier and spawning new ones to boot. Reuters correspondent Nick Carey reports from Chicago.

OneUnited bank was weakest to receive TARP support

Beth — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:55:34 +0000

A report on Bank Tracker, a project of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, shows that OneUnited Bank, the bank at the center of the allegations against Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., was the weakest TARP bank at the time of its rescue. “When then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced creation of the so-called “Capital Purchase Program” in October 2008, he said said it was directed at “healthy institutions.” Nevertheless OneUnited Bank of Boston received a $12.1 million capital injection from the Treasury Department on Dec. 19, 2008. The money has not been repaid, according to Treasury Department documents.”

Insurers profit on policies of fallen soldiers

Beth — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:19:03 +0000

An investigation by David Evans of Bloomberg found that Prudential Insurance has been profiting on life insurance policies of deceased veterans. The funds are held in “Prudential’s general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer.” According to regulatory filings from 2008, survivors were being paid 1 percent interest on their Alliance Accounts, while Prudential earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds. In addition, these holdings are not are not in banks covered by the FDIC.

Board members profit from part-time work

Beth — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:45:07 +0000

An accountant, a lawyer and two retired executives each collected more than $475,000 last year – and one topped $600,000 – doing part-time work for multiple Wisconsin companies, according to review of Securities and Exchange Commission data by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Cary Spivak. The men are members of corporate America’s most elite club: the board of directors. By creating a unique database of board members for the state’s 50 or so public companies, Spivak was able to identify trends and cross-connections between boards. The package included a searchable database of all the board members, their pay packages and the boards they sit on.

Schools profit off of student credit card debt

Beth — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:56:08 +0000

An investigation by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund found “some of the nation’s largest and most elite universities stand to gain millions of dollars from selling the names and addresses of students and alumni to credit card companies while granting the companies special access to school events.“ The schools earn bonuses when the credit cards are used by students. The report includes links to the contracts obtained during the investigation.

Feds investigate possible billing fraud at Texas medical school, hospital

Beth — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:33:10 +0000

The Dallas Morning News’ Reese Dunklin and Miles Moffeit reported that a Dallas medical school and its teaching hospital are under federal investigation in possible Medicare and Medicaid fraud, billing for patient services that doctors didn’t provide. It is the second time in less than a week that allegations of billing fraud hit the two institutions. The coverage is part the newspaper’s ongoing investigation into possible patient harm, preferential treatment and lax resident supervision at the school and hospital.