Finance Space

Supporters of Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss can attribute their candidate’s re-election Tuesday night to any number of factors.

It could have been a fear of a filibuster-proof upper house with Democrats behind the wheel. Or it could have been former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin who drew thousands to events she attended in Georgia this week.

Local Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon thinks it’s a bit of both.

“Middle of the road voters don’t like the idea of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama passing anything willy nilly,” McKoon said as he watched the returns at the Columbus Government Center. “We need Saxby to be this kind of firewall.”

NEW YORK (Associated Press) – An offer of $500 in free slot-machine playing credits was accidentally mailed to 55,000 gambling customers, leaving a Pennsylvania casino scrambling to placate customers and figure out how the mistake happened.

Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course decided to partially honor the offer on Monday after frantically calling tens of thousands of customers over the weekend.

The mistake was reported by WGAL-TV, which said some confused and angry customers began trying to take advantage of the offer that took effect Monday.

Gov. David Paterson, who has repeatedly refused calls to increase taxes to soften the blow of his proposed deep budget cuts, apparently has not developed an across-the-board hatred of all taxes since he abandoned his liberal legislator ways in favor of a more centrist and (to his mind) statewide approach.

During his Q-and-A this afternoon, Paterson markedly did not rule out support for the payroll tax on businesses that reportedly will be proposed by the Ravitch Commission as part of a rescue plan for the MTA.

The governor said he is “quite pleased” by what he’s seen so far from the commission, adding:

The Commission on Property Tax Relief took a surprising direction in the report it released Monday. Not only did it lay out a blueprint for cutting school costs – the underlying driver of high property taxes – it dug deep to root out problems that have deviled educators for decades.

If the report’s recommendations survive the inevitable political battles to come, it will be because the commission listened to these nitty-gritty policy issues. It has published an in-depth look at special education costs, expensive regulations and possible consolidations. The commission, led by Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, did its homework.

Lawyer Laura Hess and her Hess Kennedy Law Firm allegedly stole millions of dollars from Florida residents who were trying to get out of debt.

According to the attorney general, Hess allegedly duped thousands of customers who gave her money through direct deposits every month believing she was paying their creditors and reducing the amount they owned.

Victims told NBC 6 that their bills weren’t paid and their credit scores dropped hundreds of points.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the Florida attorney general told NBC 6 that some banks have decided to forgive the debts of many of Hess’ customers.

“Panic” might be too weak a word for what’s going on out there. It’s not just that the stock market has been affected — the far larger lending market has seized up as well. Banks don’t want to lend to each other, much less those of us out here in the real world, and the bond markets remain off-limits to all but the strongest of borrowers.

And all of that is leaving everyone terrified. The long-term future simply doesn’t matter all that much to a company that risks oblivion in the next week if it can’t roll over its maturing debt or cover tomorrow’s margin call.

One thing that I love about the currency market is that there is always a currency or two going up at all times, even when stocks and commodities are getting thrashed.

The global slow down that has punished stocks for well over a year now has seemed to have “blessed” a couple of currencies out there. Some currencies can actually benefit from “hard times”.

Let’s take a look at the chart of the Japanese yen below since “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I’ve overlaid it on a chart of the S&P 500 so you can see how “inversely” they have tended to trade against each other (click to enlarge).

What to do about corporate tax rates represents a key difference between Obamanomics and McCainomics. John McCain wants to cut them. Barack Obama wants to raise them, at least on oil companies, through a windfall profits tax. But maybe they’re both wrong. Maybe we should just get rid of these levies altogether. Here are 20 reasons why it’s time to sack the corporate income tax:

1) The United States has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world, just shy of 40 percent when you combine state and federal taxes.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the credit boom that preceded the current bust was the belief of professional investors that they had found a way to increase their profits without taking on risk.
Very sophisticated financial models showed no risk whatsoever in AAA-rated mortgage securities. The underlying mortgages might lose money, the models showed, but built-in safeguards assured that the securities were well protected.

It turned out the models were wrong.

The idea that the route to higher profit runs through higher risk has been around for a long time. The phrase “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” dates back to Geoffrey Chaucer in 1374, about six centuries before computers began to run regressions to find ways to get rich without risk.

Provincial Finance’s 11,000 debenture-holders will receive another 8c next month, taking their total recovery to 90.5c in the dollar in just over two years since receivership.

That is one of the few pieces of good news in a sector littered with more than 25 collapsed finance companies.

Provincial receiver Maurice Noone said the 8c payment would be made on September 12. An additional small payout would be made related to litigation against Veda Advantage, and that court hearing was expected to start early next year. It was unclear when the payout would be.