Saturday, January 29, 2011

Im Making Money

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Tim Geithner led an Administration effort yesterday to publicize in glowing terms the tax cut deal passed by Congress and signed by the President during the lame duck session in December. Concurrently, they sent out a fact sheet with some similar statistics that Geithner described in a press briefing. He claims that 159 million workers will benefit from the payroll tax cut, and there’s no reason to doubt him on that point. But the analysis suffers from a major sin of omission.

Geithner said that the payroll tax cut, totaling about $110 billion according to new estimates, will lead to an increase in take-home pay for the average worker by about $700 a year, and for the average working family about $1,000 a year. It’s important for him to use those numbers, because they are greater than the $400 per individual, $800 per family Making Work Pay tax cut which this payroll tax cut essentially replaces for 2011. The difference comes in how those taxes get calculated and where they phase out.

Making Work Pay was a flat $400 for every worker, but the benefit phased out for workers making over roughly $95,000 a year. That meant it was targeted directly to people who would spend it and offered a pretty nice benefit. By contrast, the payroll tax cut applies to every worker in America, as Geithner says. Bill Gates will get a payroll tax cut. Alex Rodriguez will get a payroll tax cut. Paris Hilton will get a payroll tax cut. Because the payroll tax itself caps out currently at $106,800, the tax cut for Gates, Rodriguez, Hilton and anyone else making that number is $2,136. But that’s $2,136 more than they got under Making Work Pay. I’ll leave it toy you to determine whether that’s something they need, and something which will work to stimulate the economy.

By contrast, at the low end of the scale, the “benefit” from the payroll tax cut ends up worse than the benefit from Making Work Pay. Making Work Pay was a flat benefit of $400; with the payroll tax cut it’s a percentage of income. So any individual making under $20,000 a year or family making under $40,000 a year will see less of a benefit under the payroll tax cut. That comes out to roughly 50 million workers, or close to 1 in 3, using Geithner’s numbers.

So you have this crazy circumstance where the payroll tax cut ends up a worse deal for low-income workers, who would spend the money, and a better deal for high-income workers, who probably won’t.

It’s true that the payroll tax cut comes out to $110 billion in tax relief for 2011, roughly $50 million more than Making Work Pay on an annual basis. But it’s woefully targeted. And the phony use of “average tax cut” promulgated by Geithner belies the fact that it’s a worse deal for 1 in 3 workers. Similarly, all the examples on the fact sheet are careful to use people making over $20,000 a year, to avoid the embarrassment of admitting that the deal raised taxes for those under that threshold.

I’m sure Geithner and the Administration would reply that it’s unfair to compare the payroll tax cut with Making Work Pay, because Making Work Pay was expiring. Well, so were the Bush tax cuts. And yet they were characterized as needing to be extended to avoid a tax increase. Under their own logic, the payroll tax cut effectuated a tax increase for 50 million workers.

What’s more, I’m sure the White House would look toward all the other wonderful provisions in the deal. Most of them, they’d have to admit, extend current law from 2010 into 2011 and 2012. Geithner was sure to mention the bonus depreciation for new capital investment, which gets accelerated in the bill from current law. But that’s a very lonely provision that represents something different from 2010, a time of sluggish growth.

The Administration and leading economists are sticking to their predictions that the economy will grow 3-4% in 2011, and that this package, in the words of Geithner, will add at least 1.5 million jobs. So far, economic indicators are decidedly mixed on that front. But I wish they would acknowledge all the facts of the payroll tax cut part of the deal, which is a raw one for the working poor.

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Monday, January 24, 2011

Making Money Secrets

In an interview, a former credit card thief talks about some of the scams he used to run on unwary consumers. It's got some good takeaways for protecting yourself, like the one where you make up fake answers to security questions. With all the info that can be found online now some of these security questions aren't that hard to figure out. So instead of putting down the real answer to "What's your mother's maiden name?" put down "unicorn princess."

Secrets of a Former Credit Card Thief [Yahoo] (Thanks to Newdreams!)

Facebook finally put out a press release on PR Newswire officially setting the record straight on $1.5 billion in funding. The overseas clientele of Goldman Sachs bought $1 billion, and the bank plus Digital Sky Technologies together invested another $500 million.

The blogosphere will doubtlessly explode with posts about why and how the numbers seem to have changed from what was originally reported by The New York Times on January 2. I don’t think the size of the deal selling to Goldman’s clientele shrank from $1.5 billion to $1 billion because of U.S. investors got shut out of the deal, although that’s a clever idea.

I think the discrepancy more likely has to do with the nature of off-the-record scoops, like the one that started the media frenzy in the first place. Rarely do the early leaks of secrets ever turn out to be accurate. Don’t mistake this as dissing any of the previous coverage of $500 million in direct investment and $1.5 billion from Goldman clientele. Like the release says, Facebook chose to limit the overseas offering to $1 billion, after the bank offered the choice of a range from $375 million to $1.5 billion.

The release consists of one straightforward factual paragraph, a quote from Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman and then a set of four questions and answers about the deal — all of it appears below, except for the boilerplate at the tail end. The fact that this official statement came out today indicates that the deal has closed. Read on for the release:

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion

Facebook Receives $1 Billion from Goldman Sachs Overseas Offering; Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs Also Recently Made $500 Million Direct Investment

Investment Values Facebook at $50 Billion

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook today announced it has raised U.S.$1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The transaction consisted of two parts. Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock. In December, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” said David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

The investment generated a significant number of questions from interested parties and Facebook has addressed the most common ones below.

Why did Facebook raise this money?

DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders.

Why did Facebook choose to raise $1 billion in the overseas offering?

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

What are Facebook’s plans for the proceeds of this transaction?

There are no immediate plans for these funds. Facebook will continue investing to build and expand its operations.

Does this investment mean that Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders?

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

It’s great to see that the social network will indeed begin making financial disclosures to the public by the end of April; and the release doesn’t say anything about whether or when an initial public offering might happen.

Why do you think the total size of the transaction changed from the originally reported $1.5 billion coming from overseas clients of Goldman Sachs to the currently announced $1 billion?

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Polson Kanneth reports: Daniel Hernandez Jr., one of the heroes of the mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., two weeks ago, tells ABC News that he will be sitting, along with his father, Daniel Hernandez Sr., with Michelle Obama at the.

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Making Money

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Chatroulette found itself with a surplus of naked men, so founder Andrey Ternovskiy figured out how to get rid of them while turning a profit.

TechCrunch crunched the numbers and found that 89% of Chatroulette users are male, and 1 in 8 chats on the site contain material that would be at least rated R (read: naked people). That might account for the site's sharp drop in traffic. 18 year old founder Andrey Ternovskiy turned naked men into money, telling Fast Company, "Everyday, about 50,000 new men are trying to get naked. What we're doing is selling the naked men to a couple of websites."

Here's how it works. Users on Chatroulette can now control the content they receive by flagging chat partners as displaying inappropriate content. Once a user receives a certain amount of flags, they're banned from the site for forty minutes. Instead of just kicking the offending user off the site, Chatroulette redirects them to an adult website; the adult site, in turn, pays Chatroulette for the referral.

When Chatroulette first came on the scene, Ternovskiy was besieged with offers to buy the innovative site, and turned them all down. The offers dropped off with the drop in traffic, but the content control system has already yielded positive results. The rerouting of naked men has also made Chatroulette about $100,000 a month.

Source: Fast Company, via Geek

Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » Mammoths news ...

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Schneier on Security: More Stuxnet News

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

foreclosure defense

Even though banks piously insist that every one of their foreclosure actions is fully justified, evidence in the court system continues to prove that claim to be false. We pointed out this sorry development in October, that of banks entering and changing the locks on homes they had not foreclosed upon. Per a report from the Sarasota Herald Tribune:

The process of banks hiring people to break into homes, even when occupied, is just the latest oddity of the messy foreclosure crisis in Florida.

Some property owners are reporting the break-ins to law enforcement as burglaries. Yet investigators consider the disputes a civil matter because the contractors do not display criminal intent.

That essentially leaves the property owners without recourse…

“It is vastly underreported; it is happening in counties all across the state,” said St. Petersburg foreclosure defense attorney Matt Weidner. “The more this occurs, the more prevalent it’s going to become.”

The lack of willingness of the local police to deem destroying property and unauthorized entry as criminal acts leaves wronged parties with litigation as their only recourse. And some are filing suits.

Note that these suits likely represent only a small fraction of the actual cases of bank miscreance, since few of the victims are likely to have the financial wherewithall and intestinal fortitude to sue a bank. Per the New York Times:

When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks.

When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.

The culprit, Ms. Ash soon learned, was not a burglar but her bank. According to a federal lawsuit filed in October by Ms. Ash, Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings, without alerting Ms. Ash beforehand….

Identifying the number of homeowners who were locked out illegally is difficult. But banks and their representatives insist that situations like Ms. Ash’s represent just a tiny percentage of foreclosures.

This, as the British would say, is bollocks. The traditional procedures around the transfer of title made the old system virtually fail-safe. Any number above zero is unacceptably high. And “a tiny percentage” across the huge numbers of foreclosures happening across the US adds up to meaningful numbers in real terms.

The examples in the NY Times story are all from middle to upper income homeowners. For someone of lesser means, the consequences of wrongful action can be devastating. If possessions are removed, or worse, put out on the street, the losses can be significant.

This is the banks’ excuse:

A clause in most mortgages allows banks that service the loan to enter a home and secure it if it is in default, meaning if the mortgage payment is 45 to 60 days late, and if the house has been abandoned, authorities said.

First, some of the homes broken into have been current on payments. Second, “abandoned” seems to be interpreted as “no one at home when the contractor showed up” which would be true during the business day for most working families.

This pattern again proves what we know all two well, namely, that we have a two-tier system of law in the US: one for the banks, one for the rest of us.

“So being the Government is again wasting taxpayer money assisting the banks with Hamp rather then those for whom it was intended, why are people in the USA not upset?”

Maybe we are accustomed to this? Personally, I would like the government to STOP trying to take the lead. Half of their attempts are expensive boondoggles, the other half make things even worse. HAMP was about politics and buying votes, as most political ’solutions’ are.

“The heads in the sand applies to those people as well, because your economy is too attached to the mortgage industry to settle until it does. The Governemnt lying and saying your recession has ended referred to wallstreet only. There is much more to come. My New Year’s prediction is 8 nore years on the roller coaster.”

I personally believe that is backwards. You CANNOT have a healthy economy driven by the financial sector. Any attempt to do so is essentially a Ponzi scheme. Witness the past decade for a perfect example.

Absolutely agree that there are many more years “on the roller coaster”. The big question, of course, is what effect the trillions of dollars of fiscal and monetary stimulus will have on the markets. We know they won’t do much to help the real economy — again, you CANNOT have an economy driven by the financial sector. But at this point they seem likely to produce an inflationary recession rather than a deflationary recession. (And even if the actions already taken are insufficient, the people in charge have expressed a willingness to continue new initiatives until they succeed.)

“you make your own fate and luck…”

I try to assume bad luck and prepare for that. If it is likely that our income will drop by 20% in a recession, then I prepare for a 40% drop (with a large margin of safety). The flip side of that is running multiple jobs and businesses in distinct sectors, any one of which can be ramped up if the others run into trouble. A total of ~100 hrs/week employment during the school year, of which we need to maintain about 60 hrs/week to meet our budget.

That’s the way my grandparents (who lived through the Great Depression) lived their lives. I can’t think of any other way to deal with the uncertainty in our economy today.

How many of the people who are in trouble on their mortgages left themselves that kind of leeway? I absolutely sympathize for those who have fought for every inch of progress, emigrating to the US, working their way to solid employment while saving pennies, buying a low-end house or apartment, and then losing income or suffering a medical/financial disaster.

I have far less sympathy for people who had six-figure incomes, who splurged on a 2500+ sq ft McMansion that cost $400k, who borrowed against their equity to fund luxury vacations, and somehow believed that the gravy train would never end. If you’ve chosen to live an above-median lifestyle, then there is no excuse for failing to take precautions to protect yourself against a downturn. Especially since you would think the 2000-2002 recession would have dropped a few hints of how rapidly the outlook can turn from “rosy” to “bleak”. (Except, of course, I forgot. Real estate NEVER declines in value, right?)

From your link:

“You could say the Kaharas have only themselves to blame. They entered into a complex, interest-only loan when they purchased their two-bedroom house for nearly $300,000 in 2004.”

Let’s see… They were 26 and 28 when they leveraged themselves to the hilt to buy an ultra-expensive property in a posh community that I would never be able to afford. The article goes on to explain how their construction business seemed to be doing well at the time, so they figured they could take the risk. They took the risk, they wiped out. That happens. NOTHING you will say is going to make me feel sorry for somebody who takes stupid and unnecessary risks like that.

I don’t want to excuse or justify the bank’s actions, but it is entirely possible to have a conflict with NO sympathetic characters involved. To me, this is one of those times.

I bet they lost less than I did on my first house. Doesn’t sound like they had much of downpayment. The bankruptcy will clear most of their debts and (in time) they can start anew.

“The Kaharas will rebuild their lives.”

Hopefully making more careful spending decisions in the future. Live and learn.

Does that help explain my viewpoint? My seeming lack of sympathy for some of these situations? I believe we have a responsibility to do our best to avoid being a burden to society. Find jobs that contribute (rather than simply scamming money as so many Wall Street traders do). Take responsibility for your own education and personal finances, so the cash flows ONE WAY ONLY from your earnings into the public purse. Make whatever sacrifices needed to plan ahead, so you don’t have to ever ask for financial aid.

Plenty of people live lives like that, not all making high incomes either, and for the most part they don’t end up profiled in foreclosure stories.

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