• Will FedEx Target Certain ‘Custom’ers for Rate Increases?

    Updated: 2010-08-31 21:11:44
    Lower volume customers would receive a “Dear John” letter while higher volume customers would get the message delivered in person by the sales team accompanied by something along the lines of “we’d love to keep your business, but unfortunately not at current margins. We think this proposed pricing is a win/win and still offers lower-than-market [...]

  • Mail Trucking Business Owner Charged With Stealing Funds From USPS

    Updated: 2010-08-31 21:11:44
    Westmoreland County trucking company owner charged with failing to insure employees; stealing government funds intended to buy insurance HARRISBURG – Attorney General agents have filed criminal charges against a Westmoreland County business owner accused of misappropriating more than $45,000 from the United States Postal Service (USPS). The money was intended to pay for workers compensation [...]

  • Kidnapper of Memphis Mail Carrier Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison

    Updated: 2010-08-31 21:11:44
    Memphis, TN – On Monday, August 23, 2010, United States District Court Judge Bernice B. Donald sentenced Michael Julian Smith, also known as Michael Walls, age 24, of Memphis, Tennessee, to 25 years incarceration in federal prison with no parole, announced Edward L. Stanton, III, United States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. Smith [...]

  • Impotence of policy in the face of moribund private demand

    Updated: 2010-08-31 16:30:30
    Those that advocate another dose of quantitative easing to support a still fragile economic recovery need first to demonstrate that the initial £200bn slug of the stuff actually had a meaningful, positive effect. Evidence from today’s Bank of England lending and money supply figures is again ambiguous. Certainly, all that new money doesn’t yet appear to [...]

  • A DIY solution to the pensions crisis

    Updated: 2010-08-31 08:09:09
    The latest dismal news about company pensions should not obscure the simple fact that if you want to be sure something is done properly you should do it yourself. Saving for retirement is no exception to this rule. If you rely on your employer or pension scheme managers to do the job for you, the [...]

  • Things worth reading: 31st August 2010

    Updated: 2010-08-31 08:09:06

  • Fix the IPCC process

    Updated: 2010-08-28 00:20:42
    By Ross McKitrick There is too much conflict of interest built into the report-writing process After the Climategate emails scandal of last winter, and discoveries of some embarrassing errors in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, asked the Inter-Academy Council (IAC) to review IPCC procedures. The IAC [...]

  • Canpotex and the cartel bureau

    Updated: 2010-08-28 00:16:03
    Canpotex might have been called the Organization of Potash Exporting Companies. That reminds us that cartels are meant to be ‘bad,’ except … when you are doing the colluding BHP Billiton’s $40-billion “hostile” bid for Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan is in most respects unfolding predictably. BHP CEO Marius Kloppers is on the road selling the deal. [...]

  • U.S. Fed arms itself for a double dip

    Updated: 2010-08-28 00:11:08
    By Michael Gregory What would Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke do, faced with escalating risks of a deflationary double dip? At his recent semi-annual congressional testimony, he said he would, in order of preference: (1) Stop the Fed’s balance sheet from shrinking owing to maturing securities and mortgage prepayments. (2) Use more specific language in [...]

  • Presidential Panel Releases Tax Reform Report

    Updated: 2010-08-27 21:15:04
    CRFB.org Stimulus.org US Budget Watch Peterson-Pew Commission E-mail list sign up : Subscribe Unsubscribe Search : Home Documents Blog News Events About Contact Recent Posts Trichet Calls for Ambitious’ Debt Reduction Line’ Items : Emmy Edition CRFB President Comments on Fiscal Policy in Jackson Hole Presidential Panel Releases Tax Reform Report A Liberal Voice for Budget Reform CRFB Releases Its Realistic Baselines S P Warns U.S . About Credit Rating Current Policy Extensions and Growth By month August 2010 42 July 2010 60 June 2010 63 May 2010 45 April 2010 64 March 2010 65 February 2010 61 January 2010 60 December 2009 49 November 2009 51 October 2009 54 September 2009 53 All Archives By Keyword Budget 146 CBO 89 Congress 166 Deficits and Debt 253 Economy 99 Financial Sector Policy 40

  • Accountants issue final warning on 'banana skin' tax change

    Updated: 2010-08-27 12:07:37
    Tax changes intended to stop people earning more than £130,000 exploiting pension loopholes will hit workers much further down the income scale, accountants warned the Treasury today. In the final hours of the official consultation process, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) said members of final salary pension schemes earning £40,000 could face tax bills [...]

  • Ontario’s Power Trip: Prices up, profits down

    Updated: 2010-08-27 01:15:13
    By Parker Gallant Industry giants issue grim numbers — less volume, lower revenues and profits — that are largely ignored Like a tree falling in a forest, what happens when major companies release financial information and nobody pays any attention? That’s become the pattern with the big players in Ontario’s electricity market. On Aug. 12, [...]

  • Milked by taxis

    Updated: 2010-08-27 00:57:57
    Taxi permits now cost over $200,000 in Montreal, gouging customers while discouraging taxi use In 1952 there were just under 5,000 taxis in service on the island of Montreal. Hazard a guess as to how many there are now? 4,445. More than 500 fewer. Despite the fact that there are 500,000 more Montrealers than there [...]

  • The Cuckoo of Corner Brook

    Updated: 2010-08-27 00:41:51
    Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams can get away with playing the steering-wheel-out-the-window madman mainly because of the province’s offshore oil resources Danny Williams’ confrontational style and resources-for-the-people posturing has long attracted unflattering political analogies. The Premier of Newfoundland has been compared more than once to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. In his obsession with the wrongs inflicted [...]

  • An unsupportable American dream

    Updated: 2010-08-27 00:37:07
    Obama remains blind to causes of housing crisis One of the great paradoxes of the U.S. economy is how something as personal and individualistic as home ownership — a core value at the heart of the American dream — could have been turned into one of the world’s biggest socialist disasters. Yesterday, the U.S. housing [...]

  • BHP takeover of Potash could squeeze workers

    Updated: 2010-08-26 15:59:11
    By Ken Neumann, Counterpoint Most foreign takeovers are rubber stamped. All are behind closed doors Last week’s hostile takeover bid for the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PCS) should raise a red flag for Canadians. However, it is an opportunity for a national debate on the future of Canada’s potash industry, the continuing onslaught of foreign [...]

  • How the roof over your head could earn £1,000 out of thin air

    Updated: 2010-08-26 08:15:09
    About half the homes in Britain could share in a £7bn “rooftop bonanza” worth up to £1,000 a year each, according to British Gas, which aims to make it easier to take advantage of Government green energy initiatives. Householders will not need to put up any capital to participate in a new “rent a roof” scheme [...]

  • It pays to riot in Europe

    Updated: 2010-08-25 19:02:28
    Ireland must now pay more than Greece to borrow. Dublin has played by the book. It has taken pre-emptive steps to please the markets and the EU. It has done an IMF job without the IMF. Indeed, is has gone further than the IMF would have dared to go. It has imposed draconian austerity measures. The solidarity [...]

  • The high cost of bank capital rules

    Updated: 2010-08-25 16:07:18
    Canada could be better off going it alone and saying no to new bank capital rules Government regulations come with costs, a point made clearly  last week by the Bank of Canada in a series of assessments of  possible new financial regulation. But would the benefits of those  new regulations — imposing higher capital and [...]

  • Spike in 401(k) loans and withdrawals

    Updated: 2010-08-25 14:05:36
    Thinking about tapping into your 401(k) early? Think again - at least if you want a shot at a secure retirement. In a recent report, Fidelity Investments notes that the percentage of Fidelity customers who borrowed from their 401(k)s increased over the past year from nine to 11 percent. Currently, a whopping 22 percent of account holders [...]

  • Why should the poor pay higher tax rates than millionaires?

    Updated: 2010-08-25 08:11:13
    Many pensioners and low-paid families with children have suffered higher marginal rates of tax than millionaires for several years now, so today’s report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies should come as no surprise. They are victims of the maze of means-tested benefits – often disguised as ‘tax credits’ – created by Gordon Brown and [...]

  • Northern Rock admits 'systems error'

    Updated: 2010-08-24 12:56:29
    Northern Rock has been forced to temporarily withdraw its offer to cut mortgage application fees to £99 – although it says that it will honour its promise to homebuyers who applied yesterday when the deal was briefly introduced. A spokesman for the Government-owned bank said: “Regrettably, due to an internal system error, this change has been [...]

  • Spain uses social security fund to prop up the bond market

    Updated: 2010-08-24 12:08:44
    Spain is putting all its eggs into one basket, and if it carries on like this, we may start to see a lot of Basques and Catalans crowding into one exit. The state pension fund – the €64bn Fondo de Reserva, known as the ‘hucha de las pensiones‘ – is buying Spanish sovereign debt at a [...]

  • Who'd want to be a trustee of the BBC pension fund? Not me

    Updated: 2010-08-24 10:34:29
    Zarin Patel, the BBC’s finance director, needs to find a way to bridge a predicted £2billion deficit in the BBC’s pension scheme. Her principal proposal – the one which has taken the BBC to the brink of a strike – is to break the link between actual pay and pensionable pay. Under the proposals, BBC [...]

  • Peter Foster: The last Scottish union radical

    Updated: 2010-08-21 01:10:02
    CBC’s As It Happens’ rose-coloured historical revisionism of the Jimmy Reid story To speak well of the dead is both respectful and prudent. However, the burial on Thursday of Jimmy Reid, an iconic former Scottish Trade Unionist, has produced some rose-coloured historical revisionism that needs to be addressed. The CBC’s As It Happens promoted the [...]

  • Not Making the Social Security Grade

    Updated: 2010-08-19 14:30:57
    CRFB.org Stimulus.org US Budget Watch Peterson-Pew Commission E-mail list sign up : Subscribe Unsubscribe Search : Home Documents Blog News Events About Contact Recent Posts Trichet Calls for Ambitious’ Debt Reduction Line’ Items : Emmy Edition CRFB President Comments on Fiscal Policy in Jackson Hole Presidential Panel Releases Tax Reform Report A Liberal Voice for Budget Reform CRFB Releases Its Realistic Baselines S P Warns U.S . About Credit Rating Current Policy Extensions and Growth By month August 2010 42 July 2010 60 June 2010 63 May 2010 45 April 2010 64 March 2010 65 February 2010 61 January 2010 60 December 2009 49 November 2009 51 October 2009 54 September 2009 53 All Archives By Keyword Budget 146 CBO 89 Congress 166 Deficits and Debt 253 Economy 99 Financial Sector Policy 40

  • Happy Birthday Social Security

    Updated: 2010-08-14 14:08:06
    CRFB.org Stimulus.org US Budget Watch Peterson-Pew Commission E-mail list sign up : Subscribe Unsubscribe Search : Home Documents Blog News Events About Contact Recent Posts Trichet Calls for Ambitious’ Debt Reduction Line’ Items : Emmy Edition CRFB President Comments on Fiscal Policy in Jackson Hole Presidential Panel Releases Tax Reform Report A Liberal Voice for Budget Reform CRFB Releases Its Realistic Baselines S P Warns U.S . About Credit Rating Current Policy Extensions and Growth By month August 2010 42 July 2010 60 June 2010 63 May 2010 45 April 2010 64 March 2010 65 February 2010 61 January 2010 60 December 2009 49 November 2009 51 October 2009 54 September 2009 53 All Archives By Keyword Budget 146 CBO 89 Congress 166 Deficits and Debt 253 Economy 99 Financial Sector Policy 40

  • Happy 75th, Social Security!

    Updated: 2010-08-13 23:53:38
    Our birthday present to you is that we are going to stop policymakers from chopping you to pieces. Social Security, you’ve been providing an economic lifeline that millions of Americans rely on. It’s too bad that on your 75th birthday, you’re under siege like never before. What a bunch of ingrates, right? You’ve become so wildly successful [...]

  • Plan Termination Year vs. Short Plan Year

    Updated: 2010-08-10 14:25:01
    One confusing aspect of pension plan terminations is when the plan sponsor’s reporting obligation for the plan ends. Often there is the perception that a short plan year occurs during the year of plan termination, even if benefits are not distributed at that time. This post will clarify a few items with regard to short [...]

  • Retirement Deduction Limits and Employee Risk

    Updated: 2010-08-06 14:57:23
    A while back I read a blog post titled “The Beer Napkin Annuity” (BNA) that I found intriguing (if nothing else, the name is catchy). The basic premise was that perhaps we could adjust our retirement tax deduction rules to transfer some deduction opportunities traditionally reserved for defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) [...]

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