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    Julie Satow

    Julie Satow

    Contributor

  • Real Estate Associations Want Appraisers To Inflate Home Prices

    The housing market is still struggling because appraisers are being too tough assessing the value of homes. Until then, they argue, what's wrong with a few inflated prices? Many (but not all) mortgage brokers and realtors referred buyers to appraisers that ALWAYS hit the number of the home purchase price.

  • Dunkin' Donuts' Salmonella Scare

    Dunkin' Donuts has temporarily stopped selling hot chocolate and Dunkaccino brand beverages after learning equipment used at a supplier's facility might have been contaminated with salmonella. Plainview, Minn., supplier Plainview Milk Products Cooperative announced it had voluntarily recalled its instant nonfat dried milk and whey protein because of potential salmonella bacteria contamination. It says there were no reported illnesses.

  • WATCH: Bernanke Vs. Issa

    Ben Bernanke spent the morning on Capitol Hill getting grilled by the House, and it wasn't pretty. The issue was Bernanke's role in orchestrating Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch last year. According to Issa, Bernanke threatened BofA CEO Lewis and the company's board with firing if they invoked the so-called material adverse change clause, or MAC, to wiggle out of the deal.

  • Perfect Storm Arises To Shed Light On Shady Commodities Markets

    When Olav Refvik wanted to boost the price of heating oil to make a lucrative energy deal even more lucrative, the Morgan Stanley trader locked up several storage tanks the bank owned near New York Harbor to squeeze supply. Far from being illegal, the maneuver -- which earned him millions and the moniker "King of New York Harbor" -- is business as usual in the "regulated" commodities market. The rough-and-tumble Chicago-based commodities market is an unusual beast on Wall Street, where practices that would be frowned upon at the flashier New York stock exchange, are considered quite acceptable.

  • Consumers Rejoice Over New Agency, Prepare For Battle On The Hill

    Consumer groups welcomed President Barack Obama's proposal to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency as part of his sweeping overhaul of financial regulations on Wednesday. "The financial industry is sharpening its knives, and the question is, will Congress be able to withstand a sustained assault?" asked Travis Plunkett, the legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America. In anticipation of the confrontation, a coalition of 200 consumer groups announced a day earlier the creation of Americans for Financial Reform, which will fortify their allies in Congress and will work to protect the president's proposal for the new consumer agency.

  • Why Is The FDIC Waiting?

    Bert Ely, a longtime banking consultant, has identified a data point that highlights how far behind the regulators have actually fallen. During the savings and loans crisis and its aftermath, banks that failed had a loss ratio--or a bank's total losses divided by its total deposits--of just around 13%. Since the current recession began, that same ratio for failed banks surged to more than 37%, or nearly triple S&L crisis levels.

  • Hampton Mansions: Georgica Pond Homes For Sale (SLIDESHOW)

    Four mansions on exclusive Georgica Pond in the Hamptons are on sale and are asking big bucks despite the recession. The home, at 30 Wainscott Stone Highway, also includes an outdoor pool, tennis court and a 110-seat movie theater that is a replica of the famed Zeigfeld Theatre. Among its former renters are Madonna, Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, Jay Z, Damon Dash and Jennifer Lopez.

  • Sbarro's, Krispy Kreme Among The Most Vulnerable Restaurant Chains

    It's been nearly a year since Bennigan's filed for bankruptcy, and now US News & World Report examines some other food chains that may be vulnerable to the deteriorating economy. Searching data from Standard & Poor's, the magazine isolated those companies that met two criteria: a credit rating of B or lower and a negative outlook. With market share of only 8%, the restaurant chain told US News & World Report that it has cut expenses by $7.3 million, delayed some remodeling and called a halt to expansion.

  • Why This Recession Is No Different From All The Others (VIDEO)

    Check out this video, produced by Dent Asset Management, that posits this recession is no different from the many others America has experienced over the decades. While the idea that this down cycle is nothing unique in the history of the American economy, this video gives a nice summary of that view, with montages of magazine covers and newspaper articles from the Great Depression through to today, as well as speeches from as varied speakers as Rodney King to Ronald Reagan. While we are featuring the shorter (5 minute) version, there is a longer video available on YouTube.

  • The FDIC To Start Dumping Toxic Assets, Banks Could Feel The Pain

    Contrary to popular belief, the Public-Private Investment Program, a centerpiece of the government's strategy to rescue the nation's banks, is not dead. The PPIP may be in critical condition, but the FDIC is planning what it hopes will be a miracle cure--a new pilot program it will launch in July to unload toxic assets under the supervision of new advisers who will structure and oversee the sale to qualified investors, the agency told the Huffington Post. The new pilot is similar to the original PPIP that failed so spectacularly earlier this month, when banks resoundingly refused to sell any toxic--or err, um, "legacy"--assets to private investors.

  • Nouriel Roubini Profile: Is He Good, Or Just Lucky?

    This year, Nouriel Roubini, the economist known to the general public as Dr. Doom, Prophet of the Financial Apocalypse, spent the early hours of Mardi Gras on the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

  • Regulating Credit Default Swaps: The Fight Over The Last Remaining Source Of Huge Banking Profits

    Despite bringing the world economy to its knees and costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts for events such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and American International Group (NYSE:AIG), the Masters of the Universe who run the largest Wall Street firms of have learned not a thing when it comes to credit default swaps ("CDS") and other types of high-risk financial engineering. Indeed, not only are the largest derivative dealers fighting efforts to reform the CDS and other derivative instruments that caused the AIG fiasco, but regulators like the Federal Reserve Board and US Treasury are working with the banks to ensure that a small group of dealers increase their monopoly over the business of over-the-counter ("OTC") derivatives. For the world's largest banks, the OTC derivatives markets are the last remaining source of supra-normal profits - and also perhaps the single largest source of systemic risk in the global financial markets.

  • Martha Stewart Gets $5M, Plus Driver, Other Perks

    Despite this, we just couldn't ignore Martha's new employment contract in the 10-Q filed by the company yesterday, which includes a $3 million "retention payment" for the domestic goddess. The contract also includes a wide range of other goodies, including "automobiles and drivers seven days a week", reimbursement for all business, travel and entertainment expenses (which seems like a pretty broad definition), security expenses and even internet and telephone expenses at her various homes.

  • Victoria Gotti FORECLOSED On By JP Morgan (SLIDESHOW)

    JP Morgan is foreclosing on the Long Island mansion owned by Mafia daughter Victoria Gotti. The 46-year-old reality star owes a whopping $650,000 on the property, according to the New York Post. The daughter of John "Dapper Don" Gotti hasn't made a mortgage payment since September 2006.

  • Goldman Settlement On Subprime Probe

    Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to a multimillion dollar settlement with the state of Massachusetts related to its packaging of subprime mortgages. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley plans to announce the agreement today at a 1 p.m. news conference, according to a statement from her office. The settlement is worth $60 million, the Associated Press reported, without citing a source for the figure.

  • WATCH: Brooke Astor's 100th Birthday Party

    According to the New York Post, the defense in the Brooke Astor trial showed a video of the New York society doyenne's 100th birthday party. The 2002 party at the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, Westchester, was submitted as evidence by the defense yesterday to show that Astor was not yet suffering from Alzheimer's. The prosecutors had planned to use the same video for the opposite reason, before the defense team beat them to the punch. Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, is defending himself against allegations of elder abuse, including forcing his mother to stay in a room with a urine-stained couch.

  • SEC Disfunction: Why The Agency Is Broken

    The agency got more tips from FINRA -- the financial industry's self-regulator -- than it had the resources to pursue, it lost 11.5% of its lawyers since 2004, and the staff lacked in-house expertise on pretty much all the fancy financial instruments without which we would not have this crisis (in addition to "government securities" which seems a bit sad, the SEC being a division of the government). The agency's revenues were in a downward spiral, with corporate penalties falling 39% in fiscal year 2006, only to fall another 48% in 2007, only to fall another 49% last year.

  • Stress Tests: It Might Have Been Different If Fed Had Restricted Bank Dividends

    According to a new study, Bank Dividends In The Crisis: A Failure Of Government, by finance professors at NYU's Stern School of Business, Princeton University and the London Business School, the largest US bailed out banks issued more than $50 billion in dividends even as their very existence remained in the balance. Dividend payments are important not just because they deplete capital, which the banks so desperately now need, but also because they can be a major source of compensation for company executives, as well as a boon for regular shareholders. The dividend payments that come with the stocks--they are usually some set amount of money dolled out per share--can often boost overall compensation significantly.

  • CalPERS To Vote Against BofA's Ken Lewis

    The huge California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, will vote against the re-election of Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis tomorrow at the bank's annual shareholder meeting. The news, announced in a press release on CalPERS' web site, is a major blow to the already-beleaguered Lewis. CalPERS, with more than 1.6 million benefit recipients, is the country's largest public pension fund.

  • Obama's 100 Days; Business By The Numbers

    Well, the Huffington Post wanted to see how Obama's financial predictions have played out. The Dow has gone from 7,949.09 on Jan. 20, the day of Obama's inauguration, to 8,016.95 as of Tuesday's close. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.