Category: Business

Folding dealers shock car buyers with unpaid liens

The national wave of auto dealership closures has come crashing down on thousands of people who are on the hook for used-car loans that dealers were supposed to absolve.

When a car buyer still owes money on a vehicle he is trading in, the dealer promises to pay off the outstanding loan, then resells the vehicle. But as more dealers go out of business, some are sticking consumers with the bill. Lenders can then go after the previous owner who thought the debt was paid, or repossess the car from the new owner who assumed it came with clear title.

via Folding dealers shock car buyers with unpaid liens – Yahoo! News.

Hispanics – Social Shoppers

Compared to non-Hispanic shoppers, Hispanics tend to be browsers. Only 16 percent of Hispanics found it was important to get in and out of a store quickly, compared to 39 percent of non-Hispanic shoppers.

Hispanics’ purchase decisions are also more likely to be influenced by in-store promotions and advertising with 34 percent saying they are influenced by in-store ads and coupons compared to 14 percent of total shoppers. More than a third (34 percent) of Hispanic shoppers also claim to be influenced by in-store price reductions compared to 22 percent of non-Hispanic shoppers.

“Trips to the store for Hispanic consumers are about more than just availability of goods, it is also largely about service and the store experience. This sense of trust is a key reason that community based stores (bodegas and supermercados) are successful despite limited selections and often charging higher prices,” said Emil Morales, TNS executive vp and general manager.

via TNS: Hispanics Are Browsers.

Palm Beach In Shock Over Madoff

bebBelow is a piece that I posted on Huffingtonpost.com yesterday. About ten minutes after it went on line, the metropolitan editor of the New York Post emailed me about running it and it’s on page four in Saturday’s paper. The piece has reacted in a full range of opinion, from overwhelmingly positive to outrage. I’m trying to understand why some people are so upset. And as soon as I have a full grasp on this I’m going to publish again at Huffingtonpost.com and put it in my personal blog as well. (Thanks to Randy Marks)

via THE WAGES OF WEALTH.

Progressive Corporatism

The government will be much more active in economic management (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Democrat). Government activism will provide support to corporations, banks and business and will be used to shore up the stable conditions they need to thrive (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Republican). Tax revenues from business activities will pay for progressive but business-friendly causes — investments in green technology, health care reform, infrastructure spending, education reform and scientific research.

If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor.

After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we’re getting a glimpse of what comes next.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Establishment Lives! – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

Banks Call In The Plumbers

ANY good tradesman will tell you the importance of the bits of a house that you cannot see. Never mind the new kitchen: what about the rafters, the wiring and the pipes? So it is with financial markets. The stockmarkets are the most visible: as they soar or swoon, the headline-writers get to work. The money markets, however, are the plumbing of the system. Normally, they function efficiently and unseen, allowing investment institutions, companies and banks to lend and borrow trillions of dollars for up to a year at a time. They are only noticed when they go wrong. And, like plumbing, when they do get blocked, they make an almighty stink.

So it is safe to say that, until the money markets behave more normally, the financial crisis will not be over. And until the financial crisis is over, the global economy may not recover. So today the Fed moved to guarantee Commercial Paper and European Finance Ministers met in Emergency session to free up the plumbing. Click on the Economist link for a clear explanation of  the plumbing of the  Financial world.

Blockages in the money markets | Blocked pipes | The Economist

Buffett’s time bomb goes off on Wall Street

Buffett’s time bomb goes off on Wall Street | U.S. | Reuters
When historians write about the current crisis, much of the blame will go to the slump in the housing and mortgage markets, which triggered the losses, layoffs and liquidations sweeping the financial industry.

But credit default swaps — complex derivatives originally designed to protect banks from deadbeat borrowers — are adding to the turmoil.

Five years ago, billionaire investor Warren Buffett called them a “time bomb” and “financial weapons of mass destruction” and directed the insurance arm of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc to exit the business. Continue reading “Buffett’s time bomb goes off on Wall Street”

How Restaurants Cook the Books

With Software, Till Tampering Is Hard to Find – NYTimes.com
Thanks to a software program called a zapper, even technologically illiterate restaurant and store owners can siphon cash from computer cash registers and cheat tax officials.

One of the first reported zapper cases in the United States was Stew Leonard’s dairy, whose owner was convicted in 1993 of skimming $17 million over 10 years. The theft was uncovered after Mr. Leonard tried to board a plane to St. Martin with an unreported $50,000.

Continue reading “How Restaurants Cook the Books”

China & India To Spend Their $$$

Maybe the Olympics will awake people in the developed world, who are grossly ignorant of the size and power of the economies in the developing world.China has 1.4 billion people, and India has 1.1 billion people.  Together they make up about 40% of the world population.  The U.S. and Europe together total about 700 million people or about 12% of the world population.

<> Both China and India would like to do infrastructure development and the current decline in the price of world commodities will allow them to use the trillions of U.S. dollars that they have set aside for just such purposes.  China has said that they will spend $250 billion for each of the next two years on repairing the damage of the huge earthquake of 2008.  In addition, China announced some time ago a $13 trillion dollar plan to upgrade their railroads, plus $ trillions more on other huge plans for dams, roads, airports and many other infrastructure programs.

Behind the Big Credit Card Scam

His Miami condo, his 2006 BMW, his Glock 27 firearm… | Beyond the Beyond from Wired.com
At least hackers are still pitifully eager to rat out their friends to the Secret Service — the oldest tradition in the trade — but gee whiz, look at the level of global cooperation and the awesome sums of money contingent on being a major-league black-hat cracker these days. That almost beats the oil biz. Here’s the scoop behind the intrigue. Continue reading “Behind the Big Credit Card Scam”