News and Finance

U.S. investigators believe 10 or more people associated with imprisoned swindler Bernard Madoff could be criminally charged in the coming months or beyond, a law enforcement source said on Tuesday.

The source, who asked not be identified because of the ongoing investigation into the multibillion-dollar Madoff fraud, said the FBI was "closer to the beginning than the end" of the probe.

Disgraced financier Madoff, 71, was sentenced to 150 years imprisonment on Monday after he pleaded guilty in March to orchestrating a worldwide investment scheme of as much as $65 billion. Madoff has not named accomplices in the classic "cash in, cash out" fraud and the only other person charged so far is his outside accountant.

"There will probably be more people charged," the law enforcement source said. "It is likely to be 10 or more, but it is going to be a lengthy process that could take months or more."

A spokeswoman for the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, which prosecuted Madoff and accountant David Friehling, declined to comment on the investigations payday loan.

Federal investigators have declined to identify who is the focus of their inquiries, but they are skeptical of the claims by some people who worked at the Madoff firm that they had no knowledge of the scheme.

Lawyers and white-collar crime experts have said all along that Madoff’s decades-long scheme appeared to be too complex to have been the work of one person alone.

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York had a brokerage unit and an investment advisory business. The court-appointed trustee winding down the firm said the nefarious activity took place on the investment side.

The trustee and regulators have sued several businessmen, who made billions in handling Madoff money through so-called feeder funds, charging that they knew or should have known the financier was running a fraud. 

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General Motors Corp is heading to bankruptcy court on Tuesday to seek approval to sell its assets to a “New GM” in a plan to reinvigorate the automaker under U.S. government ownership.

GM is seeking approval for the sale from U.S. bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber just 30 days after filing for Chapter 11. Under the deal, brokered by the Obama administration’s autos task force, the company would sell its assets under Section 363 of the bankruptcy code to a “New GM” and continue to operate its best assets, like Chevrolet and Cadillac, while gaining access to billions in funding from the U.S. Treasury.

GM’s old assets would remain behind in bankruptcy court to be liquidated.

The deal faces several objections from bondholders and those concerned about the fate of its dealers, but no competing bidders have emerged as an alternative to the U.S. government’s $60 billion financing for GM, including a proposed equity investment of $50 billion that would give the U.S. Treasury a 60 percent ownership stake.

If the sale goes through it would mark the second big win this month for the Obama administration’s autos task force, which successfully brokered the sale of Chrysler LLC to a group led by Italy’s Fiat SpA. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for that deal to go through on June 9.

“I think it is going even perhaps more smoothly than Chrysler, which is kind of interesting considering how much bigger GM is than Chrysler,” said Stephen Lubben, a bankruptcy professor at Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey.

“Chrysler cleared the path for it and they’re using pretty much the same strategy,” he added.

GM said in court documents that the sale would avoid a “systemic failure” for the U.S. auto industry and that it is the only way to provide “a genuine opportunity for the business to survive and thrive in an economically viable entity instant personal loan approvals.”

The company has shut 13 of its U.S. assembly plants for up to 11 weeks as part of a bid to cut production and run down inventory while it seeks approval of the sale in bankruptcy court.

The company plans to shed dealer contracts and has deals to sell brands like Hummer and Saturn that will not be carried over to the new company. It also plans to shed the Pontiac brand and GM said on Monday that it would cut operational ties with a Northern California auto plant it had operated in a joint venture with Toyota Motor Corp.

UPHILL BATTLE FOR CHALLENGERS

While dozens of objections have been filed in the bankruptcy case, some have already been resolved or withdrawn, and challengers to the deal could face an uphill battle since the same court has already approved the Chrysler sale.

“I think Judge Gonzalez kind of made life easier for Judge Gerber here,” Lubben said, citing the New York bankruptcy judge who approved Chrysler’s sale and the several higher courts that backed his decision.

“People basically know the Second Circuit has already largely blessed this structure,” he added.

GM has said more than 50 percent of its bondholders support the deal and also argued that the sale would maximize recovery for its stakeholders. Under the plan, the U.S. government would take a 60 percent stake in the newly formed company, the United Auto Workers union would have a 17.5 percent stake, the Canadian government would own about 12 percent, and GM bondholders are expected to get about 10 percent. 

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CANNES–A U.S. recovery is likely to begin this autumn, the worst of the crisis has passed and it is "reasonable to be optimistic for 2010," internet search giant Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt said on Friday.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in southern France, Schmidt said U.S. jobless claims indicated "the beginning of the bottom."

"The rate of jobless claims is decreasing although the absolute number is increasing," he explained.

Schmidt said he did not want to comment on a report that Google had set up a team of engineers to study the technical specifications of Bing, the search engine launched recently by Google rival Microsoft, as he had not seen it no fax payday loans.

But he added: "Bing is a competitor. We have absolutely looked at Bing; we have actually studied what they do as Microsoft studied what Google does."

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been winning U.S. market share from its rivals but is still trailing Google and Yahoo Inc.

Bing will be launched in the UK in the autumn and a test version is already available in Europe.

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Nigeria’s main militant group said it had blown up a well-head in a Royal Dutch Shell oil field in Delta state late on Thursday, hours after President Umaru Yar’Adua announced an amnesty offer for gunmen.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) accused the military of going on a “punitive expedition” to hunt down suspected militants in the Agbeti community of Delta state after Yar’Adua’s amnesty proclamation.

“In response … (operation) Piper Alpha continued its rampage on the Nigerian oil industry by blowing up the second remaining well-head of the Shell Afremo offshore oil fields in Delta state,” MEND said in a statement e-mailed to media.

The military denied carrying out any such campaign.

“Our troops did not carry out any operation in Agbeti. This is a lie, propaganda by these miscreants to justify their attacks on isolated oil facilities,” said Colonel Rabe Abubakar, spokesman for the joint military taskforce in the Niger Delta.

A Shell spokeswoman said it was investigating reports of an attack on its Afremo platform B facility, which had already been shut down following an attack on the Trans Escravos pipeline in February.

Afremo was one of the sites MEND also said it had attacked in a triple raid on Sunday. It described the field as being 14 miles from an export terminal through which crude oil from Shell’s Forcados fields is pumped.

A senior industry source said at the time the location was not a deepwater installation, but a facility located in or close to the mangrove creeks, where pipelines and equipment run across broad stretches of water paydayloans.

BILLIONS IN LOST REVENUE

Yar’Adua on Thursday offered the amnesty to gunmen who laid down their weapons during a 60-day period ending on October 4, in a bid to end years of unrest which have cost Africa’s top oil exporter billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Pipeline bombings, attacks on oil and gas installations and the kidnapping of industry workers over the past three years have prevented Nigeria from pumping much above two thirds of its installed capacity of 3 million barrels per day of oil.

The supply disruption has at times helped push world energy prices higher and cost Africa’s most populous nation, which relies on crude oil for 90 percent of its foreign earnings, tens of millions of dollars a day.

MEND’s latest campaign of sabotage, which began just over a month ago and which it has dubbed “Hurricane Piper Alpha”, has already forced at least 133,000 barrels per day (bpd) of production to be shut down.

It has again had an impact on global energy prices, helping push oil over $71 a barrel on Friday. <O/R>

One faction leader, Ateke Tom, has indicated he would consider taking part in an amnesty while a lawyer for Henry Okah, the suspected leader of MEND who is on trial for treason, has said he hoped his client would be covered by the proposal. 

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Peabody Energy Corp. said it is considering an investment in a large new surface mine in the coal-rich Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region of northwestern China.

Purchasing a stake in the Shaxi mine, which is already being developed by the mining unit of Shaxi Lu’an Mining Co., a Chinese energy and chemicals company, would give Peabody access to a significant block of coal in the Xinjiang region, which contains 40 percent of China’s coal reserves, Peabody spokeswoman Beth Sutton said.

The mine’s annual production could exceed 15 million tons of coal, Peabody said. Coal will be shipped to power plants and industrial customers in central and eastern China on a rail line being developed by the Chinese government.

Peabody said the next step in evaluation of the project is to work with Lu’an on a study to evaluate requirements for the next phase of development florida health insurance. That could include tapping other Lu’an coal reserves in the region.
The potential structure of a venture with Lu’an hasn’t been determined, except that Peabody would serve as an operating partner in the Shaxi mine, Sutton said.

The agreement with Lu’an is the latest venture by Peabody to tap China’s fast-growing demand for energy.

Last year, the company announced a $2.5 billion project to develop a mine in Mongolia.

(Jeffrey Tomich)

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Moody’s Investors Service said on Tuesday that the U.S. government’s triple-A credit rating was safe but added that it could be at risk if Washington were unable to bring its public debt back to a downward trajectory.

Financial markets have repeatedly been spooked this year by concern that triple-A rated governments such as the United States and Britain could face credit ratings downgrades as they borrow heavily to spend their way out of recession.

“The U.S. government triple-A is safe,” Pierre Cailleteau, team managing director of Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group, said at a media briefing on sovereign credit ratings held in Tokyo.

Moody’s has a stable outlook on the U.S. rating, which indicates a change is not expected over the next 18 months.

Replying to a question about the sovereign rating of the United States, Cailleteau said the U.S. rating “remains a solid triple-A.”

But he added that there were possible risks that could lead to a downgrade.

“That will happen for two reasons. Either our assumptions in terms of debt reversibility prove to be wrong. That is, in fact the U.S. government is unable to bring public debt back to a downward trajectory,” he said.

The other reason would be if the United States’ ability to raise a large amount of debt at a low cost were to be put at risk, Cailleteau said no teletrack cash advance.

“It could be put at risk if the U.S. dollar was severely challenged as the main international reserve currency,” he said.

But the possibility of the dollar being replaced as the main international reserve currency in the near future was a “pretty remote risk,” he added.

Debate has flared in the past few months about the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency at a time when the United States’ debt issuance is ballooning to pay for financial and economic rescue programs.

The bulk of the world’s foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars, and Russia, the holder of the world’s third-largest reserves after China and Japan, has repeatedly called for less global reliance on the dollar.

Moody’s Investors Service said in May that it was comfortable with the triple-A sovereign rating on the United States, but it was not guaranteed forever.

It also warned in May that if the United States failed to reduce current debt levels once economic growth returned, the triple-A rating could come under pressure.

(Reporting by Masayuki Kitano; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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I have enough. I hope you find you do, too, when you consider what’s really important in your life.

I’ve pondered the question of how much is enough after receiving a perceptive e-mail from a reader and copies of two thought-provoking books.

The e-mail, from a longtime reader in Wisconsin, embodies the philosophy guiding my own semi-retirement.

"Many of my 50-something friends are wasting some invaluable time that they’ve been given on Earth," this reader said. They are caught up in an "earning and spending cycle" (must keep working hard so they can keep buying things they don’t really need) while worrying they’ll need to save a lot of money to retire.

"I can’t believe the number of smart, talented friends I have who are not particularly happy doing what they are doing," the reader said. But they believe "they must continue so they can stop working at (fill-in-the-blank age) to play golf or sit by the pool."

I must agree. What a waste, doing something you don’t like so eventually you can stop and do … nothing?

Why not pursue your passions even if the pay is less? (This reader did, returning to school for a degree in a different field.) If you love what you do, you may never feel the need to totally retire, or at least won’t mind working a few more years. "Retirement," as this reader said, would be a time to work for joy and learn new things.

That’s what I did in 2000 when I quit my full-time job at age 55, even if half a dozen online calculators I checked estimated I was as much as $250,000 short of what I needed to retire.

And yet, I’ve done just fine. By phasing down my writing rather than stopping completely, I’ve remained active, earning income doing something I enjoy but without the stresses of a 24/7 newspaper job free business card templates. I’ve found more time for family and friends, for hobbies and community. I’m taking music courses and volunteer as a chess teacher at two elementary schools, activities I enjoy immensely but had no time to do before.

Other things my wife, Georgina, and I find most gratifying — simple things such as daily walks on the beach — cost little or nothing. We are certain we have enough, not just enough money to live on, but enough time to do the things we like and enough balance in our lives.

BOOKS EXPLORE SUBJECT

That’s the point in the book "How Much is Enough? Making Financial Decisions that Create Wealth" by Arun Abey and Andrew Ford. The question "how much is enough?" is not simply about money but about "how much is enough to balance all areas of your life to achieve fulfillment," the authors say.

About the book, first published in Australia, "I was a bit skeptical, as I’m not a big fan of ‘touchy-feely’ planning," said Harold Evensky, a respected certified financial planner in Coral Gables, Fla., who sent me a copy. "Surprise! I thought it was terrific." Evensky liked it so much he wrote the foreword for the American edition.

Another worthwhile book is "The Secret Language of Money: How To Make Smarter Financial Decisions and Live a Richer Life" by David Krueger. Krueger, a clinical psychiatrist and business coach, wisely advises that money "must be balanced with family, work, health, friendships, leisure, making a difference in your community, and taking care of yourself."

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Chancellor Angela Merkel said the slumping German economy has nearly hit bottom and will unlikely recover quickly, the AP reported, citing a speech she made in Berlin.

The chart of the German economy may look more like a “bathtub” than a “V” as output stagnates before recovering, she said, according to the news agency payday loans for bad credit. “I hope it is a children’s bathtub and not a bathtub for people with particularly long legs,” Merkel is quoted as saying by the AP.

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U.K. families unaffected by job losses have enjoyed a 25 percent increase in spending money in the past year after mortgage costs and energy bills fell, Ernst & Young said.

The disposable income of the average household, assuming no change in employment status, rose by 200 pounds ($327) a month, the business advisory firm said in a report today. Homeowners benefited after the Bank of England cut the key rate to a record low of 0.5 percent, curbing mortgage costs. Gasoline, gas and electricity bills also fell.

“Even though we’re still in recession, many U.K. householders who have not been hit by unemployment have experienced a dramatic upturn in their monthly budgets over the last year,” Jason Gordon, retail director at Ernst & Young, said in the statement.

Rising unemployment and the worst recession in a generation will probably encourage consumers to pay back debt than spend their extra wealth in the shops, Ernst & Young said. U.K. retail sales unexpectedly dropped in May for the first time in three months, the Office for National Statistics said today cash advance no fax.

The average household has 1,075 pounds to spend every month after paying bills, Ernst & Young said. That amounts to 27 percent of gross income, compared with 22 percent last year.

Weaker house prices, which the Bank of England estimates have declined about 20 percent, may still have eroded households’ overall wealth, the report showed.

A surge in oil prices may lift utility bills in the months ahead. Brent crude oil futures topped $71 a barrel yesterday, almost double the low of $36.20 reached on Dec. 24.

Unemployment rose to the highest since 1996 in the quarter through April and the Confederation of British Industry predicted this week that as many as 3 million consumers will be without work by the middle of 2010.

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Social networking site MySpace said Tuesday that it plans to slash nearly 30% of its workforce, leaving it with 1,000 employees.

Once the world’s largest online social network, MySpace has struggled to compete with the rapid user growth of rivals Facebook and Twitter. Usership and average time spent on the Web site have decreased over the past several months.

"Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," said MySpace Chief Executive Owen Van Natta. "Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product."

MySpace was purchased for $580 million by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp (NWS, Fortune 500) in 2005, when it was the leading social network.

The company’s success and growth continued until last year. In April 2008, 73% of the total time spent on social networks was spent on MySpace, according to a recent Nielsen study. Social network users spent just 23% of their time on MySpace in April 2009, compared to nearly 66% for Facebook.

"MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace," said Jonathan Miller, News Corporation’s CEO of Digital Media freecreditscore. "I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward."

A new leader. Facebook has taken over the social networking crown in recent months because it appeals to a broad age range and continues to unveil diverse applications for gaming, music and social interaction.

MySpace, on the other hand, has a much younger audience and is the Internet leader in media downloads, including streaming movies and music.

As a result, experts say MySpace may continue to pursue its niche, allowing Facebook to remain social networking leader for the time being.

"MySpace is not currently in a situation where they feel they can win this social networking battle," said Josh Bernoff, social networking analyst at Forrester Research. "It has become difficult to take the leader head on, so there’s less need for the number of developers they had." 

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