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casinos struggle, tribes seek more federal aid - (news.yahoo.com) As casinos struggle through
downturn, Connecticut Indian gaming tribes seek more federal aid. Once the envy
of Indian Country for its billion-dollar casino empire, the tribe
that owns the Foxwoods Resort Casino has been struggling through a
financial crisis and pursuing more revenue from an unlikely source: U.S. government
grants. The money provided annually to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal
Nation through the Interior Department and the Department of Health
and Human Services has risen over the last five years to more than $4.5
million, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press through the
Freedom of Information Act. One former tribal employee says department leaders
were encouraged to offset dwindling resources by seeking more federal
grants. The Pequots, who once distributed stipends exceeding $100,000 annually
to adult members, are not alone among gaming tribes seeking more federal aid.
Several, including the owner of Foxwoods' rival Connecticut casino, the
Mohegan Sun, say they have been pursuing more grants — a trend that critics
find galling because the law that gave rise to Indian casinos was intended to
help tribes become financially self-sufficient.
After Cyprus, euro zone faces tough bank regime: Eurogroup head
- (www.reuters.com) A rescue program agreed for
Cyprus on Monday represents a new template for resolving euro zone banking
problems and other countries may have to restructure their banking sectors, the
head of the region's finance ministers
said. "What we've done last night is what I call pushing back the
risks," Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the
Eurogroup of euro zone finance
ministers, told Reuters and the Financial Times hours after the Cyprus deal was
struck.
Cyprus Salvaged After EU Deal Shuts Bank to Get $13B - (www.bloomberg.com) Cyprus dodged a disorderly
sovereign default and unprecedented exit from the euro by bowing to demands
from creditors to shrink its banking system in exchange for 10 billion euros
($13 billion) of aid. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades agreed to shut the
country’s second-largest bank under pressure from a German-led bloc in an
overnight negotiating melodrama that threatened to rekindle the European debt crisis and rattle
markets. “It’s been yet another hard day’s night,” European Union Economic and
Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli
Rehn told reporters in Brussels early today. “There were no
optimal solutions available, only hard choices.”
Spain’s Swelling Debt Seen Impeding Rajoy Deficit Battle -
(www.bloomberg.com) Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy’s progress in curbing a deficit worsened by the cost of
servicingSpain’s
swelling debt load will be revealed this week with the release of data on the
country’s finances. The Budget Ministry will tomorrow publish figures for
February showing the central government’s budget shortfall, which accounted for more
than half of the nation’s deficit in 2012. Data in the following days on mortgage loans, inflation and retail sales will also highlight the
plight of the taxpayers financing those outlays. Rajoy last week signaled the
difficulty of his task in taming a deficit as he backtracked for the first time
on his pledge to haul Spain out of a six-year slump later this year. He said
the euro region’s fourth-largest economy may face a worse recession than the
0.5 percent contraction he’d previously predicted for 2013.
Russians prepare to quit Cyprus - (www.ft.com) For Fedor Mikhin the deluge of overseas phone
calls began on Wednesday, just five days after the EU first proposed the
ill-fated tax levy on Cypriot depositors. There were the two Andorran bankers
who called offering to open bank accounts for the Cyprus-based businessman in
the Pyrenees, and then Mr Mikhin’s Swiss bank, which announced it would be
sending representatives to Limassol to poach Russian clients on Tuesday, the
day Cyprus is
due to reopen its banks for the first time in over a week. While last week saw
dozens of well-heeled Russians and their representatives fly down to Cyprus to
check on bank accounts and confer furiously with Cypriot officials, they are
being closely followed by another wave of visitors: the European bankers who
hope Cyprus’s loss will be their gain.
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