Realtors
arrested for mortgage fraud scheme - (www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com) Federal
agents have arrested Stockton residents Lillian Marquez, 38, and Michael
Keatts, 56, in their homes early Wednesday morning for a mortgage fraud scheme,
according to U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner. A federal grand jury indictment
charges them with conspiring to commit mortgage fraud and with nine counts of
mail fraud. According to the indictment, from February 2006 through at least
August 2012, Ms. Marquez and Mr. Keatts, who operated Colonial Home and
Business Services in Stockton, supplied false information to mortgage lenders
indicating that would-be homebuyers were employed by various businesses set up
and controlled by the defendants. But, says the government, the clients were
not employed by those businesses and their actual income from their true
employment was far less than what was represented to lending institutions. To
support these false claims, the defendants created and submitted fraudulent
paystubs and tax documents falsely stating that their clients were so employed,
the indictment alleges.
Mexico
Housing Hits U.S. Investors as Plan Collapses - (www.bloomberg.com) Three
years into her home-ownership dream, Martha Orozco has had enough. Stuck in a
government-sponsored complex called Parque San Mateo that’s two hours away from
her $8,000-a-year job as a hospital secretary in Mexico City, Orozco sees only broken promises
and blight all around her. Power outages drag on for hours at a time.
Neighboring townhouses lie abandoned by the hundreds, giving criminals a
growing foothold in the community. The stench of overflowing sewage permeates
the development. And then there’s the commute: Until Orozco started driving to
work, it was a van-to-train-to-bus odyssey whose cost consumed 20 percent of
her pay. Orozco, a 52-year-old widow, is looking to leave her $18,500 house and
move with her daughter and granddaughter closer to Mexico City. If she does,
she’ll join an army of disenchanted homeowners who moved in the past 10 years
to the sprawling new towns that have sprung up in most of Mexico’s 31 states.
The buyers all signed up for a government-backed program that helped finance
construction of millions of homes. The complexes ring the country’s major
cities from Veracruz to Mexico City to Tijuana. The program has been a
disaster. Hundreds of thousands of homes are now derelict after buyers such as
Orozco concluded they were located too far from city centers and moved out.
Developers, their profits assured by government guarantees, built houses faster
than municipalities could connect them to water systems and power grids.
Unilever
Announces Brutal Cuts: 800 Marketing Jobs Gone; 30% Of Products Axed [THE
BRIEF] - (www.businessinsider.com) Unilever announced
in an investors' meeting yesterday that it will be cutting 800 marketers, decreasing its product varieties by 30
percent, and will continue to trim agency and commercial production fees.
Worst South African Bond Sales in 15 Years Hits Rand to 2009 Low - (www.bloomberg.com) “We’re seeing evidence of the continued unwind of risky assets, and it’s all to do with growing concern about Federal Reserve tapering,” Michael Keenan, a South Africa strategist at Barclays Plc’s South African unit, said by phone from Johannesburg. “Because South Africa is so dependent on capital inflows, this will hurt the rand. It’s still got a long way to go. We could see more selling.” Foreign investors sold 36.3 billion rand ($3.5 billion) of South African stocks and bonds since the beginning of November, according to JSE data. The nation needs average inflows of 19.5 billion rand a month to plug its current-account shortfall, according to Standard Bank Group Ltd. The deficit widened to 6.8 percent in the third quarter from 5.9 percent the previous three months, the Reserve Bank said on Dec. 3.
Wanted: More Unemployment - (www.nytimes.com) It’s
easier to see the trends if you skip over the government’s wacky data for the
month of October, and compare November with September. The number of people
that the government counted as unemployed fell by 348,000, driving the
unemployment rate from 7.2 percent to 7.0 percent. But the number of people
with jobs only increased by 83,000. In other words, for every person who found
a job between September and November, three other people stopped looking. Explanations
for this problem fall into two categories, both depressing. The first school
holds that the economy is broken: We have entered an era of “secular stagnation.”
We must resign ourselves to a smaller work force. The second school holds that
the government is broken. There are steps we could take to grow faster but, for
the most part, we are doing the opposite.
Lawmakers
rushing to reach budget agreement to avoid another shutdown - (www.washingtonpost.com)
Budget Talks Target One Year Deal as Lawmakers Protest - (www.bloomberg.com)
Budget Talks Target One Year Deal as Lawmakers Protest - (www.bloomberg.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment