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STORIES:
San
Jose council votes to explore new road taxes - (www.mercurynews.com) Facing grim reports of deteriorating roads, the San Jose City Council
voted unanimously to explore a raft of new tax and bond measures next year. The
council also voted 9-2 to encourage state lawmakers to lower the required
approval threshold for tax measures dedicated to transportation needs from
two-thirds to 55 percent. Councilmen Pete Constant and Johnny Khamis were
opposed. "The current condition of our roads is just unacceptable,"
said Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen. But some of the few public speakers who
attended the afternoon council meeting -- which was interrupted by a power
outage -- urged restraint on new taxes, especially after council members noted
they also are considering renewal of a library bond measure and possibly a
public safety bond.
Homeowner's
Scheme Makes Bad Situation Worse... Ends Up in Jail - (www.ml-implode.com) Yesterday, a Connecticut homeowner, Eric S. Scherz, 44, was sentenced by
United States District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant to 37 months of imprisonment,
followed by three years of supervised release, for mortgage fraud. Here’s what
happened… According to a press release issued
by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Connecticut, in October 2007, Mr.
Scherz secured a $417,000 mortgage related to the purchase of a property in
Barkhamsted. Then, in April 2008, he created a “fraudulent release of
mortgage on the property” that showed that a fictitious lender (a company Mr.
Scherz created), had been paid in full and he filed the fraudulent release with
the Town of Barkhamsted. Mr. Scherz then stopped making his mortgage payments
in March of 2009, although in April 2009 he made three payments using a wire
transfer from his bank that he knew would be reversed due to insufficient funds
in his account. And then… in May of 2009, he sold his property for $299,000,
and even though he owed $410,718.56 on his loan, the buyer believed the
fraudulent recorded release was legitimate… and Mr. Scherz just pocketed the
cash… none of the sale proceeds went to satisfying his outstanding loan.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was
prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael J. Gustafson and on
January 6, 2012, Mr. Scherz pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud. And
now Eric Scherz will be spending the next three years and one month doing
“federal time,” which as I understand it, means
he’ll serve every single day of his sentence.
Volcker Says Weakening the Fed’s Stimulus ‘Liquor’ a Challenge
- (www.bloomberg.com) Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said U.S. central bank
officials may find it difficult to rein in their historic stimulus at the
appropriate time because “there is a lot of liquor out there now.” “At some
point when the worm turns and the party is getting under way, to use that old
analogy, at what point do you begin retreating?” Volcker said today in a forum
discussion in Washington. “You can make a
mistake and go too quick, but the much more frequent mistake in my judgment is
you go too slow, because it’s never popular to take the so-called punch bowl
away or to weaken the liquor.”
Europe's economic fractures widen in February - (www.reuters.com) France,
Spain and Italy dragged the euro zone into a
deeper downturn in February, according to business surveys that showed the
chasm between these countries and prosperous Germany widening yet
again. While British services companies had a slightly better month than
expected, Tuesday's purchasing managers' indexes (PMIs) showed deepening
fractures running through the European economy. The divide between Germany and France, the euro zone's two
biggest economies, grew to its widest since the currency union's inception in
1999.
Quinn's budget
to call for education cuts – (www.chicagotribune.com)
Gov. Pat Quinn is expected to call for spending nearly 3 percent less on
education as he unveils a new budget proposal Wednesday, a move he blames
squarely on the state's increasing government worker pension costs. The $278
million cut to elementary and high school funding would be at least the third
straight significant annual reduction from state government to local school
districts. "When you have that tremendous amount of money that you have to
put in the pension (system), something's got to give," Quinn said on the
"John Kass in the Morning" radio show on WLS-AM 890. "And our
education, classroom education is going to get cut. And I don't like that, I
think that's not the right thing for us to do as a state. That's why we need
pension reform."
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