Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore

Shell companies in Cayman Islands allow KBR to avoid Medicare, Social Security deductions.

CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands. Read more..
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/03/06/top_iraq_contractor_skirts_us_taxes_offshore/

Up to 70% of US aid to Pakistan 'misspent'

America's massive military aid package to Pakistan has come under scrutiny after allegations that as much as 70% of $5.4bn in assistance has been misspent.

Since 2002, the US has paid the operating costs of Pakistan's military operations in the tribal belt along the Afghan border, where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are sheltering.

Pakistan provides over 100,000 troops and directs the fight; the US foots the bill for food, fuel, ammunition and maintenance. The cash payments — averaging $80m a month — have been a cornerstone of US support for President Pervez Musharraf.

But over the past 18 months, as militants seized vast swaths of the tribal belt and repelled a string of Pakistani offensives, the funding has come under the microscope.

American officials processing the payments at the US embassy in Islamabad have concluded that the Pakistani expense claims have been vastly inflated, two western military officials told the Guardian. Read more..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/27/pakistan.usa


THIS SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE..REMEMBER THE MISSING MONEY IN IRAQ, THE LOST MONEY IN IRAQ? WHEN YOU CAN PRINT YOUR OWN MONEY AND SELL OFF YOUR DEBT TO OTHER COUNTRIES, YOU WOULD BE CARELESS TOO. MISSING MONEY...YEAH RIGHT. DRUG MONEY MISSING TOO?

"Euros Accepted" signs pop up in New York City

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the latest example that the U.S. dollar just ain't what it used to be, some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.

"We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank," Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told Reuters television.

The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates. Read more..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080206/us_nm/newyork_euros_dc

Immigrants hit hard by slowdown, subprime crisis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As an economic slowdown and the subprime mortgage crisis deepen across the United States, Hispanic immigrants are increasingly in danger of losing their jobs and their homes.

Both legal and illegal immigrants joined Americans in buying homes they could barely afford when the market spiraled upward and many have been caught with mortgages higher than the value of their homes as prices have slumped in the past year. Read more..

1)Why are they lending money to Illegals?
2)Why are the lenders not being prosecuted?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080130/us_nm/usa_economy_immigrants_dc

PayPal buying Israeli online security firm Fraud Sciences

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Online financial transactions firm PayPal announced on Monday that it has a 169-million-dollar deal to buy an Israeli company that specializes in uncovering fraud.

PayPal, which is owned by veteran Internet auction service eBay, expects to complete the purchase of Fraud Sciences Ltd. in 30 days.

Once acquired, the company's expertise will be used to expose scams and deceptions targeted at PayPal and eBay users, according to the companies.

"Integrating Fraud Sciences' risk tools with PayPal's sophisticated fraud management system should allow us to be even more effective in protecting eBay and PayPal's hundreds of millions of customers around the world," said PayPal president Scott Thompson.

PayPal did not disclose details of the deal but said it is valued at 169 million dollars. Read more..
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080128/bs_afp/technologyusisraelitinternetcompanyebay;_ylt=Al1C2X3Sm4RkT5ChxJJllX0jtBAF">http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080128/bs_afp/technologyusisraelitinternetcompanyebay;_ylt=Al1C2X3Sm4RkT5ChxJJllX0jtBAF
Ahhh, but of course, an American company uses foreign companies to protect who?

US slides into dangerous 1930s 'liquidity trap'

The United States is sliding towards a dangerous 1930s-style "liquidity trap" that cannot easily be stopped by drastic cuts in interest rates, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned. Read more..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/01/24/bcnstig124.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

What’s $34 Billion on Wall Street?

UNDER the stewardship of Dow Kim and Thomas G. Maheras, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup built positions in subprime-related securities that led to $34 billion in write-downs last year. The debacle cost chief executives their jobs and brought two of the world’s premier financial institutions to their knees.

In any other industry, Mr. Kim and Mr. Maheras would be pariahs. But in the looking-glass world of Wall Street, they — and others like them — are hot properties. The two executives are well on their way to reviving their careers, even as global markets shudder at the prospect that Merrill and Citigroup may report further subprime losses in the coming months. Read more..
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/yourmoney/27kim.html?_r=1&em&ex=1201410000&en=1b5f65e4f3c47453&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Citigroup CEO gets $26.7 million in stock, 3 million options

NEW YORK — Citigroup (C) awarded Chief Executive Vikram Pandit $26.7 million worth of shares and 3 million stock options six weeks after he took over the largest U.S. bank, and a week after the company reported a record $9.83 billion quarterly loss.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday night, Citigroup said Pandit was awarded 1,094,949 shares Tuesday under a company incentive plan adopted in 1999. Read more..
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2008-01-25-citigroup-ceo-pay_N.htm?csp=34

Merrill Lynch gets fresh $6.6bn injection

Merrill Lynch on Tuesday said it had raised $6.6bn by selling preferred shares to investors from the Middle East and Asia, as part of a second injection of funds to help shore up the US investment bank’s capital base

The bank said it would issue preferred stock to ”long-term investors”, with the bulk being taken up by the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA). Mizuho Corporate Bank, a subsidiary of Japan’s second largest bank, is taking about $1.2bn and the Korean Investment Corporation (KIC), $2bn. Read more..
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6d7b30e-c361-11dc-b083-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Citigroup may cut 24,000 jobs as loans crisis grows

The fallout from America’s mortgage meltdown continued at Citigroup yesterday amid reports that the world’s biggest bank was poised to cut up to 24,000 jobs, that it planned a substantial dividend cut and that the Chinese Government had pulled out of a deal to inject about $2 billion (£1 billion).

The job losses, up to 8 per cent of Citigroup’s 300,000 staff, were reported by CNBC, the American television news network.

Citigroup is expected to announce a hefty dividend cut for the fourth quarter, perhaps by as much as half, which would save about $5 billion if maintained over a year.

Meanwhile, it became apparent that the state-owned China Development Bank had rejected an opportunity to invest after several weeks of discussions.

However, the bank is expected to say that it has agreed a multibillion-dollar injection from a consortium of Asian and Middle Eastern investors. Its balance sheet has been badly damaged by billions of dollars of losses on investments in sub-prime mortgages and it is expected to announce further sub-prime losses today, with some reports suggesting as much as $24 billion for the fourth quarter. Read more..
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3187637.ece

Merrill Lynch targetted in share investigation

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating whether Merrill Lynch used knowledge about some of the share trades the brokerage conducted for its clients to make a profit on its own account.

The US watchdog’s probe centres on whether some current and former Merrill Lynch executives engaged in a practice known as "front running" which is when a brokerage receives a large order to buy or sell a particular share from a client and quickly executes its own trade in the same stock before addressing the client’s transaction.

Merrill Lynch reported an $8.4 billion (£4.2 billion) writedown in the third quarter, much of it relating to mortgage investments. It is expected to announce a further $10 billion to $20 billion sub-prime-related losses when the brokerage reports its fourth quarter figures.

Merrill Lynch is also expected to announce on Thursday that it has agreed a second capital injection, of about $4 billion, from investors thought to include the Kuwait Investment Authority. The infusion would follow a $6.4 billion investment last month from Temasek, the Singapore government-owned fund and Davis Selected Advisors, the US asset manager.
Read more..
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article3186660.ece

Wall Street Trio In Line For $15 Million Dollar Bonuses, Thanks to Sub-Prime Cleanup

THREE New York traders celebrated one of the biggest windfalls in Wall Street history after making a £2bn gamble that sub-prime mortgages would fall in value.
The trio at Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, watched their winnings grow as the rising number of mortgage defaults caused chaos in a worldwide financial crisis.

Dan Sparks, 40, Michael Swenson, 40, and Josh Birnbaum, 35, bet that the sub-prime mortgage market was in trouble and scooped $4bn (£1.96bn) for the bank, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

Their win, one of the biggest windfalls in the securities industry in years, has wiped out between $1.5bn and $2bn of mortgage-related losses elsewhere at the bank.

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Wall-St-loans-coup-nets.3594796.jp