NewsTrust - Money and Politics - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

American Airlines' attempt to ditch pension riles feds, labor unions

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Steven Mufson - Feb. 11 (News Report) - Now in bankruptcy proceedings, the airline wants to terminate its four pension plans for 130,000 workers and retirees and ask the government's Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. to bail out its unfunded pension obligations to the tune of $9 billion.

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Capitol Assets: Some legislators send millions to groups connected to their relatives - Washington Post

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Scott Higham, Kimberly Kindy, David S. Fallis - Feb. 08 (Investigative Report) - .. the practice has continued unabated, the Post found.

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Web Piracy Bills Invite a Protracted Battle

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jenna Wortham, Somini Sengupta - Jan. 16 (News Report) - The Obama administration’s statement of opposition to antipiracy legislation let the technology industry claim a victory, but few in Silicon Valley or Hollywood consider the battle over.

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One Percent, Many Variations

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Shaila Dewan, Robert Gebeloff - Jan. 15 (Special Report) - Adam Katz is happy to talk to reporters when he is promoting his business, a charter flight company based on Long Island called Talon Air. But when the subject was his position as one of America’s top earners, he balked. Seated at a desk fashioned from a jet fuel cell, wearing a button-down shirt with the company logo, he considered the public relations benefits and found them lacking: “It’s not very popular to be in the 1 percent these days, is it?”

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Warren Buffett Ready to Take Republicans' Tax Challenge

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Time - By Rana Foroohar - Jan. 11 (News) - Buffett has pledged to match 1 for 1 all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. “And I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell,” he says. That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million. As Buffett put it to me, “I’m not worried.”

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Lawmaker warns USTR on labor in Trans-Pacific pact

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Yahoo! News - Dec. 15 (News Report) - A Republican lawmaker on Wednesday warned the Obama administration that Congress could reject a proposed Asia-Pacific trade deal if the White House pushes too hard on language to protect workers rights.

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Russian billionaire to run against Putin

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By Alla Eshchenko - Dec. 12 (News Report) - Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov -- the owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team and one of the world's richest men -- said Monday that he will run for president of Russia next year.

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L.A. calls for more regulation of corporate campaign money

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - Dec. 06 (News) - At a packed City Council meeting that included remarks from a man in a top hat with fake money tucked in the pocket of his suit, Los Angeles lawmakers Tuesday called for more regulations on how much corporations can spend on political campaigns. The vote

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Gingrich Gave Push to Clients, Not Just Ideas

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By MIKE McINTIRE, JIM RUTENBERG - Nov. 30 (News Report) - Newt Gingrich is adamant that he is not a lobbyist, but in the eight years since he started his health care consultancy, he has made millions of dollars while helping companies promote their services.

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Murdoch's News Corp accused of trying to bribe Australian senator

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Nov. 23 (News Report) - Federal police investigate Bill O'Chee's claim he was offered favourable coverage if he voted against digital TV laws Australian police are investigating a former senator's allegations that an executive from Rupert Murdoch's News Limited offered him favourable newspaper coverage and "a special relationship" in return for voting against government legislation. Bill O'Chee made the allegations in a nine-page statement to police and they were published Wednesday by Fairfax Media newspapers, rivals of News Corp's Australian subsidiary. The newspapers reported that an unnamed executive of News Ltd asked O'Chee during a lunch on 13 June 1998 to vote against his conservative government's legislation on the creation of digital TV in Australia. The News group stood to profit from the legislation failing. The Australian federal police said in a statement on Wednesday that O'Chee's allegations had been under investigation since 4 November. "As this matter is ongoing it would not be appropriate to ...

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Congress: Trading stock on inside information?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CBS News - By Steve Kroft, Ira Rosen, Gabrielle Schonde - Nov. 16 (Special Report) - Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information - but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it's time for the law to change.

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How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Tim Dickinson - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet.

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What Percent Are You?

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Phil Izzo - Oct. 25 (Special Report) - The Occupy Wall Street movement seeks to speak for the bottom 99% of the population by income, which includes pretty much everyone who makes less than $500,000 a year. According to the protesters’ unofficial website, “Occupy Wall Street” is a leaderless movement of people from many different backgrounds. “The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” the website says. A related site called We Are the 99% records stories from people around the country. The calculator above shows where your income stands on the wide range of the 99%. An annual salary above $506,000 puts you in the top 1%, while you need to make less than $2,500 a year to be in the bottom 1%. Where do you stand?

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Long ties to Koch brothers key to Cain’s campaign

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Oct. 16 (News) - Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation’s capital. But Cain’s economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity.

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Wall Street Protest Spurs Online Conversation

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jennifer Preston - Oct. 08 (News) - What began as a small group of protesters expressing their grievances about economic inequities last month from a park in New York City has evolved into an online conversation that is spreading across the country on social media platforms.

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Democrats Propose 5% Job Killing Surtax on Millionaires

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:00:51 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 05 (News) - Senate Democrats proposed a 5% job killing surtax on people earning more than $1 million a year to pay for the $447 billion cost of Obama's 'so-called' job-creation bill, in a move designed to shore up Democratic support for the measure.

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Obama Calls for New Taxes on Wealthy

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By John D. McKinnon, Jared Favole, Damian Paletta - Sep. 20 (News Report) - Obama called for $1.5 trillion in new taxes to help lower the nation's deficit, saying tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires in the last decade helped add to the country's massive debts.

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Tax us more, say wealthy Europeans

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Helen Pidd - Aug. 29 (News Report) - German group latest to volunteer for higher contributions, saying country could raise €100bn in two years with a 5% wealth tax First it was Warren Buffett announcing that he and his chums had been "coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress". Then Liliane Bettencourt, France's richest woman, who was at the centre of a tax scandal last year, signed a letter along with 15 other billionaires begging to make a special contribution to the treasury to help drag France out of the financial crisis. Even an Italian got in the action , with the boss of Ferrari saying that as he was rich, it was only "right" that he stump up more cash. Now, as both France and Spain consider introducing a wealth tax, a group of 50 rich Germans have joined the "tax me harder" movement by renewing their open call to Angela Merkel to "stop the gap between rich and poor getting even bigger". The German group, Vermögende für eine Vermögensabgabe (The Wealthy for a Capital Levy) is the latest ...

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Wall Street Aristocracy Secretly Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Bradley Keoun, Phil Kuntz - Aug. 22 (Special Report) - Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest US banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market's collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the US Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the US Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret

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U.S. aid implicated in abuses of power in Colombia

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Karen DeYoung, Claudia J. Duque - Aug. 20 (News Report) - The Obama administration often cites Colombia’s thriving democracy as proof that U.S. assistance, know-how and commitment can turn around a potentially failed state under terrorist siege. The country’s U.S.-funded counterinsurgency campaign against a Marxist rebel group — and the civilian and military coordination behind it — are viewed as so successful that it has become a model for strategy in Afghanistan. But new revelations in long-running political scandals under former president Alvaro Uribe , a close U.S. ally throughout his eight-year tenure, have implicated American aid, and possibly U.S. officials, in egregious abuses of power and illegal actions by the Colombian government under the guise of fighting terrorism and drug smuggling. ...

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Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Aug. 17 (Investigative Report) - Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after

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Safety doubts raised at U.S. nuclear waste cleanup project

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Ralph Vartabedian - Aug. 14 (Investigative Report) - Senior scientists at the site said in emails obtained by The Times that Bechtel's designs for tanks and mixing equipment are flawed, representing such a massive risk that work should be stopped on that part of the construction project. But Energy Department officials in Washington said they believed the problems were fixable and that they had authorized Bechtel to keep going

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Debt 'Super Committee' Nearly Complete, At 9 Members

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - Aug. 10 (News Report) - BILL CHAPPELL The new "Debt Supercommittee" created by the recent deficit ceiling deal now has 9 of its 12 members, as House Speaker John Boehner says Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas will co-chair the new committee, according to the AP. The panel's task will be to create a bipartisan plan for cutting the federal deficit by around $1.5 trillion. That money could come from a combination of spending cuts and raising revenue. If the panel fails to reach an agreement, automatic cuts would be made — and the automated cuts were crafted to be unpalatable to both of the major political parties.

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U.S. Stocks Drop Sharply Amid Fears About Europe

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Christine Hauser - Aug. 10 (News Report) - Stocks on Wall Street finished steeply lower on Wednesday as the financial sector dragged down the broader market, in a sharp reversal from the rally of the previous day. Financial stocks were down by more than 7 percent at about 4 p.m., in part because of fears about their exposure to French banks as shares in those institutions dropped during European trading. The broad stock market was affected because big countries like France in the heart of Europe might now be called upon to bail out their own banks as well as economies like Spain and Italy. "Today it’s fears about French banks and France," Michael Gapen, United States economist at Barclays Capital in New York, said, singling out the French bank Société Générale, whose shares fell about 18 percent. "SocGen is the name that is really driving trading."

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Fed tells worried stock market it will keep interest rate near zero for 2 years

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Aug. 09 (News Report) - The Federal Reserve guaranteed super-low interest rates for two more years Tuesday - an unprecedented step to arrest the alarming decline of the stock market and the economy. Wall Street roared its approval and finished a wild day with a 429-point gain. The rally was remarkably fast - the Dow Jones industrial average was still down for the day with less than an hour of trading to go - and enough to erase two-thirds of its decline the day before. The Fed set its target for interest rates near zero in 2008 as a response to the financial crisis that fall. Since then, it had said only that rates would stay low for an "extended period." On Tuesday, it guaranteed them until mid-2013.

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