Too-Big-To-Fail Banks Have Raked In $102 Billion In Subsidies Since 2009: Report

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America’s biggest banks want you to believe that they get no special advantage, no subsidies, from being too big to fail. And yet people keep finding evidence of those subsidies.

The latest is World Bank economist Deniz Anginer, in a study for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Anginer estimates that the six biggest U.S. banks have saved $82 billion in borrowing costs since 2009 because investors believe the government will never let them fail and thus don’t charge as much to lend them money as they do smaller banks. The report will be published in the June issue of the magazine.

Together with dirt-cheap government borrowing programs, Bloomberg estimates these banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — have saved $102 billion since 2009 because of their size advantage.

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A new study tries to estimate the subsidies enjoyed by too-big-to-fail banks. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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.Click link below for story, slideshow, and video:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/too-big-to-fail-subsidies_n_3252879.html?ref=topbar

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Too-Big-To-Fail Banks Have Raked In $102 Billion In Subsidies Since 2009: Report

FROM

Click link below picture

.

America’s biggest banks want you to believe that they get no special advantage, no subsidies, from being too big to fail. And yet people keep finding evidence of those subsidies.

The latest is World Bank economist Deniz Anginer, in a study for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Anginer estimates that the six biggest U.S. banks have saved $82 billion in borrowing costs since 2009 because investors believe the government will never let them fail and thus don’t charge as much to lend them money as they do smaller banks. The report will be published in the June issue of the magazine.

Together with dirt-cheap government borrowing programs, Bloomberg estimates these banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — have saved $102 billion since 2009 because of their size advantage.

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A new study tries to estimate the subsidies enjoyed by too-big-to-fail banks. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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.Click link below for story, slideshow, and video:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/too-big-to-fail-subsidies_n_3252879.html?ref=topbar

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Small Businesses Opt To Pay Obamacare Penalty Instead Of Offering Health Insurance

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Since the Affordable Care Act passed into law, companies have been vocal about the drastic measures they’ll take to avoid paying for basic health care coverage for their employees, including cutting hours and firing workers.

An increasing number of companies now say paying the government’s penalty to break the law will be cheaper than following it, The Wall Street Journal reports.

An Obamacare provision that goes into effect next year requires businesses with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health care coverage for employees. For businesses that don’t, there is a $2,000 penalty for each full-time worker above the 30-employee threshold. (Full-time workers are defined as anyone who works more than 30 hours a week in a given month.)

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/small-business-obamacare-penalty_n_3037749.html?icid=maing-grid7|myaol|dl3|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D295389

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12 Things That Can Shorten Your Life

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A few key behaviors and health conditions could predict your chances of health and longevity for the next 10 years. Find out what they are.

Want to look 10 years into the future, and see how your health is holding up? Thanks to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, you now can. They developed a checklist, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which fairly accurately predicts a senior’s chance of surviving another decade, providing a unique opportunity for patients and physicians to work together to lessen key health risk factors and improve seniors’ quality of life, they say.

The UCSF analysis used a nationally representative cohort of U.S. adults over age 50. Point values were assigned to each factor in the mortality index (the higher the points, the worse the risk). A risk score was then calculated for each participant based on their self-reported health indicators. In the end, there was a dramatic difference: Participants with no risk factors had a 2.8 percent chance of dying over 10 years, while those with the most risks had a 96 percent chance of dying.

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.Click link below for list:

http://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health-pictures/things-that-can-shorten-your-life.aspx?xid=aol_eh-news_8_20130304_&aolcat=HLT&icid=maing-grid7|myaol|dl4|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D279547#/slide-1

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Elizabeth Warren Embarrasses Hapless Bank Regulators At First Hearing (VIDEO)

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Bank regulators got a sense Thursday of how their lives will be slightly different now that Elizabeth Warren sits on a Senate committee overseeing their agencies.

At her first Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Warren questioned top regulators from the alphabet soup that is the nation’s financial regulatory structure: the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFPB, CFTC, Fed and Treasury.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts had a straightforward question for them: When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial? It was a harder question than it seemed.

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.Click link below for story, video, and slideshow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/elizabeth-warren-bank-regulators_n_2688998.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

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Lynsi Torres, In-N-Out Burger Owner, Is America’s Youngest Female Billionaire

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Lynsi Torres, the 30-year-old president and owner of In-N-Out Burger, is the youngest female billionaire in the U.S., Bloomberg reports. Her grandparents Harry and Esther Snyder founded the hamburger chain.

Torres does not have a college degree or much formal management training, Bloomberg reports. Thanks to In-N-Out’s large fan base at its nearly 280 restaurants in five states, the chain is now worth roughly $1.1 billion, according to estimates — 19,298 times more than the median U.S. household in 2010.

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.Click link below for story. videos, and slideshow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/lynsi-torres-in-n-out-burger_n_2614814.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular#slide=1542168

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Identity Theft’s Taxing New Trend: Scammers Are After Your Tax Refund

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Along with the rapid rise in identity theft has come the explosion of a specialized and sophisticated form of theft: tax identity theft.

During the 2011 tax processing year, roughly 940,000 tax returns were filed fraudulently. This year the number will likely reach 1 million. Even the IRS’ own taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson, says the IRS is woefully incapable of handling the boom.

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.Click link below for article:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/25/identity-theft-tax-refund-scammers/?icid=maing-grid7|myaol|dl32|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D262148

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Alleged Narwhal Tusk-Smuggling Ring Busted In Maine

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PORTLAND, Maine — A smuggling ring brought narwhal tusks from the Canadian Artic into Maine in a trailer with a secret compartment and then illegally sold them to American buyers, officials said.

Andrew Zarauskas, of Union, N.J., and Jay Conrad, of Lakeland, Tenn., will be arraigned in Bangor, Maine, next week on 29 federal smuggling and money laundering charges each.

For nearly a decade, two Canadians smuggled the whale tusks into Maine and shipped them via FedEx to Zarauskas, Conrad and other unnamed American buyers, according to an indictment.

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Size comparison with an average human

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/narwhal-tusk-smuggling-ring_n_2404925.html?icid=maing-grid7|myaol|dl1|sec3_lnk2%26pLid%3D252605

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Silvio Berlusconi To Pay $4 Million Per Month In Alimony (REPORT)

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Being one of the richest men in the world comes at a price.

AC Milan owner and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — who split with second wife Veronica Lario in 2009 — has been ordered to pay his ex a whopping $4 million per month in alimony, the Associated Press reports.

According to the settlement paperwork filed Tuesday, Berlusconi will walk away with the couple’s Villa Belvedere estate located near Milan.

Lario announced she was leaving the Italian politician in 2009 after he attended the 18th birthday party of an aspiring model.

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.Click link below for story, video, and slideshow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/silvio-berlusconi-to-pay-_n_2376968.html

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Richest Black Woman In The World, Folorunsho Alakija, Was A Major Fashion Designer In Africa

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We didn’t think it was possible, but Oprah Winfrey has been dethroned as the richest black woman in the world. The new leading lady is oil baroness Folorunsho Alakija from Nigeria.

While drilling oil has reportedly made the 61-year-old owner of FAMFA Oil Limited a very rich woman — she is estimated to be worth at least $3.2 billion — Alakija started her ascent to financial supremacy in fashion.

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.Click link below for story and slideshow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/folorunsho-alakija-richest-black-woman-fashion-designer_n_2245703.html

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