Headed by Douglas Elmendorf, the United States Congressional Budget Office, projects this year’s deficit will be $200 billion less than it projected just a few months ago. That said, it’s not all good news over the next ten years or so. 

Annual deficits are dipping even faster than the Budget Office predicted back in February, and the nation’s total debt is expected to drop as share of the economy for a couple years. However, the downward trend will not persist since lawmakers have not implemented measures to address the long-term drivers of the nation’s debt. 

In its budget outlook released yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office now estimates the annual deficit for the fiscal year of 2013 to be roughly $642 billion or 4 percent of GDP. This is $203 billion less than the office estimated earlier this year. The office attributes the improved figure to higher-than-expected tax revenues and more payments to the Treasury by mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

By 2015, the United States’ deficit will drop to its lowest point in the decade (roughly 2.1 percent of GDP). Moreover, the deficit will remain below 3 percent until 2019, at which point it will begin to increase again. Deficits under 3 percent are regarded as sustainable because it signifies that budget shortfalls are not growing faster than the economy. 

In a similar fashion, the budget office estimates the country’s total debt—the sum of yearly deficits procured over decades—will dip to 71 percent of GDP in 2019. This figure is four percentage points below the present day. However, the debt will begin to climb higher again, reaching almost 74 percent by 2023.

“Budget shortfalls are expected to increase later in the coming decade, but because of the pressures of an aging population, increased health care costs and increased interest payments on the federal debt,” the Congressional Budget Office claimed in its report. 

The bulk of the deficit reduction that is expected to take place in the next few years will be the result of several measures that do not address said pressures. Specifically, the expiration of the payroll tax cut, increased tax rates on high-income homes, the sequester, and lower spending caps for defense and domestic programs between 2014 and 2021. 

In the meatime, the better-than-expected deficit for this year allows provides lawmakers with more time before they are required to raise the debt ceiling, which is the nation’s legal borrowing limit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Congress will need to render a decision regarding the ceiling in October or November. 

Source: Congressional Budget Office

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission charged husband-and-wife executives at a China-based business with engaging in a fraudulent activity to overstate the company’s revenues and divert funds from a securities offering for their personal use.

Former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling has reached an agreement to reduce his fraud sentence by nearly a decade. Skilling, according to court documents, will remain incarcerated for years, but could potentially shave ten years off the 15 years remaining in his prison sentence. 

Former executive Skilling is now known as inmate #29296-179 at the Englewood federal prison in Littleton, Colorado. Mr. Skilling was convicted in December of 2006 for conspiracy, fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors in the largest corporate fraud case in the history of the United States. Mr. Skilling was originally sentenced to 24 years in prison, which would put him on pace for release in February of 2028. 

“The agreement in this matter brings finality to a long and painful process,” said attorney Daniel Petrocelli for O’Melveny & Myers. “Although the suggested sentence for Mr. Skilling would be more than double of any of the other Enron defendants, all of whom have been released from prison for a long time, Jeff would at least have the opportunity to get back to a meaningful portion of his life.”

The Federal Government submitted a series of documents to federal court in the Southern District of Texas claiming they had reached an agreement to reduce Skilling’s sentence to as little as 15 years. 

“This agreement will finally put an end to the battles surrounding this matter,” said a spokesman for the Justice Department. “This agreement guarantees that Mr. Skilling will be punished for his crimes and that victims will receive the restitution they deserve.

The spokesman for the Justice department claimed victims will receive $40 million in restitution as part of the agreement. In excess of 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many of these individuals also lost their life savings, when the Houston-based energy company declared bankruptcy in 2001. In addition to workers, investors also were hard hit from the illicit activities and ultimate failures, losing more than a billion of dollars.  

Source: sec.gov

California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a lawsuit against banking giant JP Morgan on Thursday, alleging that the financial institution engaged in legal and fraudulent debt collection practice against tens of thousands of California residents. 

Harris claims that from January of 2008 to April of 2011, JP Morgan filed in excess of 100,000 lawsuits against consumers in California over uncollected credit card debts, including 469 in a single day. 

To maintain this pace, JP Morgan used a number of illegal shortcuts, the lawsuit alleges. Among those illegal tactics was robo signing, in which employees of JP Morgan produced sworn documents and other legal filings at a substantial pace without verifying bank recrods and reviewing cases for accuracy. 

Robo signing was used on an extremely large scale during the foreclosure crisis as banks scrambled to complete foreclosures throughout the United States as the housing market collapsed.

Among other allegations, the attorney general claims that JP Morgan failed to notify residents of California that they were being sued. Moreover, the personal information of consumers allegedly went unredacted in court documents, increasing the odds of identity theft exposure. JP Morgan is also accused of certifying under penalty of perjury that consumers targeted with suits were not on active military duty without actually checking their background, therefore depriving these individuals of their rightful legal protections. 

“At virtually every stage of the debt collection process, defendants cut corners for the sake of speed and savings, providing only the slimmest veneer of legitimacy to their suits,” the complaint alleges. 

JP Morgan could end up being forced to pay a significant sum in penalties should a judge rule in California’s favor. Each alleged violation carries a maximum fine of $2,500, and a spokesperson for Harris said there are likely to be multiple violations per case for the more than 100,000 consumers the banking giant targeted. This spokesperson also claimed that Harris’s office will continue to investigate this issue on an industry-wide basis, with potential suits being filed against other banking institutions.  

Source: sec.gov

The Tesla Model S, which is priced at a substantial $70,000, is now the hottest electric car on the market. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, sales of the Tesla Model S outpaced similar gasoline models from the top three German luxury models. Roughly 5,000 consumers purchased the Model S while a shade over 3,000 purchased Mercedes’ top-flight sedan.

Sales figures; however, are by no means a perfect comparison as actual selling price for the S-class Mercedes start toward the high-end of the Tesla Model S price Range. Moreover, buyers do not receive the $7,500 federal tax credit for buying a luxury gasoline model.

That said, the Tesla Model S is faring quite well, particularly for a start-up auto maker with a limited network.

Last week, Tesla announced a profit that crushed Wall Street estimates; the relatively young automaker also raised its Model S sales forecasts for 2013 to 21,000 from 20,000.

To continue the positive momentum, Consumer Reports on Thursday called the Tesla Model S the best automobile that it ever tested. The vehicle’s overall performance was off the charts, according to the publication’s head of auto testing. The vehicle earned an almost perfect score of 99 out of a possible 100 points; 1 point was deducted from the vehicle’s score because it cannot be driven long distances without recharging.

Despite early struggles, including a feud with the New York Times over the vehicle’s “super charger” network and delays sparked by traditional car sellers over the sales strategy, the new Tesla model seems to be thriving in this green-friendly market. 

Sales: whitehouse.gov

With Mother’s Day behind us, President Obama spoke to a group of women—including a number of moms—about the ways the new Affordable Care Act is already providing aid to millions of Americans like them.

“The female population in particular has more control today over their own care than ever before,” the President of the United States said. “I am pleased to be joined today by many women who contacted us to describe what the Affordable Care Act does for them.”

Carol was just one of the women who contacted President Obama, and today, she introduced him in the East Room. Carol’s son, a recent college graduate and survivor of a traumatic brain injury, was able to stay on his family’s health care policy instead of being removed off the plan this year. Procuring coverage on his own would have been virtually impossible, as Carol mentioned to the President. “Given my son’s history, he would be uninsurable under the archaic set of laws. Instead of finishing law school, my resources and my son’s resources would have been channeled into somehow finding an insurance policy that would cover him.”

Carol and her son, according to the Whitehouse, are why the new Affordable Care Act lets you people stay on their parent’s healthcare plan until they reach the age of 26, President Obama said. 

Another woman named Alycia also spoke about the benefits the new laws bring to her family. “Alycia is the mother of Avey, who is a 3-year-old girl who is battling Leukemia,” President Obama explained. “Imagine what this is like for a parent. While you are just figuring out how to take care of a baby, you have to figure out how you are going to pay for expensive treatment that could save your baby’s life. This is why the Affordable Care Act made it illegal for unscrupulous individuals in the insurance industry to discriminate against children like Avey.”

President Obama mentioned a few more ways the Affordable Care Act is helping people throughout the United States. “Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits on the amount of care you undertake, or drop you from coverage if you get sick, or discriminate against your children who have preexisting conditions,” President Obama said. “And women are now given access to free preventive care like mammograms, checkups, and cancer screenings, so you can evaluate and catch preventable illness on the front end. Because of this Act, seniors on Medicare can now receive free checkups and preventive care with zero deductibles or co-pay. These individuals also receive discounts on prescription drugs, which have already saved over 6 million seniors more than $700 each.”

Source: whitehouse.gov

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, along with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority issued an investor alert for Pension or Settlement Income Stream Investments.

This alert informs investors about the risks involved when selling rights to an income stream or when investing in another entity’s income stream. The alert cautions investors who are considering an investment in settlement income streams or pensions to proceed with extreme caution.

Any individual receiving regular distributions form a settlement following a personal injury suit or a monthly pension may be targeted by corrupt salespeople who offer an immediate lump sum in exchange for rights to some or all of the payments you would be entitled to receiving in the future. Typically, recipients of a structured settlement or a pension will sign over said rights to some or all of their monthly payments to a factoring institution in return for a lump-sum figure; this figure is typically much lower than the present value of the future income stream.

“Investors must always educate themselves before making an investment decision, and this is of course true with respect to investing in a structured settlement product or a pension,” said the Director of the SEC’s Investor Education and Advocacy Division. “This alert intends to help investors understand the risks and costs associated with these transactions.”

The investor alert is equipped with a checklist of questions that you should go over before selling away an income stream:

·Is the transaction I’m about to undertake legal?

·Is the transaction worth the cost? You should locate the discount rate that the factoring company has applied to the income stream and compare the rate to alternatives such as a bank loan.

·What is the reputation of the institution offer the lump sum?

·Will the underlying factoring company require life insurance?

· What are the tax consequences if you undertake this transaction? The lump-sum payout offered by the factoring company may be taxable. 

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Greenwich.-based hedge fund advisory firm Level Global Investors will pay in excess of $21.5 million to settle charges that one of its founders, who also served as the funds’ portfolio manager and its lead analyst engaged in numerous insider trading in the securities of Nvidia Corp. and Dell Inc. 

During January of last year, the SEC filed insider trading charges against Level Global, a former analyst Sam Adondakis, co-founder Anthony Chiasson, and six other individuals, including five investment professionals and a hedge fund advisory company. 

The complaint, which was filed in federal court in New York City, suspected that Adondakis was a member of a group of associated hedge fund analysts who unlawfully procured highly sensitive information regarding the performance of Nvidia and Dell before the information was released to the public. The illicitly procured information involved Nvidia and Dell’s revenues, profit margins and indicated that the companies’ quarterly results would contrast significantly from consensus expectations rendered by Wall Street analysts. 

According to the SEC, during 2008 and 2009, Adondakis relayed the information to Chiasson, who used it to execute trades on behalf of several hedge funds managed by Level Global. This passing of information ultimately reaped millions of dollars in illegal profits for those involved. In 2011, followings reports of an SEC investigation, Level Global, which previously managed as much as $4 billion, announced that it close its business and begin returning money to damaged investors. 

“The events of insider trading at Level Global was not an isolated event; it occurred several times over, and involved a number of companies and a number of quarterly announcements,” claimed a Senior Associate Director of the agency’s New York Regional Office. “This case serves as a reminder that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission will hold several hedge fund managers accountable when their employees go against the securities laws of the United States.”

The settlement with Level Global requires the firm to disgorge nearly $11 million in fees that it acquired from the alleged insider-trading scheme, along with $1.3 million in interest and an added penalty of $10 million. 

source: sec.gov