Finance & Business World

Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz will be interviewed at the USA Today CEO Forum held at Georgia State University on Wednesday.

Bartz will be interviewed by David Lieberman, USA Today senior media reporter for the Money section, at 3 p.m. in the Student Center Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.

Lieberman will have a 75-minute interview with Bartz, asking about her road to the top, key milestones in her career, thoughts on leadership and future plans for the road ahead. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the interview no fax payday loans.

“This is an excellent opportunity for our working professional students to hear one of the foremost CEOs in the nation interviewed by one of USA Today's best money reporters,” said H. Fenwick Huss, dean of the Robinson College of Business. "This interaction, coupled with audience questions, will provide our students with insights they can take back to the classroom and into the workplace.”

Source

If President Obama’s plan for the Bush tax cuts is enacted, the wealthiest residents of New York City would feel real tax rates of 50.7%, highest of any place in the country.

Right behind is Hawaii, where residents would pay 49.7%.

Those are some of the findings from a report issued Wednesday by the Tax Foundation calculating the so-called marginal effective tax rates under the Obama proposal.

The Obama proposal would let the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire for families earning more than $250,000 and individuals earning $200,000 and up. The top two tax rates would revert to where they were in the late 1990s: The 35% rate would go to 39.6% and the 33% rate would go to 36%.

The research group attempts to paint a fuller picture of what top earners would pay by including state and local income tax rates on top of federal rates.

California residents can expect a rate of 49.4%, with Vermont at 48.8% Maryland at 48.6% and New York state at 48.4% following close behind, according to the Tax Foundation. (New York City was the only local jurisdiction the group calculated separately; it otherwise blended local taxes into each state number.)

Overall, residents of 15 states can expect tax rates in excess of 47.3%.

The Tax Foundation arrived at its marginal effective tax rates by adding the expected federal rates to those already on the books in state and local municipalities.

There are important caveats. For one thing, the rates listed in the report are those faced by the highest earners on their self-employment income — that means income that comes in the form of business profits or investment revenue.

And a 50% marginal effective tax rate doesn’t mean that top earners will be paying 50% of their income to local, state and federal governments. Instead, the rate applies only to income made over and above the top tax bracket.

Finally, of course, some instead collect sales tax on purchases, a tax not included in the study.

The Tax Foundation analysis also found that if a plan favored by Republicans to extend all the Bush tax cuts becomes law, the range of top marginal tax rates would be approximately 5 percentage points lower in each state.

Under the rival Republican plan, Hawaii’s rates are set at 44.3%, California at 44.1%, Vermont at 43.3%, Maryland 43.1% and New Jersey at 43.0%.

And while this it is too late for states to change their tax rates for 2011, two cash-strapped states — Illinois and Washington — are toying with raising their income tax rates to cover future budget shortfalls. 

Source

Virtual world company IMVU Inc. said on Tuesday it will begin offering casual and social games.

The Palo Alto company said it will partner with Viximo, Heyzap and OMGPOP on the new offerings.

Until now, IMVU has been a place where users adopt alter virtual personalities, or avatars, that they can use in customizable virtual locations to chat with friends. Now they will be able to play games, as well.

IMVU was founded in 2004 and has more than 40 million registered users and 10 million unique visitors a month.

Click here to read the press release.

Source

The foreclosure crisis has entered a new phase: The number of properties entering the foreclosure process has dropped, and now nearly matches the number of repossessions.

The number of homeowners falling enough behind on their loans to attract initial notices of default was down 30% in August, RealtyTrac said Thursday. Eventually, that should translate into fewer people losing their homes.

But lenders repossessed more than 95,000 homes — a record — and that was up from 76,000 a year ago.

RealtyTrac spokesman, Rick Sharga, said the initial default rate should be higher, given the numbers of borrowers who have missed one or two payments. Normally, when a third payment is missed, lenders take immediate action.

"It appears that lenders are allowing delinquencies to go on longer before they issue notices of default," he said.

Lenders may delay filing for a couple of reasons. In some cases, a notice of default puts lenders on the clock; regulations force them to foreclose within a certain time frame, sometimes before they want to.

Second, borrowers might vacate their homes when they receive default notices, leaving the houses empty, subject to vandalism, and forcing lenders to take over the expense of maintaining them.

However, once lenders have begun the initial foreclosure process, they are moving quickly to repossession.

That’s in part because as housing markets have improved, as it has in California, lenders are able to resell foreclosed homes more quickly and avoid further losses payday loans direct lenders.

In other markets, according to Sharga, they may take homes back but not necessarily put them on the market again right away. That may represent a deliberate effort to manage the flow of foreclosures to prevent further erosion of home prices.

Not only would a flood of properties and lower prices hurt lenders’ profits, it would leave more mortgage borrowers owing more than their homes are worth. As more homeowners plunge underwater, more would default, causing a new round of home price drops and still more foreclosures.

For the 44th straight month, Nevada led all states in the rate of foreclosure filings. One in every 84 households there received some kind of filing during the month, more than four times the national average.

The other "sand states," Florida (one in 155 households), Arizona (one in 165) and California (one in 194) followed in a familiar foreclosure pecking order.

All of the top 10 metro area hot spots recorded drops in foreclosure activity during August. In the worst hit city, Las Vegas, filings dropped 25% year-over-year but still came to one for every 73 households.

Modesto and Stockton, both medium-sized cities in California’s Central Valley, closely trailed Las Vegas in filing rate. Rounding out the first five metro areas were Cape Coral and Miami. 

Source

Global officials meeting in Switzerland Sunday announced new guidelines to strengthen the financial system by forcing banks to set aside more capital.

The goal is ensure that banks have bigger reserve cushions when things go bad and avoid another bank meltdown like the panic of 2008, which led to widespread credit gridlock and fueled the recession.

At the same time, the rules attempt to walk a delicate balance: Forcing banks to stash too much too soon in "rainy day funds" could crimp their ability to lend — at a time when global credit has already contracted dramatically.

The effort was led by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which is made up of officials from 27 countries including the United States. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair were among attendees from the U.S. government.

U.S. regulators said Sunday that the new guidelines would make the banking system more stable by curbing risk.

"The agreement represents a significant step forward in reducing the incidence and severity of future financial crises," the Fed, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in a joint statement.

The new rules, known as Basel III, will be enforced by local bank watchdogs like the Fed and FDIC and will take effect over a period of years after being adopted by each country.

The reforms will increase the minimum core capital cushion — the funds banks accumulate by selling stock and retaining profits — to 4.5% of assets from the current 2%. In addition, banks will have to set aside another 2.5% for "future periods of stress."

"The agreements reached today are a fundamental strengthening of global capital standards," said Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank us fast cash.

Phase-in period: Under the agreement, the United States and other nations would be required to start implementing the new standards on Jan. 1, 2013. The stricter capital requirements would be phased in over two years to avoid putting too much stress on banks.

The phase-in will reduce "the potential for … short-term pressures on the cost and availability of credit to households and businesses," U.S. regulators said.

Basel III, which will apply everywhere, was the subject of intense lobbying. Big banks in Japan and Europe, which tend to be less robustly capitalized than those in the United States and the United Kingdom, were particularly aggressive.

Shares of European banks tumbled last week as investors worried about the impact of the new requirements. But the new rules may not have an immediate impact on the likes of Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), which have amassed significant capital over the last few years and boosted profits.

The policies were developed based on lessons from the financial crisis in 2008. As the bubble in home prices burst, banks suffered billions of dollars in losses on mortgage-related assets. Those losses proved fatal for some banks, namely Lehman Brothers, when liquidity dried up and investors panicked.

Earlier this year, President Obama signed a far-reaching Wall Street reform bill that gives regulators more clout to come down hard on banks they think are engaging in overly risky lending.

- Fortune’s Colin Barr and CNNMoney’s Ben Rooney contributed to this report. 

Source

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has appointed Michael James Vallejos to replace retiring District Court Judge J. Stephen Phillips in the 2nd Judicial District, which serves Denver, effective Nov. 30, officials said on Friday.

Vallejos currently heads the Denver regional office of the Colorado State Public Defender’s Office, where he has worked since 1991. He previously was in private practice, where he provided criminal defense and served as guardian ad litem for children in divorce proceedings.

He earned bachelor’s degrees from the University of Colorado in 1984 and his law degree from the University of Colorado in 1991 guaranteed online personal loans.

For a district court judge, the initial term of office is a provisional term of two years. Thereafter, if retained by the voters, district court judges serve six-year terms at an annual salary of $128,598.

Source

Former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd is in talks with Oracle Corp. about taking a high-level executive position, it was widely reported Sunday. Hurd resigned last month under pressure, amid allegations of sexual harassment and falsified expenses. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been among his strongest supporters, saying in an earlier email to the newspaper that Hurd’s ouster “was the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.”

Source

A 16-acre office park in San Jose will be redeveloped into a residential community with about 89 detached single-family homes, Trumark Companies said Thursday.

The residential developer said its plan received San Jose City Council approval Wednesday, paving the way for the res-use project.

The future neighborhood of Brookside Estates is located in the Almaden Valley, which lies within the Los Gatos Unified School District.

"While we are in a challenging residential market, the supply and demand dynamic in the Silicon Valley is such that there continues to be a solid market for high quality, low-density housing in top tier neighborhoods," said Arden Hearing, vice president of land acquisitions for Trumark Companies. "San Jose is a supply-constrained market with high barriers to entry and this is one of the last sizable detached communities that will come on line in the foreseeable future."

Trumark said the neighborhood’s proximity to Guadalupe Creek and the associated corridor on its Western edge is one of its most attractive amenities.

The property is currently home to two office buildings, a vacant 123,000-square foot structure and a fully leased 55,000-square foot office, both of which will be removed to make way for new homes. The office buildings and parking lot are currently developed up to, and in some areas encroach beyond, the Guadalupe Creek’s riparian edge line.

"The approval of 89 units will allow Trumark to remove 3.8 acres of asphalt and structures along the riparian edge and restore this land into riparian habitat," said Jason Kliewer, a partner and general counsel of Trumark Companies. "Overall, increasing the average setback from the riparian edge by 72 feet will reduce impacts to the creek and provide a substantial benefit to the environment."

In addition to restoration of riparian habitat, the company also intends to add hundreds of trees and enhance and open up an existing creekside walking trail for public use.

"Brookside Estates is the largest local private habitat restoration in San Jose that we are aware of," said Chris Davenport, senior vice president of Trumark Companies. "The project creates an unparalleled open-space, focused development in a core urban area."

The property is adjacent to another residential development called Campagna, the former site of an IBM research facility that was redeveloped for homes about 10 years ago.

Trumark Companies is in partnership with Brookfield Homes to complete the redevelopment and restoration effort, which will take place over the next two or three years.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Source

Federal aviation regulators slapped American Airlines on Thursday with the largest fine in history, charging that the carrier made thousands of unsafe flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it has "proposed" a $24.2 million civil penalty for American Airlines’ failure to properly inspect wire bundles in the wheel wells of its MD-80 aircraft. The incident snarled thousands of flights in 2008.

The airline, owned by AMR Corp., (AMR, Fortune 500) did not follow the guidelines in the so-called 2006 Airworthiness Directive, which was intended to prevent wires from shorting, which could cause a loss of power and possibly a fire, the FAA said.

The airline’s stock price is down 1.7%.

The FAA inspections resulted in the grounding of about 1,000 American Airlines flights in early April, 2008, after the FAA found that the airline did not properly inspect two of its airplanes.

As part of that inspection, the FAA determined that the airline operated 286 of its MD-80s on a total of 14,278 flights "while the aircraft were not in compliance with federal regulations cheap business cards."

FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the fine is considered a proposal as a legal formality, because the airline has 30 days to respond and has the option of negotiating a smaller fine.

"There was never a flight safety issue," American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith told CNNMoney.com in an email.

"These events happened more than two years ago and we believe this action is unwarranted," he said. "We will challenge any proposed civil penalty. We are confident we have a strong case and the facts will bear this out."

Lunsford said that Southwest Airlines (LUV, Fortune 500) had previously been the recipient of the biggest FAA fine — of $10.2 million — which it was able to negotiate down to $7.5 million. 

Source