foreclosure homes

Weekly Audit: Foreclosuregate Hits Home

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Earlier this month, Bank of America (BOA), the country's largest bank, announced a moratorium on foreclosures in all 50 states.

The bank promised not to sell any foreclosed homes or take any more delinquent borrowers to court until it had reviewed its potentially defective foreclosure process. Other major lenders soon announced that they too were suspending foreclosures in dozens of states. Why are the biggest banks in the country voluntarily calling for a time-out? It's a hint that we're facing a huge problem: The banks aren't sure if they have the legal right to foreclose on millions of homes.

Here's what's new in foreclosuregate since the Audit took up the story last week. The Bank of America announced that it would resume some foreclosures on Oct. 25, having deemed its own methods sound. The stock market begged to differ. BOA's stock fell over 5% on Thursday and other bank stocks also took a beating, as did mortgage bonds. This pattern indicates that investors are very worried about the effect of the foreclosure crisis on the health of the banks.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is calling for a foreclosure moratorium under the new Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), as Ellen Brown reports for Truthout. The FSOC has the power to preemptively break up any large financial institution that threatens U.S. economic security. Grayson wants a moratorium on all mortgages securitized between 2005 and 2008 until the FSOC can determine which foreclosures are valid and which are bogus.

The missing link

So, what kind of "defects" in the foreclosure process are we talking about? Fraud, basically.

Zach Carter of the Campaign for America's Future explains to Chris Hayes of the Nation why Bank of America and other major lenders are in so much trouble: They are just administering loans for other lenders. You make your check out to the Bank of America, but the bank is just babysitting after the loan for the bondholders.

The real creditors are the investors who own bonds made up of pieces of many different mortgages, including yours. The bond gives the bondholder a share of the money that you and other borrowers pay each month. If you don't pay, BOA initiates foreclosure. If you're late, BOA charges you fees.

However, the bank can't just hire a foreclosure company to take your home away on a whim. The bank must first show proof that it is entitled to foreclose because you've defaulted on your mortgage in the form of a mortgage note. If you hold one of those toxic asset mortgages, there's a good chance the bank doesn't have the note.

As Dean Baker explains in Truthout, in many, if not most, cases, "liar loans" (mortgages issued with no proof of income or assets) have become given way to "liar liens" (foreclosures with no proof of default).

According to Carter, all the big banks have been hiring foreclosure mills to rubber-stamp their claims without checking. Unscrupulous foreclosure companies are admitting to "robo-signing," i.e., foreclosing without even checking whether the bank's claims were legit.

Foreclosuregate

According to Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, the Bank of America stands to lose up to $70 billion over what's come to be known as "foreclosuregate." A mortgage starts out with an originator, typically a bank or a mortgage broker. In the heyday of mortgage-backed securities, investment banks were buying up hundreds of thousands of mortgages, making them into mortgage-backed bonds, and selling them to investors.

Unfortunately, if the bank doesn't have the note, who does? The mortgage originator may have gone bankrupt, many were fly-by-night operators that folded when the housing bubble burst. Many mortgages were bought and resold more than once before they found their way into a mortgage-backed bond.

So, the question is whether the bank really owned the mortgages it made into mortgage backed-securities and sold to individuals, pension funds, and other institutions. If not, the banks stand could be on the hook for selling assets they didn't actually own to investors.

Moratorium now

The scandal affects so many mortgages that some lawmakers are calling for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures until investigators can sort out who owns what once and for all. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that Congress needs to stop banks from putting people out on the street until there is some way to differentiate between fraudulent foreclosures and justified ones:

And so, I just think that people who are saying that this is going to hurt--I think that it's going to help, because once people gain confidence in the fact that they're being treated fairly and that there's no discrepancies in the records, then people will feel very comfortable in terms of trying to move forward. But until that happens, you're always going to have these comments about the fact that that was not done right, it was done unfairly. And, of course, I think there's enough here for us to stop and to pause and to say, let's take a look here before we move forward. So a moratorium is definitely in order.

The Obama administration opposes the moratorium on the grounds that it would hurt the housing market and thereby slow the economy. Towns counters that what would really be bad for the economy is letting banks take people's homes away without any semblance of due process. If the government doesn't act to protect the innocent, foreclosuregate could shatter the confidence of potential home buyers. Would you want to invest in a house if you were afraid the bank could just take it away from you?

In AlterNet, Mike Lux argues that fraudulent foreclosures are one more assault on poor and middle class Americans. He argues that the banks are so used to being coddled by Washington that they're counting on legislators to retroactively change the rules to protect them from the consequences of their own devious behavior.

At this point we don't know what percentage of foreclosed-upon homes have simply been stolen by banks to pay bondholders, but we do know the problem is vast and systemic. The Obama administration is content to let the banks seize private property first and ask questions later. We need a moratorium to take stock and restore the rule of law.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

New fronts are opening in the foreclosure mess.

A lot of people have wondered why no one has gone to jail over what by commonsense standards is fraudulent activity. The possibility that the violations were indeed criminal is finally being investigated. From the Washington Post:

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in connection with the national foreclosure crisis, examining whether financial firms broke federal laws when they filed fraudulent court documents to seize people’s homes, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Obama administration’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is in the early stages of an investigation into whether banks and other companies that submitted flawed paperwork in state foreclosure proceedings may also have misled federal housing agencies, which now own or insure a majority of home loans, according to these sources.

The task force, which includes investigators from the Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies, is also looking into whether the submission of flawed paperwork during the foreclosure process violated mail or wire fraud laws. Financial fraud cases often involve these statutes.

Yves here. On the one hand, I would not underestimate the ability of Team Obama to give the banking industry a free pass when tough action is warranted. On the other hand, there is a proud tradition of the Federal government rousing itself when measure by the states run the risk of showing it to have been complacent to the point of negligence (one well known example is when state securities law suits force the generally lapdog SEC to take swing into gear). So if state or even private lawsuits expose enough damaging material, it will be hard for this task force to sit on its hands.

On another front, the ACLU is starting to obtain information to determine whether foreclosures in Florida (the so called rocket docket) violated Constitutional “due process” requirements:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Florida today filed public records requests with judicial officials in Florida to determine whether homeowners are having their constitutional rights violated during foreclosure proceedings and being unlawfully removed from their homes.

In Florida, where almost half a million foreclosure cases are pending, the state legislature recently spent over $9 million to create special foreclosure courts, staffed by retired judges, with the intent of speeding through the state’s backlog of such cases. But recent media reports in Florida and around the country, which reveal rampant error and fraud in the foreclosure process, have shown that courts should take particular care with foreclosure cases. Instead, in the rush to push foreclosure cases through the courts, Florida may be taking shortcuts and, in the process, forsaking constitutionally-required due process protections….

Filed with the Office of the State Court Administrator and the chief judges of all 20 of Florida’s circuit courts, the requests seek access to, among other things, all documents related to special court systems created to dispose of foreclosure cases and the rules and procedures in place that govern those systems…

Copies of the ACLU’s public records requests are available online at: www.aclu.org/racial-justice/aclu-seeks-information-about-constitutionality-florida-foreclosure-courts

Yves here. These initiatives are only in the early stages, but both show that the foreclosure crisis is moving from narrow legal issues to much bigger ones.

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Weekly Audit: Foreclosuregate Hits Home

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Earlier this month, Bank of America (BOA), the country's largest bank, announced a moratorium on foreclosures in all 50 states.

The bank promised not to sell any foreclosed homes or take any more delinquent borrowers to court until it had reviewed its potentially defective foreclosure process. Other major lenders soon announced that they too were suspending foreclosures in dozens of states. Why are the biggest banks in the country voluntarily calling for a time-out? It's a hint that we're facing a huge problem: The banks aren't sure if they have the legal right to foreclose on millions of homes.

Here's what's new in foreclosuregate since the Audit took up the story last week. The Bank of America announced that it would resume some foreclosures on Oct. 25, having deemed its own methods sound. The stock market begged to differ. BOA's stock fell over 5% on Thursday and other bank stocks also took a beating, as did mortgage bonds. This pattern indicates that investors are very worried about the effect of the foreclosure crisis on the health of the banks.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is calling for a foreclosure moratorium under the new Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), as Ellen Brown reports for Truthout. The FSOC has the power to preemptively break up any large financial institution that threatens U.S. economic security. Grayson wants a moratorium on all mortgages securitized between 2005 and 2008 until the FSOC can determine which foreclosures are valid and which are bogus.

The missing link

So, what kind of "defects" in the foreclosure process are we talking about? Fraud, basically.

Zach Carter of the Campaign for America's Future explains to Chris Hayes of the Nation why Bank of America and other major lenders are in so much trouble: They are just administering loans for other lenders. You make your check out to the Bank of America, but the bank is just babysitting after the loan for the bondholders.

The real creditors are the investors who own bonds made up of pieces of many different mortgages, including yours. The bond gives the bondholder a share of the money that you and other borrowers pay each month. If you don't pay, BOA initiates foreclosure. If you're late, BOA charges you fees.

However, the bank can't just hire a foreclosure company to take your home away on a whim. The bank must first show proof that it is entitled to foreclose because you've defaulted on your mortgage in the form of a mortgage note. If you hold one of those toxic asset mortgages, there's a good chance the bank doesn't have the note.

As Dean Baker explains in Truthout, in many, if not most, cases, "liar loans" (mortgages issued with no proof of income or assets) have become given way to "liar liens" (foreclosures with no proof of default).

According to Carter, all the big banks have been hiring foreclosure mills to rubber-stamp their claims without checking. Unscrupulous foreclosure companies are admitting to "robo-signing," i.e., foreclosing without even checking whether the bank's claims were legit.

Foreclosuregate

According to Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, the Bank of America stands to lose up to $70 billion over what's come to be known as "foreclosuregate." A mortgage starts out with an originator, typically a bank or a mortgage broker. In the heyday of mortgage-backed securities, investment banks were buying up hundreds of thousands of mortgages, making them into mortgage-backed bonds, and selling them to investors.

Unfortunately, if the bank doesn't have the note, who does? The mortgage originator may have gone bankrupt, many were fly-by-night operators that folded when the housing bubble burst. Many mortgages were bought and resold more than once before they found their way into a mortgage-backed bond.

So, the question is whether the bank really owned the mortgages it made into mortgage backed-securities and sold to individuals, pension funds, and other institutions. If not, the banks stand could be on the hook for selling assets they didn't actually own to investors.

Moratorium now

The scandal affects so many mortgages that some lawmakers are calling for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures until investigators can sort out who owns what once and for all. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that Congress needs to stop banks from putting people out on the street until there is some way to differentiate between fraudulent foreclosures and justified ones:

And so, I just think that people who are saying that this is going to hurt--I think that it's going to help, because once people gain confidence in the fact that they're being treated fairly and that there's no discrepancies in the records, then people will feel very comfortable in terms of trying to move forward. But until that happens, you're always going to have these comments about the fact that that was not done right, it was done unfairly. And, of course, I think there's enough here for us to stop and to pause and to say, let's take a look here before we move forward. So a moratorium is definitely in order.

The Obama administration opposes the moratorium on the grounds that it would hurt the housing market and thereby slow the economy. Towns counters that what would really be bad for the economy is letting banks take people's homes away without any semblance of due process. If the government doesn't act to protect the innocent, foreclosuregate could shatter the confidence of potential home buyers. Would you want to invest in a house if you were afraid the bank could just take it away from you?

In AlterNet, Mike Lux argues that fraudulent foreclosures are one more assault on poor and middle class Americans. He argues that the banks are so used to being coddled by Washington that they're counting on legislators to retroactively change the rules to protect them from the consequences of their own devious behavior.

At this point we don't know what percentage of foreclosed-upon homes have simply been stolen by banks to pay bondholders, but we do know the problem is vast and systemic. The Obama administration is content to let the banks seize private property first and ask questions later. We need a moratorium to take stock and restore the rule of law.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

New fronts are opening in the foreclosure mess.

A lot of people have wondered why no one has gone to jail over what by commonsense standards is fraudulent activity. The possibility that the violations were indeed criminal is finally being investigated. From the Washington Post:

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in connection with the national foreclosure crisis, examining whether financial firms broke federal laws when they filed fraudulent court documents to seize people’s homes, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Obama administration’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is in the early stages of an investigation into whether banks and other companies that submitted flawed paperwork in state foreclosure proceedings may also have misled federal housing agencies, which now own or insure a majority of home loans, according to these sources.

The task force, which includes investigators from the Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies, is also looking into whether the submission of flawed paperwork during the foreclosure process violated mail or wire fraud laws. Financial fraud cases often involve these statutes.

Yves here. On the one hand, I would not underestimate the ability of Team Obama to give the banking industry a free pass when tough action is warranted. On the other hand, there is a proud tradition of the Federal government rousing itself when measure by the states run the risk of showing it to have been complacent to the point of negligence (one well known example is when state securities law suits force the generally lapdog SEC to take swing into gear). So if state or even private lawsuits expose enough damaging material, it will be hard for this task force to sit on its hands.

On another front, the ACLU is starting to obtain information to determine whether foreclosures in Florida (the so called rocket docket) violated Constitutional “due process” requirements:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Florida today filed public records requests with judicial officials in Florida to determine whether homeowners are having their constitutional rights violated during foreclosure proceedings and being unlawfully removed from their homes.

In Florida, where almost half a million foreclosure cases are pending, the state legislature recently spent over $9 million to create special foreclosure courts, staffed by retired judges, with the intent of speeding through the state’s backlog of such cases. But recent media reports in Florida and around the country, which reveal rampant error and fraud in the foreclosure process, have shown that courts should take particular care with foreclosure cases. Instead, in the rush to push foreclosure cases through the courts, Florida may be taking shortcuts and, in the process, forsaking constitutionally-required due process protections….

Filed with the Office of the State Court Administrator and the chief judges of all 20 of Florida’s circuit courts, the requests seek access to, among other things, all documents related to special court systems created to dispose of foreclosure cases and the rules and procedures in place that govern those systems…

Copies of the ACLU’s public records requests are available online at: www.aclu.org/racial-justice/aclu-seeks-information-about-constitutionality-florida-foreclosure-courts

Yves here. These initiatives are only in the early stages, but both show that the foreclosure crisis is moving from narrow legal issues to much bigger ones.

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

eric seiger

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Weekly Audit: Foreclosuregate Hits Home

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Earlier this month, Bank of America (BOA), the country's largest bank, announced a moratorium on foreclosures in all 50 states.

The bank promised not to sell any foreclosed homes or take any more delinquent borrowers to court until it had reviewed its potentially defective foreclosure process. Other major lenders soon announced that they too were suspending foreclosures in dozens of states. Why are the biggest banks in the country voluntarily calling for a time-out? It's a hint that we're facing a huge problem: The banks aren't sure if they have the legal right to foreclose on millions of homes.

Here's what's new in foreclosuregate since the Audit took up the story last week. The Bank of America announced that it would resume some foreclosures on Oct. 25, having deemed its own methods sound. The stock market begged to differ. BOA's stock fell over 5% on Thursday and other bank stocks also took a beating, as did mortgage bonds. This pattern indicates that investors are very worried about the effect of the foreclosure crisis on the health of the banks.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is calling for a foreclosure moratorium under the new Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), as Ellen Brown reports for Truthout. The FSOC has the power to preemptively break up any large financial institution that threatens U.S. economic security. Grayson wants a moratorium on all mortgages securitized between 2005 and 2008 until the FSOC can determine which foreclosures are valid and which are bogus.

The missing link

So, what kind of "defects" in the foreclosure process are we talking about? Fraud, basically.

Zach Carter of the Campaign for America's Future explains to Chris Hayes of the Nation why Bank of America and other major lenders are in so much trouble: They are just administering loans for other lenders. You make your check out to the Bank of America, but the bank is just babysitting after the loan for the bondholders.

The real creditors are the investors who own bonds made up of pieces of many different mortgages, including yours. The bond gives the bondholder a share of the money that you and other borrowers pay each month. If you don't pay, BOA initiates foreclosure. If you're late, BOA charges you fees.

However, the bank can't just hire a foreclosure company to take your home away on a whim. The bank must first show proof that it is entitled to foreclose because you've defaulted on your mortgage in the form of a mortgage note. If you hold one of those toxic asset mortgages, there's a good chance the bank doesn't have the note.

As Dean Baker explains in Truthout, in many, if not most, cases, "liar loans" (mortgages issued with no proof of income or assets) have become given way to "liar liens" (foreclosures with no proof of default).

According to Carter, all the big banks have been hiring foreclosure mills to rubber-stamp their claims without checking. Unscrupulous foreclosure companies are admitting to "robo-signing," i.e., foreclosing without even checking whether the bank's claims were legit.

Foreclosuregate

According to Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, the Bank of America stands to lose up to $70 billion over what's come to be known as "foreclosuregate." A mortgage starts out with an originator, typically a bank or a mortgage broker. In the heyday of mortgage-backed securities, investment banks were buying up hundreds of thousands of mortgages, making them into mortgage-backed bonds, and selling them to investors.

Unfortunately, if the bank doesn't have the note, who does? The mortgage originator may have gone bankrupt, many were fly-by-night operators that folded when the housing bubble burst. Many mortgages were bought and resold more than once before they found their way into a mortgage-backed bond.

So, the question is whether the bank really owned the mortgages it made into mortgage backed-securities and sold to individuals, pension funds, and other institutions. If not, the banks stand could be on the hook for selling assets they didn't actually own to investors.

Moratorium now

The scandal affects so many mortgages that some lawmakers are calling for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures until investigators can sort out who owns what once and for all. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that Congress needs to stop banks from putting people out on the street until there is some way to differentiate between fraudulent foreclosures and justified ones:

And so, I just think that people who are saying that this is going to hurt--I think that it's going to help, because once people gain confidence in the fact that they're being treated fairly and that there's no discrepancies in the records, then people will feel very comfortable in terms of trying to move forward. But until that happens, you're always going to have these comments about the fact that that was not done right, it was done unfairly. And, of course, I think there's enough here for us to stop and to pause and to say, let's take a look here before we move forward. So a moratorium is definitely in order.

The Obama administration opposes the moratorium on the grounds that it would hurt the housing market and thereby slow the economy. Towns counters that what would really be bad for the economy is letting banks take people's homes away without any semblance of due process. If the government doesn't act to protect the innocent, foreclosuregate could shatter the confidence of potential home buyers. Would you want to invest in a house if you were afraid the bank could just take it away from you?

In AlterNet, Mike Lux argues that fraudulent foreclosures are one more assault on poor and middle class Americans. He argues that the banks are so used to being coddled by Washington that they're counting on legislators to retroactively change the rules to protect them from the consequences of their own devious behavior.

At this point we don't know what percentage of foreclosed-upon homes have simply been stolen by banks to pay bondholders, but we do know the problem is vast and systemic. The Obama administration is content to let the banks seize private property first and ask questions later. We need a moratorium to take stock and restore the rule of law.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

New fronts are opening in the foreclosure mess.

A lot of people have wondered why no one has gone to jail over what by commonsense standards is fraudulent activity. The possibility that the violations were indeed criminal is finally being investigated. From the Washington Post:

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in connection with the national foreclosure crisis, examining whether financial firms broke federal laws when they filed fraudulent court documents to seize people’s homes, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Obama administration’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is in the early stages of an investigation into whether banks and other companies that submitted flawed paperwork in state foreclosure proceedings may also have misled federal housing agencies, which now own or insure a majority of home loans, according to these sources.

The task force, which includes investigators from the Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies, is also looking into whether the submission of flawed paperwork during the foreclosure process violated mail or wire fraud laws. Financial fraud cases often involve these statutes.

Yves here. On the one hand, I would not underestimate the ability of Team Obama to give the banking industry a free pass when tough action is warranted. On the other hand, there is a proud tradition of the Federal government rousing itself when measure by the states run the risk of showing it to have been complacent to the point of negligence (one well known example is when state securities law suits force the generally lapdog SEC to take swing into gear). So if state or even private lawsuits expose enough damaging material, it will be hard for this task force to sit on its hands.

On another front, the ACLU is starting to obtain information to determine whether foreclosures in Florida (the so called rocket docket) violated Constitutional “due process” requirements:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Florida today filed public records requests with judicial officials in Florida to determine whether homeowners are having their constitutional rights violated during foreclosure proceedings and being unlawfully removed from their homes.

In Florida, where almost half a million foreclosure cases are pending, the state legislature recently spent over $9 million to create special foreclosure courts, staffed by retired judges, with the intent of speeding through the state’s backlog of such cases. But recent media reports in Florida and around the country, which reveal rampant error and fraud in the foreclosure process, have shown that courts should take particular care with foreclosure cases. Instead, in the rush to push foreclosure cases through the courts, Florida may be taking shortcuts and, in the process, forsaking constitutionally-required due process protections….

Filed with the Office of the State Court Administrator and the chief judges of all 20 of Florida’s circuit courts, the requests seek access to, among other things, all documents related to special court systems created to dispose of foreclosure cases and the rules and procedures in place that govern those systems…

Copies of the ACLU’s public records requests are available online at: www.aclu.org/racial-justice/aclu-seeks-information-about-constitutionality-florida-foreclosure-courts

Yves here. These initiatives are only in the early stages, but both show that the foreclosure crisis is moving from narrow legal issues to much bigger ones.

eric seiger

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger eric seiger
eric seiger

eric seiger
eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Great <b>news</b>: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session <b>...</b>

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session.

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>

On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...

Good Economic <b>News</b> May Be Bad for Fed Recovery Plan

Consumers, the life's blood of the American economy, have shown a growing willingness to spend, but this might play havoc with the Federal Reserve's bold plans to revive the recovery.

eric seiger

Professional SEO Copywriting Services - What They Are, And What They Aren't

Scott Gerber is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, public speaker and author of Never Get a “Real” Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke. The content for this post was sourced from the Young Entrepreneur Council, a group of successful Gen Y business owners. You can submit your questions to this group on NeverGetaRealJob.com.

Today’s reality is that your business needs to be on social media, but the mere existence of your business on sites like Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook and Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter doesn’t guarantee a single sale, or even a single referral. In order for businesses to succeed in the social media space, they need to be properly educated on what works and what doesn’t. More importantly, business owners need to have realistic goals about what they’ll get out of social media.

When the right tools are used effectively with the right motives in mind, social media can have a huge impact on small business marketing and customer service efforts. You just have to understand how to properly determine and assess the return on investment you’re looking for.

I asked a panel of successful Gen Y entrepreneurs how small businesses can go about getting the most out of their social media marketing and how they can convert more of their existing social media followers into paying customers. Here are their responses.

1. Experiment With Social Networks

“Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t be used as marketing platforms, but rather one-to-one direct communications mediums with customers, potential customers, journalists, and other stakeholders. As the population of Twitter increases, and people start following thousands of other people, your message gets lost. Facebook’s news feed algorithm stops marketers from using their Fan Page as a loudspeaker because fans that aren’t engaged won’t see their content anyway.”

- Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding, LLC

2. Quality, Not Quantity

“Social media is first and foremost about building relationships. It takes time and consistent effort to see any meaningful results, but the time and effort you spend are worth it in the long run – if you do it right. While it’s great to have a large following on Twitter and Facebook, the value of your followers list is all about quality, not quantity. Think of it like this: if you had an ice cream shop and a thousand people a day walked through the door, but 950 of those were lactose intolerant, your high foot traffic wouldn’t be making you much money. To convert your social media followers into paying customers, remember ‘WIIFM’ (What’s In It For ME). In other words, you have to give your followers a reason to want to do business with you, and that reason has to be a benefit to them. Contests are one great way to engage followers, and if you tie them in with your business and give [a prize] that means something to your target audience, you can see results fairly quickly.”

- Adam Toren, co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com

3. Lead Your Followers Down the Purchasing Path

“Don’t be afraid to ask for the sale once you’ve developed trust and a relationship with a prospective customer. Use your Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account to ask people to take the next step, whether it’s calling you up for a quote or proposal, downloading a whitepaper, or signing up for a trial account. Repeat your call to action regularly, with lots of useful content, information and trust building in between your requests.”

- Matt Mickiewicz, founder of 99designs

4. Engagement = Consumers

“If I could talk to you right now, I’d ask, ‘What exactly are you selling?’ While the principles remain the same, social media is best leveraged by tweaking it slightly to suit the industry. There is also a misconception that social media leads to customers. It doesn’t. Social media is a great way to engage with your audience and turn them into consumers. Think about it this way – you have to attract and then convert. Social media is helping you attract the audience and build your community. But, there are two types of conversions. The first is the more common one where someone becomes your consumer. They sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your blog, or just plain ‘Like’ your Facebook Fan Page. They’ve taken the first step! Over time, the right ones becomes paying customers. This is the second type of conversion — the paying customer. Use social media to attract consumers, and then turn them into customers over time. Remember, social media is an important but small part of overall online marketing.”

- Shama Kabani, president of The Marketing Zen Group

5. Use Social Media to Make Friends, Not Leads

“Next time someone friends you or replies to you, don’t just say ‘thanks for following,’ or worse, don’t just count them as just another number or dollar sign. Take two minutes and actually look at who this real person is on the other side of the computer and ask how you can help them in an authentic way. Provide them value and become a trusted friend and this relationship building will convert into sales and evangelism for your company.”

- Matt Wilson, co-founder of Under30CEO.com

6. Give Them Something To Talk About

“The key to converting followers to customers is offering them something that they need, or identifying a pain that they are having that you can solve. You’ve done the hard part by finding followers and fans. Once you have followers and fans, it’s just a matter of finding out what value you can provide to them. If they are unwilling to buy from you then it means they are either not truly fans or followers (just happened to accept your request), or that you have not uncovered their pain points to provide a solution. An example with our company is that we had tons of fans and followers of our brand, but not everyone needed junk removal. So we surveyed them to find out what services we could provide to them and learned that moving was one that they needed more often.”

- Nick Friedman, co-founder and president of College Hunks Hauling Junk

7. Numbers Aren’t Everything

“To gain paying customers you’ll need to focus on attracting the right followers, and not just on attracting the most. Communicate often with useful information to increase your value, and focus on pitching your product in a genuine way. Make sure you have a professional web presence, and with any luck, you should start noticing your efforts pay off.”

- David Rusenko, founder of Weebly

8. Monetize Other Channels

“The hype around social media doesn’t necessarily translate into sales — in fact, it rarely does. Unfortunately, few people will tell you this because they’re busy hyping the next big thing. For example, I get more than a thousand times the financial ROI from my boring old e-mail list than from my Twitter followers. Now, if your goal is engagement or long-term bonding, social media can be a good play. But if your goal is direct revenue, I would focus on other channels that you can track and measure, such as online advertising and e-mail marketing.”

- Ramit Sethi, New York Times best-selling author, I Will Teach You To Be Rich

9. Show Followers What They’re Missing

“You have to show them what they are missing out on and how your business can be helpful and provide a sense of enjoyment to them as well. Truly engage with them, get to know them, show them your personality and make them want to be a part of what you’re doing. Show them why they can’t live without you and be creative with it.”

- Ashley Bodi, co-founder of Business Beware

10. Remember “Top-Of-Mind-Awareness”

“I would recommend giving limited-time, special opportunities that have a strong call to action to your social media community rather than just simply pointing them to your website. Another way we’ve gotten a return on our social media is posting video testimonials that our clients give us for our fan and personal pages. This builds credibility in prospects’ minds by showing that we’re busy and that we do good work. It also keeps us in top-of-mind awareness. We’ve had prospects call us often and mention that they just saw a post and thought of us.”

- Michael Simmons, co-founder of The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour

11. Go Freemium to Build Premium

“Building up fans and followers isn’t enough — you need to engage with them in substantial ways and introduce them to your product in a way that gets them wanting more. As a thought exercise, you might want to ask yourself what aspect of your product you can offer to your social media community for free. If you provide real value, for free, then show them ways they can spend just a little bit of money to get an exponential boost in value — the next tier of your product offering — you may start seeing greater conversions (and return on the initial investment it took to build that community in the first place).”

- Jordan Goldman, founder of Unigo

12. Foster Genuine Interactions

“First, you may want to rethink how you are viewing social media. If you’re looking for an immediate pop in revenue, you’re likely to give up quickly on social media and completely miss the larger opportunity it provides. Of course the broader goal of all marketing is to generate sales; however, if you show up on Facebook and Twitter simply to promote your product or service it is likely you’ll be ignored. Social media is about genuine interaction and building relationships. By fostering relationships, social media becomes an incredibly powerful tool. Provide interesting content that will generate buzz, provide helpful hints and unique discounts that are only available on Facebook or Twitter. Customers will appreciate the ability to participate in a dialogue directly with your brand and these interactions will show up on customers’ news feeds. The resulting brand exposure and word-of-mouth will ultimately pay dividends in the form of new customers.”

- Anderson Schoenrock, co-founder of ScanDigital

What other advice would you give small business owners about getting their social media plans on track? Let us know your tips and advice in the comments section.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- What to Consider When Building an In-House Social Media Team/> - 5 Tips for Marketing Online to an International Audience/> - What’s the Value in a Brand Name?/> - 5 Big Brands That Are Rocking the Social Media Space/> - 9 iPhone Apps for Managing the Recruiting Process

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The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Apps, which lets you quickly create and publish Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following their blog.

Sadly there’s no magic rubric for deciding whether an in-house social media workforce, a social media consultant, or an agency will best be able to meet your particular business needs. Like almost every business decision, it depends on your business’s goals, budget and particular situation.

There are, however, definite pros and cons to each approach. We’ve highlighted some of the most important factors to consider for each style of social media team.

If your business has gone through the process of deciding which type of social media team to instate, let us know about the factors you considered and how you came to your final decision in the comments below.

In-House Team

Handling all social media efforts in-house is often the most affordable route for small business owners. Per hour, an agency’s time or a consultant’s time is going to be much more expensive than a full or part-time employee.

But it’s a big job. Jamie Turner, the coauthor of How To Make Money with Social Media recommends that businesses contribute no less than 25% of one full-time employee’s time to social media efforts. There are, however, benefits to making this time investment.

“People inside can move quicker and always have their finger on the pulse of the company, which makes it easier for them to respond [on social media],” Turner says.

Outsourcing your social media presence to an agency, in addition to costing more, can be slow on a day-to-day basis. An agency that is handling a Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter account might need to correspond with the company before it’s able to answer a question. Or it might need to ask for approval when unsure if an idea is in sync with the company’s overall business strategy.

Social Media Consultant

There isn’t really a narrow definition of “social media consultant.” Some have niche specialties and can help a company’s in-house team accomplish a specific social media task. Some help companies put an overall strategy in place and then leave the execution up to the company. And others are more like off-site community managers who execute the social media tasks for the company for an undetermined amount of time.

One advantage most consultants have over agencies is that they’re less expensive. “Typically you can pay [a consultant up to] $300 to $500 an hour,” says Jason Keath, the founder of social media education business Social Fresh. “If you put that same person inside of an agency, you’re adding a lot of overhead; you’re adding the corporate structure on top of it that has to be paid for as well.” Also on the cost front, consultants often require smaller time commitments than agencies.

Companies that are looking to fill in a specific aspect of their strategy often find hiring a consultant to be the best approach because they can seek a specific person that fits the niche they need help with. “If you have an in-house team, there may be a lot of knowledge there — and let’s say it’s digital PR knowledge,” says Keath, who has been consulting for the past two-and-a-half years. “But let’s say this team has never done blogger outreach before. Obviously bringing in somebody who has done blogger outreach is really going to speed up the process.”

Companies that plan to start their own in-house teams also may benefit from a consultant approach. Social media consultant Mirna Bard sees herself as an educator.

“Although an agency has results in mind, they are typically not the educators and they sometimes only look at the marketing aspect of social media,” she says. “They may also take a tactical instead of a strategic approach. Many times agencies or in-house teams are used mostly for development and execution; they are not meant to be business advisers who make overall business decisions.”

A consultant can help develop a social media strategy in line with your business objectives and play a role in teaching your in-house team how to execute it.

Agency

Most large PR agencies and many advertising agencies now have branches for handling a business’s entire social media presence. This kind of work differs from that of most consultants in that the agencies handle both strategy and execution. Jim Tobin, the president of Ignite Social Media, counts this among an agency’s advantages.

“Since we also execute for our clients, we have a good understanding of what’s realistic,” he says. “If we suggest things, chances are we’re also going to have to implement them.”

Another argument for using an agency is the wide range of experience that they generally have. In-house teams are typically isolated within their own companies and industries. Agencies have experience across multiple industries and may be able to spot a good idea that an in-house team would miss.

“Social media changes so rapidly that when you work with an agency, they’re typically more on the cutting edge of what’s coming down the pike because they’ve got 100 people out there looking around at the new stuff and thinking about the new stuff and sitting in meetings saying ‘hey, have you heard this new use of class='blippr-nobr'>Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare?’ ” explains Turner.

More people who interact with more clients have obvious benefits in keeping up to speed on the latest social media strategies. But many consultants would argue that it’s more important to have a deep understanding in a valuable niche. Both Keath and Bard have done consulting work for agencies that wanted to learn more about social media strategy.

Hybrid Approach

Most companies use some combination of the above three approaches. Turner says he often sees companies who have an in-house person “on the front line” who runs accounts and answers questions via social media, but turn to consultant or agencies for high-level social media strategy.

“It’s a collaborative approach, even if you go with an agency,” explains Tobin, whose agency handles the social media strategy for companies like Microsoft, Disney and Nike. “The client contributes the business objectives and knows what can and can’t be supported…the agency brings the expertise in the space [because it lives] in social media marketing all day. Together those can be really powerful.”

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More Business Resources from Mashable:

- Inside Group Buying: 7 Small Business Success Stories/> - How Social Search Will Transform the SEO Industry/> - 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora/> - 5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

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SEO Training Courses in the UK

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, is an extremely  valuable skill.

The job websites - at a time of increasing unemployment - seem to be full of very well paid positions for SEO executives. The reason for this is that actually, there are very few people in the UK who are truly skilled in SEO - and for that reason, those that are tend to choose to work for themselves regardless of the large amount of money they could earn working for an SEO firm.

The main reason that very few people in the UK have real SEO skills, is that there are very few UK SEO training courses available. You can't just go & enroll on an SEO course at your local night school, they don't teach it in schools, there are no college courses in SEO in the UK, that I'm aware of, and there are very few real opportunities to learn real SEO from someone who knows how it's done.

I think the reason most SEO consultants don't offer to train, is that training is much harder work than just doing SEO - and at the same time, when training new SEO consultants, we're creating real competition for ourselves - and at the moment in the UK, there is not a lot of competition from REAL SEO consultant who actually do the work, and I think most consultants would agree that they'd prefer it that way - it's difficult promoting a clients website when you're up against another professional, so really for us, the less true SEO professionals out there, the better!

So - most SEO consultants are self taught. I have been teaching myself SEO for roughly ten years, and I dread to think how much I have spent over these years on ebooks, courses & programs, but I'm sure whatever the amount, I would have saved money by doing an intensive SEO training course, if there was one available when I started !

I have now started to offer SEO training courses in the UK, to help people who are serious about becoming professional SEO consultants. My training courses are one to one, intensive training courses, that include a year of help & support.

Are SEO training courses absolutely necesarry

No - they're not, however finding a professional SEO consultant to train you, will help you to take a huge leap towards becoming an SEO consultant, drastically reducing the learning curve that most SEO professionals have to go through.

What kind of SEO training course should I look for?

Look for a training course which is run by actual current SEO professionals, people who're doing this for a living. The world of SEO is an ever changing one, someone who used to be a great SEO consultant who now just trains, isn't likely to be training you using fresh knowledge & experience.

How much should I expect to pay?

SEO is a very valuable skill, and a good SEO consultant can make a lot of money, therefore logical thinking will tell you that no SEO consultant is going to offer to train you for a small amount of money, they are in effect training a future competitor, so they need to make more money than they would make in the same amount of time working for a client, otherwise what would be the incentive to offer training courses?  So, if you do find a course which seems very cheap - just think logically about the value of such a course, and why such valuable training is being offered for bargain prices.

There are some valid reasons that a course would be offered for a smaller cost, for instance a course that was teaching a number of people at one time, would enable a lower cost - but in my opinion SEO taught in a class is never going to be as valuable as one to one training with a professional SEO.

What else should I take into consideration?

The main thing to think about - is what happens after the course? Like learning to drive, the REAL test comes after you've passed & you're let alone to drive. Remember the first few weeks of driving, scary right? 

A good SEO course should include after training support. I continue to support people for a year after the course, included in the price of the course - and I offer packages for continued support after a year.

Kevin John Lewis is a professional search engine marketing / SEO Consultant Kevin is now offering a one to one SEO Training Course in the UK - available in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cornwall (Newquay), Glasgow & Dublin. There are only a small number of positions available on the training course in both 2008, and 2009 - so if you are interested in becoming a professional SEO consultant, act soon! Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_John_Lewis

personal finance books

Yesterday, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) announced that he is going to challenge Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. “I think we need a strong chairman in this position,” Royce told Bloomberg News. “I discussed this earlier today with Spencer Bachus and I shared with him that this is nothing personal.”

The prospect of a challenge to his committee leadership may explain why Bachus has been going gangbusters with his rhetoric regarding dismantling the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. And he kept it up yesterday, sending a letter to the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council scaremongering about the effects of the Volcker rule, which is meant to prevent banks from engaging in risky trading with federally insured dollars:

Bachus says that a ban on proprietary trading – known as the Volcker rule – that was included in the new Dodd-Frank financial reform law will “impose substantial costs on the American economy and market participants” with “doubtful” benefits.” “Depending on how US regulators choose to implement it, the Volcker rule may spark a mass exodus of clients from US banks to banks based abroad.”

In the letter, Bachus casts doubt on the very notion that risky trading had anything to do with the financial mentldown of 2008. But as the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts pointed out “risky proprietary investments by investment banks, along with trading for clients whose decisions were influenced by these banks, was one of the main forces that sustained upward pressure on securities prices in the bubble…Indeed, by running large trading books, banks had inside information on client trading patterns and could use that information to front-run, and thereby help sustain market trends.”

Royce, for his part, is no more sympathetic towards the Dodd-Frank law. Last week, in fact, he said that he would allow bank regulators to have direct veto power over the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During the financial reform debate, he was also one of the foremost promulgators of the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the housing bubble. It should come as no surprise that he has raised far more money from the finance industry than any other business sector during his career.

Even the likely Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), is getting into the anti-financial reform game, saying that under his watch, “not only will the Congress understand, but the American people will understand, just what this bill will do to our financial services industry.” So, no matter who takes over the Financial Services Committee, as Barry Ritholz wrote, we should expect “new hearings, new subpoenas, and general harassment of regulators by the House of Representatives.”

Launched 3 days ago by Abraaj Capital one of the world’s 50 biggest private equity groups Riyada Enterprise Development (RED) has $500 million in cash to invest on around 100 SMEs over the next 2-3 years. And they’ve kicked it off with investing in 5 already.

If your wondering what an SME is exactly, RED defines it as any company with an enterprise value of less than $50 million. That provides good reason to make your mouth water.

The industries they cover include process food, pharmaceutical, diapers, media, it services, medical testing, educational products and services, , media content, construction material, specialized logistics, child support solutions, clean energy can and should be addressed by SMEs in the region.

Some of their local partners are in Palestine the Palestine Investment Fund, in Jordan it’s Jordan Enterprise, in Lebanon it’s CISCO, and Banque Nationale d’Algérie in Algeria to name a few.

The people from Abraaj Capital successfully attempted to put the money together by contacting developmental finance institutions around the region along with a $50 million they put forward since last year. One of which was OPIC: United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

The OPIC allocation following president Obama’s 2009 speech was a $500 million tender for development in the Middle East, which RED received the largest single chunk of, which is $150 million. They added another $200 million from their investor base. And before you know it, they got the local funds to chip in getting it up to $500 million.

They started screening companies, 180 companies in total from around the region in 4 months. 160 of them weren’t of interest, the remaining 20 were. As a result they ended up investing in 5:

1. E3 is a regional medical IT Services company


2. Egypt-based integrated agriculture company which specializes in Artichoke growing/producing


3. Egypt-based regional IT services firm OMS


4. Kuwait-based Teshkeel Media Group lead by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa creator of The 99 comic book


5. Jordan-based Arabic online portal d1g.com

D1g.com is obviously the most interesting investment to us because it not only represents in an investment in an Arabic online portal, but an investment in digital Arabic content as well.

Having Usama Fayyad’s Yahoo!’s former Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solution as Executive Chairman of D1G encouraged us to attend a presentation of his during the Celebration of Entrepreneurship in Dubai and the numbers are staggering.

Since Arabic Internet content is less than 1% of all Internet content yet the Arabic language is ranked second according to the number of native speakers of that language after Mandarin, the crisis is offline as much as it is online. Another interesting fact is that only 2% percent of Arabic speaking Internet users are comfortable with doing their business/personal matter in English.

So if 98% of Arabic speaking people can’t comfortably access the content online, the Internet revolution is actively leaving them behind.

Now if we consider the offline Arabic content dilemma it’s also rather concerning. 330 books get published per year, when comparing the number of ‘quality articles’ on D1G.com, the amount of content would be equivalent to 368 books per year. And that is more than the entire book industry in the Arab world for one year.

It appears RED has made a successful investment, at least in the Arabic content generation industry we hope will catch on to other platforms and online industries.

eric seiger

Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

FOX News covers politics on America's Election Headquarters. FOX News political coverage on elections, races, foreign policy, candidates, and national security.

Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/13/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks!

Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

eric seiger
Yesterday, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) announced that he is going to challenge Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. “I think we need a strong chairman in this position,” Royce told Bloomberg News. “I discussed this earlier today with Spencer Bachus and I shared with him that this is nothing personal.”

The prospect of a challenge to his committee leadership may explain why Bachus has been going gangbusters with his rhetoric regarding dismantling the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. And he kept it up yesterday, sending a letter to the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council scaremongering about the effects of the Volcker rule, which is meant to prevent banks from engaging in risky trading with federally insured dollars:

Bachus says that a ban on proprietary trading – known as the Volcker rule – that was included in the new Dodd-Frank financial reform law will “impose substantial costs on the American economy and market participants” with “doubtful” benefits.” “Depending on how US regulators choose to implement it, the Volcker rule may spark a mass exodus of clients from US banks to banks based abroad.”

In the letter, Bachus casts doubt on the very notion that risky trading had anything to do with the financial mentldown of 2008. But as the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts pointed out “risky proprietary investments by investment banks, along with trading for clients whose decisions were influenced by these banks, was one of the main forces that sustained upward pressure on securities prices in the bubble…Indeed, by running large trading books, banks had inside information on client trading patterns and could use that information to front-run, and thereby help sustain market trends.”

Royce, for his part, is no more sympathetic towards the Dodd-Frank law. Last week, in fact, he said that he would allow bank regulators to have direct veto power over the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During the financial reform debate, he was also one of the foremost promulgators of the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the housing bubble. It should come as no surprise that he has raised far more money from the finance industry than any other business sector during his career.

Even the likely Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), is getting into the anti-financial reform game, saying that under his watch, “not only will the Congress understand, but the American people will understand, just what this bill will do to our financial services industry.” So, no matter who takes over the Financial Services Committee, as Barry Ritholz wrote, we should expect “new hearings, new subpoenas, and general harassment of regulators by the House of Representatives.”

Launched 3 days ago by Abraaj Capital one of the world’s 50 biggest private equity groups Riyada Enterprise Development (RED) has $500 million in cash to invest on around 100 SMEs over the next 2-3 years. And they’ve kicked it off with investing in 5 already.

If your wondering what an SME is exactly, RED defines it as any company with an enterprise value of less than $50 million. That provides good reason to make your mouth water.

The industries they cover include process food, pharmaceutical, diapers, media, it services, medical testing, educational products and services, , media content, construction material, specialized logistics, child support solutions, clean energy can and should be addressed by SMEs in the region.

Some of their local partners are in Palestine the Palestine Investment Fund, in Jordan it’s Jordan Enterprise, in Lebanon it’s CISCO, and Banque Nationale d’Algérie in Algeria to name a few.

The people from Abraaj Capital successfully attempted to put the money together by contacting developmental finance institutions around the region along with a $50 million they put forward since last year. One of which was OPIC: United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

The OPIC allocation following president Obama’s 2009 speech was a $500 million tender for development in the Middle East, which RED received the largest single chunk of, which is $150 million. They added another $200 million from their investor base. And before you know it, they got the local funds to chip in getting it up to $500 million.

They started screening companies, 180 companies in total from around the region in 4 months. 160 of them weren’t of interest, the remaining 20 were. As a result they ended up investing in 5:

1. E3 is a regional medical IT Services company


2. Egypt-based integrated agriculture company which specializes in Artichoke growing/producing


3. Egypt-based regional IT services firm OMS


4. Kuwait-based Teshkeel Media Group lead by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa creator of The 99 comic book


5. Jordan-based Arabic online portal d1g.com

D1g.com is obviously the most interesting investment to us because it not only represents in an investment in an Arabic online portal, but an investment in digital Arabic content as well.

Having Usama Fayyad’s Yahoo!’s former Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solution as Executive Chairman of D1G encouraged us to attend a presentation of his during the Celebration of Entrepreneurship in Dubai and the numbers are staggering.

Since Arabic Internet content is less than 1% of all Internet content yet the Arabic language is ranked second according to the number of native speakers of that language after Mandarin, the crisis is offline as much as it is online. Another interesting fact is that only 2% percent of Arabic speaking Internet users are comfortable with doing their business/personal matter in English.

So if 98% of Arabic speaking people can’t comfortably access the content online, the Internet revolution is actively leaving them behind.

Now if we consider the offline Arabic content dilemma it’s also rather concerning. 330 books get published per year, when comparing the number of ‘quality articles’ on D1G.com, the amount of content would be equivalent to 368 books per year. And that is more than the entire book industry in the Arab world for one year.

It appears RED has made a successful investment, at least in the Arabic content generation industry we hope will catch on to other platforms and online industries.

eric seiger

Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Yesterday, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) announced that he is going to challenge Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. “I think we need a strong chairman in this position,” Royce told Bloomberg News. “I discussed this earlier today with Spencer Bachus and I shared with him that this is nothing personal.”

The prospect of a challenge to his committee leadership may explain why Bachus has been going gangbusters with his rhetoric regarding dismantling the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. And he kept it up yesterday, sending a letter to the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council scaremongering about the effects of the Volcker rule, which is meant to prevent banks from engaging in risky trading with federally insured dollars:

Bachus says that a ban on proprietary trading – known as the Volcker rule – that was included in the new Dodd-Frank financial reform law will “impose substantial costs on the American economy and market participants” with “doubtful” benefits.” “Depending on how US regulators choose to implement it, the Volcker rule may spark a mass exodus of clients from US banks to banks based abroad.”

In the letter, Bachus casts doubt on the very notion that risky trading had anything to do with the financial mentldown of 2008. But as the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts pointed out “risky proprietary investments by investment banks, along with trading for clients whose decisions were influenced by these banks, was one of the main forces that sustained upward pressure on securities prices in the bubble…Indeed, by running large trading books, banks had inside information on client trading patterns and could use that information to front-run, and thereby help sustain market trends.”

Royce, for his part, is no more sympathetic towards the Dodd-Frank law. Last week, in fact, he said that he would allow bank regulators to have direct veto power over the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During the financial reform debate, he was also one of the foremost promulgators of the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the housing bubble. It should come as no surprise that he has raised far more money from the finance industry than any other business sector during his career.

Even the likely Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), is getting into the anti-financial reform game, saying that under his watch, “not only will the Congress understand, but the American people will understand, just what this bill will do to our financial services industry.” So, no matter who takes over the Financial Services Committee, as Barry Ritholz wrote, we should expect “new hearings, new subpoenas, and general harassment of regulators by the House of Representatives.”

Launched 3 days ago by Abraaj Capital one of the world’s 50 biggest private equity groups Riyada Enterprise Development (RED) has $500 million in cash to invest on around 100 SMEs over the next 2-3 years. And they’ve kicked it off with investing in 5 already.

If your wondering what an SME is exactly, RED defines it as any company with an enterprise value of less than $50 million. That provides good reason to make your mouth water.

The industries they cover include process food, pharmaceutical, diapers, media, it services, medical testing, educational products and services, , media content, construction material, specialized logistics, child support solutions, clean energy can and should be addressed by SMEs in the region.

Some of their local partners are in Palestine the Palestine Investment Fund, in Jordan it’s Jordan Enterprise, in Lebanon it’s CISCO, and Banque Nationale d’Algérie in Algeria to name a few.

The people from Abraaj Capital successfully attempted to put the money together by contacting developmental finance institutions around the region along with a $50 million they put forward since last year. One of which was OPIC: United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

The OPIC allocation following president Obama’s 2009 speech was a $500 million tender for development in the Middle East, which RED received the largest single chunk of, which is $150 million. They added another $200 million from their investor base. And before you know it, they got the local funds to chip in getting it up to $500 million.

They started screening companies, 180 companies in total from around the region in 4 months. 160 of them weren’t of interest, the remaining 20 were. As a result they ended up investing in 5:

1. E3 is a regional medical IT Services company


2. Egypt-based integrated agriculture company which specializes in Artichoke growing/producing


3. Egypt-based regional IT services firm OMS


4. Kuwait-based Teshkeel Media Group lead by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa creator of The 99 comic book


5. Jordan-based Arabic online portal d1g.com

D1g.com is obviously the most interesting investment to us because it not only represents in an investment in an Arabic online portal, but an investment in digital Arabic content as well.

Having Usama Fayyad’s Yahoo!’s former Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solution as Executive Chairman of D1G encouraged us to attend a presentation of his during the Celebration of Entrepreneurship in Dubai and the numbers are staggering.

Since Arabic Internet content is less than 1% of all Internet content yet the Arabic language is ranked second according to the number of native speakers of that language after Mandarin, the crisis is offline as much as it is online. Another interesting fact is that only 2% percent of Arabic speaking Internet users are comfortable with doing their business/personal matter in English.

So if 98% of Arabic speaking people can’t comfortably access the content online, the Internet revolution is actively leaving them behind.

Now if we consider the offline Arabic content dilemma it’s also rather concerning. 330 books get published per year, when comparing the number of ‘quality articles’ on D1G.com, the amount of content would be equivalent to 368 books per year. And that is more than the entire book industry in the Arab world for one year.

It appears RED has made a successful investment, at least in the Arabic content generation industry we hope will catch on to other platforms and online industries.

eric seiger

eric seiger

Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

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Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

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Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

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Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

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Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

My dad was always surprised that public high schools didn´t teach basic finance classes. Here are 7 things that he taught me about making money and saving the money you have.

Education is a good investment. College is expensive, and not all of us have the spare change to pay out of pocket. Taking out loans is never a good feeling, even when you know it´s for a good cause. Think of student loans as an investment in your education, and work hard to make sure it pays off.

Save for retirement now. You don't need to wait for a 401K to invest for the future retirement. Even if you don´t have a full time job with company benefits, you can still save for retirement with a Roth IRA: You can contribute up to $5,000 annually and withdrawals are tax free if you absolutely need to take out money.

Coupons are not a waste of time. The five minutes you spend clipping coupons in the Sunday paper are worth it. Not only will you save money on commonly purchased items, but you can also help out a retired neighbor or relative by giving them the coupons you won´t use. Restaurant coupons are also a good opportunity to try new places with the family without spending full price.

Watch your credit score. The recent economic crisis has proved that credit card scores count. So if you can go online and sign up for an automatic pay feature for your credit card, you´re safer than trying to remember to pay off the balance every month. This way if you forget to pay you will still be taken care of.

Sometimes spending more is worth the community investment. Even though you might save money by buying that screwdriver at Walmart, sometimes it´s worth spending the extra dollar on a local business. You´re investing money in your own community, and those little girls selling lemonade on the corner will appreciate your business more than a huge corporation!

Go to tag sales. If you´re looking for furniture for a new home, children´s toys, paperback books, or used jewelry, you won´t find better deals than yard sales. Garage sales are a great way to recycle goods families don´t use anymore and put them in the hands of people who are looking for a bargain.

Look for discounts online. Never pay for anything online without looking for an online discount code. You can do a simple google search for coupon codes which you then insert at payout if you qualify. If you´re looking to purchase a big ticket item, do some online browsing to see if the Super Sale at your local store is really giving you a deal.


eric seiger

Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

eric seiger

Supreme Court Ruling Keeps Ban on Gays From Openly Serving in the <b>...</b>

FOX News covers politics on America's Election Headquarters. FOX News political coverage on elections, races, foreign policy, candidates, and national security.

Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/13/10 - Mile High Report

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Domain Name Wire » <b>News</b> » Confirmed: Facebook Acquires FB.com <b>...</b>

Facebook acquires FB.com domain name. Ending months of speculation, it's now confirmed that Facebook has acquired the FB.com domain name. The whois record for the domain name just updated to show Facebook's name and nameservers for the ...

eric seiger