Business

Fraud Worsens Foreclosure Crisis

Posted by Shemuses

Scams to Stave Off Foreclosures Victimize Home Owners Again. As more people lose their homes, foreclosure fraud scams have spiked, with Prince George's recording the most cases of fraud in Maryland, said state mortgage fraud investigator Stephen Prozeralik. Most scams involve a "helpful" buyer who promises to save a troubled homeowner's property, by purchasing it from him to stave off foreclosure. The buyer usually collects rent up front and promises to sell the house back to the homeowner eventually, but instead strips any equity and fails to pay the mortgage, victimizing the owner once again.

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Google To Digitize Millions of Old Newspaper Pages

Posted by Jeff

On Monday Google detailed new plans to digitize millions of newspaper pages with articles, photographs, and headlines intact so they can be accessed and searched online. 'Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written,' Google said in a blog post. 'It's our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily.' For example, Google noted the availability of an original article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1969 about the landing on the moon.

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Pharmacy paid addict kickback for prescription: hidden camera

Posted by Shemuses from CBC

Downtown Eastside doctors complained to authorities about practice months ago

Some pharmacists in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside routinely pay cash to drug addicts for filling their prescriptions, a CBC hidden-camera investigation has found. The practice was revealed after several doctors complained that pharmacies were giving $10 a week or more to clients for each prescription filled if the drugs were dispensed daily. In the drug-ravaged neighbourhood, $10 buys a "rock" of crack cocaine.

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Venezuela: Creating an Endogenous Cooperative Culture

Posted by Shemuses

Since 1998, the government of President Hugo Chavez has embarked on wide ranging projects to redistribute Venezuelan resources and services. He has promised radical change to the eighty-three percent of Venezuelans who live below the poverty line in a country that is one of the world's largest exporters of oil.[1] Chavez has redirected oil income from a large and wealthy management to a multiplicity of projects designed to improve social welfare. The scope of these projects range from programs aimed to address health and educational needs to organic gardens, which are designed to change the modus operandi of the Venezuelan economy.

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Reports: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac bailout set

Posted by Jeff from MSNBC

The Washington Post reported on its Web site that government officials had told the two companies that their top executives would be dismissed and government funds used to prop them up. The New York Times said the company boards also would be replaced. The Times described the plan as effectively a government bailout that could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and would be among the largest rescues in U.S. history.

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Labor Day: Little to Celebrate for U.S. Latinos

Posted by Shemuses

A vast majority of Latino workers in the United States are forced to work for long hours and low wages with no health care or any other benefits, says a new study published this week.

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ConsumerMan: Say goodbye to robo-calls

Posted by Jeff from MSNBC

The Federal Trade Commission just changed the rules to close that loophole. By next year at this time, the chances of getting these unwanted robo-calls should drop dramatically. By December, all recorded sales calls must have a simple interactive way for you to let the company know you do not want any more of them. It could be via the keypad ("push 1 to avoid future messages like this") or by saying something into the phone.

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