GOP Will Get to Grill Jon Corzine in Congress (The Atlantic Wire)

After talks on bankrupted financial firm MF Global?in three separate congressional committees, the House Agriculture committee became the first to pull the trigger today by issuing a subpoena to its former CEO and former New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine,?reports the BBC.?And some are predicting that the Republican legislators will relish the chance to skewer the former Democratic senator and New Jersey governor. "Corzine?s Democratic credentials and past ties to Gary Gensler, now chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are surely grist for the GOP political mill," reports Politico. Gensler's commission is now investigating the bankrupt financial firm, which is reported to have lost millions of investors' dollars -- including savings by farmers, which is why the Agriculture Committee wants his testimony. And?Gensler's past buddy-buddy relationship with Corzine -- The Washington Post recalls?how Gensler joked about Corzine's upcoming wedding at an event?-- has already been fodder for GOP talking points. Just this morning Republican Senator Mike Johanns called out Corzine for?recusing himself from the probe into MF Global.?"It looks to me like you're trying to avoid the heat," he said according to Reuters. "You certainly didn't recuse yourself all of the other weeks and months and days while MF Global was doing what it was doing." Now with a subpoena out, GOP lawmakers have even more reason to take jabs at Corzine as a proxy for Democrats.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20111202/bs_atlantic/gopwillgetgrilljoncorzinecongress45675

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Senate pushes to hurry up Afghanistan pullout (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Senate voted on Wednesday to require President Barack Obama to devise a plan for expediting the pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, signaling growing impatience in Congress.

Obama in June called for about a third of U.S. forces, or 33,000 troops, to leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer. The remaining 66,000 U.S. troops are to be slowly withdrawn until a final transition to Afghan security control in 2014.

The Democratic-controlled Senate's vote for accelerating that drawdown came on an amendment to an annual defense bill, but the chances of the requirement becoming law are slim.

A similar demand for an accelerated transition of military operations from U.S. to Afghan authorities was narrowly defeated in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in May.

The sponsor of the version that passed the Senate on Wednesday, Democrat Jeff Merkley, said the chamber's vote was above all a message to the Democratic president that it was time to end the U.S. combat role.

"Our American forces have successfully pursued the two main goals set when we went to Afghanistan: stamping out the al Qaeda training camps and hunting down and bringing to justice those responsible for 9/11," Merkley said in a statement, referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"It is time to bring our men and women home. The Senate sent that message to the President today in unequivocal terms," Merkley said.

The amendment passed on a voice vote. Republican John McCain, who opposed it, declared that senior U.S. military commanders were already uncomfortable with the drawdown Obama announced in June, and said stepping it up would be "reckless and wrong."

The Senate vote came as U.S. lawmakers continued to look for ways to cut government spending and rein in massive budget deficits. Unease in Washington over the decade-long war in Afghanistan has escalated amid rising worries about tight budgets and high unemployment.

During debate on the amendment, Merkley said the conflict in Afghanistan had cost the United States nearly a half-trillion dollars, and that it was time to "bring our troops and our tax dollars home".

His amendment had 20 co-sponsors in the 100-member Senate, including two Republicans - Mike Lee and Rand Paul, both members of the chamber's conservative Tea Party caucus.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111201/pl_nm/us_afghanistan_usa_senate

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Google+ Hangouts Now Feature Free Voice Calls [Google+]

Until now, Google+ Hangouts have been limited to people in front of a computer, but a new feature now allows you to bring in anyone with a phone.

To start the Hangout, you need to use the Hangouts with extras link, then invite up to two new participants by typing in their phone number. You won't get all the handy features of the video conferencing like sharing documents, but as a completely free tool for conferencing with people with non-smartphones it works perfectly well.

A new extra for Hangouts with extras: make phone calls from inside a Hangout | Jarkko Oikarinen via ReadWriteWeb

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Ad44xMxbfcc/google%252B-hangouts-now-feature-voice-call-integration

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Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Acquires Worksite Communications, Terms ...

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) today announced the acquisition of Worksite Communications, Inc. in Tallahassee, Florida. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Established in 1996, Worksite Communications, Inc. is an employee benefits communication and enrollment firm. They provide communication, education and enrollment services for both core and voluntary benefit programs to employee benefits brokers and their clients throughout the United States. They specialize in public and private sector employers and union organizations. Joseph Gaudino and his staff will continue to operate at their current location under the direction of William Ziebell, North Central Regional Executive Vice President of Gallagher's employee benefit consulting and brokerage operations.

"Worksite Communications is highly regarded for its outstanding enrollment expertise and high degree of quality service," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "This acquisition will give our benefit consulting operations additional capabilities in the rapidly growing voluntary benefits space. They will be a terrific addition to our employee benefits brokerage and consulting operation, and we are pleased to welcome Joe and his associates to our growing Gallagher family of professionals."

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(c) 2011 Benzinga.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published in its entirety or redistributed without the approval of Benzinga.

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Source: http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/12/2172110/arthur-j-gallagher-co-acquires-worksite-communications-terms-not-disclosed

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Congress bickers toward year-end compromise (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Republicans and Democrats bickered and blustered Thursday toward eventual compromise legislation extending expiring Social Security payroll tax cuts and long-term jobless benefits through 2012, each seeking political advantage for elections almost a year distant.

The White House weighed in with a written statement opposing the GOP approach, which presidential press secretary Jay Carney said includes "window dressing" hung by Republicans seeking to cut costs by freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 and reducing the government bureaucracy.

By contrast, President Barack Obama and most Democrats in Congress want to extend and expand the payroll tax cut and pay for it by slapping a 3.25 percent surtax on incomes of $1 million or more.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Republican opponents "insist on helping the very wealthy while turning their back on the middle class," while another member of the leadership, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, said they "put up a transparent fig leaf" that would kill jobs rather than create them.

In remarks on the Senate floor, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the issue reflected poorly on both Obama and his allies in Congress.

"There's no reason folks should suffer even more than they already are from the president's failure to turn this jobs crisis around," he said. "But there's also no reason we should pay for that relief by raising taxes on the very employers we're counting on to help jolt this economy back to life."

That left both parties seeking the political high ground ? Democrats accusing Republicans of siding with the rich, and Republicans countering that Democrats were taxing small business owners who create jobs ? in advance of a pair of Senate test votes expected late Thursday or Friday morning.

Neither of two rival measures was expected to gain the 60 votes necessary for passage, a double-barreled rejection likely to clear the way for talks on a compromise.

Across the Capitol, House Republicans readied legislation of their own that aides said likely would include the tax cut extension as well as renewed benefits for long-term victims of the worst recession in decades and a painfully slow recovery.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, made clear that all costs must be paid for, and said higher taxes were a non-starter.

"Republicans are ready to work with the president and the Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance temporarily, but they must be offset with spending cuts elsewhere," he said.

There were other issues under negotiation as lawmakers looked toward the end of a highly partisan year, the first in a new era of divided government.

Boehner said lawmakers were discussing a bill to avoid a scheduled 27 percent cut on Jan. 1 in reimbursement rates for doctors treating Medicare patients.

The two parties also looked for agreement on a measure to fund the government through the Sept. 30 end of the budget year.

Boehner added that he likely would try to include some of the 20 House-passed bills that are part of a GOP jobs package in one of the year-end wrap-up bills. Most of the measures would block federal regulations on various industries, and are stalled in the Senate.

With unemployment hovering around 9 percent nationally, Obama urged Congress in September to renew and expand the Social Security payroll tax cut for workers that he signed a year ago, and called as well for an extension of benefits that can cover up to 99 weeks for the long-term jobless.

State unemployment insurance programs guarantees coverage for six months, but as in previous downturns, Congress approved additional benefits in 2008. Expiration of those payments would mean an average loss of $296 in weekly income for 1.8 million households in January, and a total of 6 million throughout 2012.

On the tax cut extension, Republicans prefer a simple one-year continuation of the existing law, jettisoning Obama's call to deepen the cut while expanding it to cover an employer's portion of payroll taxes.

To pay for the measure, Senate Republicans proposed freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 ? extending a two-year-freeze recommended by Obama ? and reducing the bureaucracy by 200,000 jobs through attrition.

The bill also would raise Medicare premiums for the wealthy, and take steps to deny unemployment benefits and food stamps to anyone with a seven-figure income.

Republicans circulated statistics from the Internal Revenue Service reporting that tax filers with $1 million or more in income received a total of $20.8 million in unemployment benefits in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. Their bill would impose a 100 percent tax on those payments ? an irony for a party that historically has opposed any tax increases.

____

Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_payroll_tax

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Hachette says France ready for digital books (Reuters)

PARIS (Reuters) ? Regulation and a devoted book culture look set to cushion the impact on French publishers and booksellers of the impending digital revolution that has so transformed markets in the United States and Britain.

Arnaud Nourry, the CEO of Hachette Books Group, predicted that e-books would take off in France this year and that the market would benefit from the relatively late adoption of digital reading because it would benefit from lessons learned elsewhere.

Strict rules that prevent booksellers from cutting prices, and a love of books amongst the French, have convinced Nourry that the shift to digital sales will be much less traumatic than otherwise feared.

"My bet is that in the first half of next year we're going to see the first signs of the e-book market taking off in France," he said at the Reuters Global Media Summit on Thursday.

"I don't see why the French readers would not want to read in digital form, (but) I also believe it will go slower and perhaps not to the same point as other markets."

Sales of digital books have grown rapidly in the U.S. and Britain in recent years to around 20 percent of total book sales in the former and almost 10 percent in the latter.

In France, such sales remain almost zero, hampered by the fact that few e-reading devices have been available and few titles offered for sale.

That is soon to change. In October, Amazon Launched a French-language digital book store and Kindle e-reader and France's number one book seller Fnac partnered with the Kobo e-reader to push digital sales.

In France the transition will be slower than in the United States or the UK, said Nourry, predicting that e-book sales could be 3-5 percent of the market next year and reach 15 percent in the next three years.

E-books are also set to get a boost in France when the value-added tax rate applied to them is brought down from the current 19.6 percent to 7 percent in line with conventional books.

The book market is also more diversified in France, with less emphasis on commercial fiction books such as those written by Dan Brown and Michael Connelly, and a wider range of offerings on niche subjects like history and non-fiction essays.

(Additional reporting by Gwenaelle Barzic and Marie Mawad; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111201/media_nm/us_digitalbooks_france

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Video: Beware the pitfalls of payday lending

>> we're back at 8:37, this morning on "today's money" payday loans . you've probably seen the ads offering quick cash when you're in a bind but are they really as easy as they seem? nbc's mara schiavocampo takes a look.

>> matt, good morning. maybe you have car repairs v to pay off bills, just want to buy holiday gifts. if you need fast cash a payday loan may sound enticing but considering this type of loan you need to understand exactly what it involves before you sign on the dotted line. like so many americans, preacher mary love knows what it's like to be tight on cash, so when she started to fall behind on her rent she went for quick fix.

>> i commercial loan would have taken days and i didn't have days.

>> reporter: love took out a payday loan , borrowing against her next paycheck and immediately got the money she needed. these days it seems to be a hot way to get some cold cash.

>> where you get the cash you need fast.

>> where money really does grow on trees.

>> reporter: but for mary love , things quickly spiraled out of control. she says she couldn't repay the loan because the interest rate was far too high for her, on her $400 loan, she ended up paying $1,420 in interest alone about a year later, that's more than 300%, three times what she first borrowed. stories like love's have become more common. the better business bureau says this year alone they've received more payday lending complaints than in the previous two years combined.

>> we tell folks you absolutely have to read the contract, you have to read the fine print , and you got to make sure you understand that contract.

>> reporter: experts say many borrowers don't realize the interest rates can be the equivalent of 600% a year, and some warn that can create a debt trap they can't get out of.

>> a good product is one that at least enables the borrower to get out of a cycle, and this does not let you out of that cycle.

>> reporter: that's not so, says the community financial services association of america , which represents the payday lending industry, and companies insist the process is completely transparent.

>> the customers who use our products, they come into our centers, they understand how much it's going to cost.

>> reporter: he says the instant cash often provides a critical lifeline for those in a dire financial bind like tina, who has taken out and paid off several loans.

>> it was always for a last-minute situation. for me, it works well.

>> reporter: but in mary love 's case, her loan was a personal disaster. she finally went to a credit counselor who helped her pay off the debt.

>> when you get in trouble like this, don't be ashamed to seek help. you're not a bad person because you're not good at managing money.

>> now proponents of the loans say the high interest rates are justified because they're dealing with a population at high risk of default and they're lending money to those who don't often qualify for a traditional loan. if you get into trouble with a payday loan get help from someone like a non-profit credit counselor

>> mara, thank you very much. jean chatzky is "today's" financial editor.

>> good morning.

>> typically, how much are people borrowing?

>> a few hundred dollars typically and on the few hundred dollars they'll pay about 15% of that in fees so on $115 and adds up from there.

>> if i need money on tuesday and not going to get my paycheck until friday, i get the check friday and pay that money back right then, it's not a big problem. it's only a problem if i miss that payment.

>> right, and research that has been done on payday loans shows people don't typically just take out one. the average payday loan borrower takes out nine different loans over the course of a year, those fees can roll over and add up.

>> we heard in the piece about fine print in the contract. what are the things that should jump out at the consumer in that fine print ?

>> you really have to understand what is the rate of interest that you're borrowing on, so if you are looking at a fee of 15%, what does that translate into? often 300% or 400% on an annual basis.

>> if you have a credit card , oftentimes you're allowed to take a cash advance . how does that compare to a payday loan ?

>> it's much cheaper and so is the overdraft protection that you get offered by your bank and you hear me sit here often and say stay away from those things. in a case like this, those things are often much cheaper.

>> the main idea here is only in an emergency, and even if it's an emergency, pay it back quickly and try not to get into a revolving cycle of taking these things out one after another.

>> that's right, used on a short term, these are okay, if you are in a total bind, but otherwise, try to do something else.

>> jean chatzky, thank you very much. appreciate it.

Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/45491243/

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