Banks in Switzerland are under pressure. Agreements make non-compliant accounts difficult. Distinctions between tax evasion and tax fraud have been erased. Swiss banks have to establish banks in foreign countries for deposits from that country. Fees once charged to customers can no longer be, and how far back customers can go to retrieve unauthorized fees has not been established. Booz Report
The first step will be to try to get a measure of just how much bad debt there is through a close examination of the assets. On October 23rd the European Central Bank gave some details of how it will do this in an “asset- quality review” and what standards it will expect banks to meet. These revealed something of the fierce arguments that have taken place recently within the ECB and the compromises it has had to swallow. The ECB needs to be tough on banks to restore confidence—yet not too tough. If it reveals capital shortfalls so large that filling them would destroy the public finances of struggling countries then it may undermine confidence rather than restore it. The Economist Reports
Forty-five percent of consumers look more favorably on SMBs that have a website, so there’s plenty of incentive to jump onboard and get a website. Companies without an Internet presence may be missing out on the wide variety of marketing and small business tools offered by today’s B2B business services companies. In the new world, this may seem obvious, but almost half of small businesses do not have their own site.
Small-Businesses-Need-Websites
The US CommodityFutures Trading Commission issued a release detailing the settlement with JP Morgan on the London Whale Trades.
JPMorgan, which admits the specified factual findings in the Order including that its traders acted recklessly, is directed, among other things, to pay a $100 million civil monetary penalty. “In Dodd-Frank, Congress provided a powerful new tool enabling the CFTC for the first time to prohibit reckless manipulative conduct,” said David Meister, the CFTC’s Director of Enforcement. “As this case demonstrates, the Commission is now better armed than ever to protect the market from traders, like those here, who try to ‘defend’ their position by dumping a gargantuan, record-setting, volume of swaps virtually all at once, recklessly ignoring the obvious dangers to legitimate pricing forces.” JP Morgan Admits Manipulative Conduct in London Whale Trades
James Surowiecki writes pungent columns on finance for the New Yorker. This week he discusses one of the crucial topics in the inequality debate: the ratio of the compensation of CEO salary to the median income of employees. He argues that the SEC’s new rules for transparency are not a solution. He looks carefully at how Boards of Directors. who are supposed to supervise corporate governance, fall into geometric increases of executive salaries. Economists at the Wharton School explain the situation in detail in an article. Board of Directors and Executive Compensation
Ahrendts will need all her experience of using social media and other interactive tools to help blur the boundary between the physical and digital world in a way that reduces the queues at Apple stores without losing the magic of the original Apple stores. Angela Ahrendts from Burberry to Apple
Greenland is increasingly independent from Denmark, but the prospect of mining uranium has brought requests from the Danes for assurances that the mining is for peaceful purposes. How can they determine the purpose?
The most important part of this deal struck with Attorney General Eric Holder is that JPMorganChase is not taken off the hook on criminal charges. Details of reported settlement.
Around the world, the economics of growing old are getting more and more complex. Germany. with one of the world’s strongest economies, finds many of their elderly in Poland where care is much more affordable. European Seniors Moving to Eastern Europe
The markets and businesses look to monthly figures from the government to assess the current situation and predict the future. Looks like their are many other sources for these figures. During the Government Shutdown US Government Economic Data Were Not Released
