Loans

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The three-year investigation into whether mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac properly disclosed their exposure to risky subprime loans is about to end. Reports said that the regulators are near a settlement with the two companies.

A proposed settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly includes no monetary penalties for the two companies. Also being considered is no admission of fraud.

Despite these terms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s possible agreement to a settlement are tacit admissions they had a major role in the housing market crash, observers said.

The observers added that it would also be an awkward moment for the two mortgage giants because the government overseer of Fannie and Freddie filed a lawsuit last week against 17 big financial companies for luring the two to purchase troubled loans. The charges are similar to the accusations that the SEC made against Fannie and Freddie that the two companies misled investors.

The investigators are not keen on imposing a fine on the two mortgage giants because of their weak finances, with the government infusing more than $100 billion into the two companies since they came under government control in 2008.

Beginning Oct. 1, the two firms are scheduled to reduce the size of loans they buy from lenders, which would force future borrowers to enter into more expensive and difficult-to-get large loans.

The old limits of $417,000 for single-family residences were hiked in 2008 in some high-cost housing markets to boost the economy. The limits reached $729,750 in some areas, but by October the cap will go down to $625,500.

Other major lenders such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have stopped accepting new applications to ensure that those in process would reach the Sept. 30 deadline.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN Sports) – NBA players filed an unfair labor practices charge against the league Tuesday with the National Labor Relations Board.

In the complaint the players accuse the league of “harsh, inflexible and grossly regressive ‘takeaway’ demands.”

The National Basketball Players Association is seeking an immediate investigation by the NLRB, plus an injunction to stop the league’s threatened lockout of players when the current collective-bargaining agreement expires June 30.

The league responded by saying it is working toward putting a new deal in place.

“There is no merit to the charge filed by the players association as we have complied, and will continue to comply, with all of our obligations under the federal labor laws,” The NBA said in a statement. “It will not distract us from our efforts to negotiate in good faith a new collective bargaining agreement with the players association.”

Players association head Billy Hunter sent out a memo to players earlier this month that stated that the league is seeking a hard salary cap that would be a 22% reduction from the current $58-million soft-cap figure.

The union argued in its NLRB claim that the NBA has engaged in “classic ‘take it or leave it’ bargaining that is “intended to delay action on a renewal [collective bargaining agreement] until the NBA locks out the employees in order to coerce them into accepting the NBA’s harsh and regressive demands.”

The league and players have a bargaining session scheduled during the NBA Finals in Dallas or Oklahoma City.

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A congressional agreement to increase the U.S. debt limit and reduce federal spending may take until August, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee said.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN Sports) – NBA players don’t see much difference in a new proposal from the league’s owners and they are not happy about it.

The latest formal collective bargaining proposal the owners have handed the players is a 10-year deal that is just barely different from the original one the owners made.

The league delivered its offer to the union last week.

The owners, who are seeking significant rollbacks in existing contracts, a hard salary cap and a larger share of basketball related income. Players are guaranteed 57 percent of the revenue under terms of the existing labor agreement, which expires June 30.

“Unfortunately, the proposal is very similar to the proposal the league submitted over a year ago,” union president Derek Fisher told ESPN.com. “This last proposal doesn’t look close to what we were expecting.”

Union director Billy Hunter previously has said the players are willing to give up their 57 percent guarantee, but he wants to keep most other elements of the existing deal.

Owners wanted nearly $800 million in salary reduction for the 2011-12 season in their original proposal. Players were paid a total of approximately $2.1 billion this season, and commissioner David Stern said last month that the league is projecting a $300 million loss for the current season, a figure the players dispute.

The NBA has not had a work stoppage since 1998.

“With the recent news that Round 1 ratings are at an all-time high, the popularity of the game globally has never been higher, we have to work to keep this going in the right direction,” Fisher said. “I will continue to urge our players to be prepared in the event of a lockout, but will remain steadfast in my efforts to drive this process forward.”

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Manila, Philippines (AHN) – Philippine Airlines continued to face labor issues on Friday even as it assured passengers that it was ready for the worst — the first strike by the carrier’s biggest union in more than a decade.

“We apologize to our passengers for whatever anxiety and inconvenience threats of work stoppage have spawned,” president and chief operating officer Jaime Bautista said in a statement. “Rest assured we are doing everything we can to ensure that your flights will proceed as scheduled.”

PAL plans to rely on 134 partners, including 12 carriers in Southeast Asia, 11 in North America and two dozen in Europe, during the work stoppage, which would be the first since the union crippled operations in 1998.

The Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association voted last week to strike in response to the company’s refusal to include an outsourcing plan in negotiations for a new contract.

The carrier, Asia’s first airline, averted a strike by flight attendants last October with the intervention of the government. But then it announced it was seeking funds for peso 2.5 billion ($58 million) worth of severance packages to outsource three non-core units.

The union representing administrative employees says 2,600 workers would be laid off if the company’s airport services, call center and in-flight catering businesses are outsourced.

But President Noynoy Aquino last week upheld the decision of labor officials allowing the plan, which is part of PAL’s cost-cutting measures to recoup losses during the global recession and weak sales.

PALEA wanted airline officials to negotiate without preconditions but PAL demanded that any new collective bargaining agreement exclude the issue of outsourcing. The impasse dragged on for five months, even while another union representing cabin crew accused the airline of “outdated sexist policies” such as a 40-year retirement age and “discriminatory” maternity rules.

Labor officials on Friday maintained its ruling in favor of the Flight Attendants’ and Stewards’ Association of the Philippines, and for the second time rejected PAL’s arguments.

The same day, PALEA held a massive rally in the nation’s main business district along with other labor groups.

A government-mandated cooling off period has kept the union from holding a strike. Early March, it filed a notice of work stoppage, which was approved by 86 percent of participating members.

The vote was held on Mar. 25. PAL submitted its counter-proposal three days later, on Monday.

“It’s not true that management refuses to convene negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement ,” Bautista said on the day of the rally. “The union’s claim that there is no justifiable reasons for the spin-off of three units… likewise have no leg to stand on.”

The submission of the counter-proposal “is the best proof that PAL is willing to negotiate,” added Bautista.

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Sarasota, FL, United States (AHN Sports) – Representatives for Major League Baseball and the Players Association met in Florida Wednesday for their first formal session to discuss a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Union executive director Michael Weiner disclosed the meetings, which both sides hope lead to a new deal. The current Basic Agreement, which expires on Dec. 11, was signed in 2006.

Baseball hasn’t had a work stoppage since 1994, when a strike eliminated the last six weeks of the regular season, the postseason and the start of the ’95 season.

Both sides are looking to avoid that happening again.

“I think losing the ’94 postseason opened a lot of eyes,” said former player and manager Joe Torre, who was named MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations on Saturday.

Weiner characterized the initial session as “productive.” The owners are seeking to expand the playoffs by adding two Wild Card teams as well as adding a slotting-pay system to a possibly expanded worldwide amateur draft.

The union is trying to figure out how to compress the schedule to include another round of playoffs.

Weiner, who replaced Don Fehr two years ago and is in his first round of bargaining as head of the union, said a number of players showed up to the session.

Weiner, who is on his annual tour of the Florida Spring Training camps, said there may be further talks when he visits the Arizona camps later this month.

Commissioner Bud Selig is hopeful that an agreement will be reached before another work stoppage.

“One of the things I’m very proud of is the 16 years of labor peace and I hope we can extend that,” Selig said.

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NY, NY, United States (AHN Sports) – The NFL and the NFL Players’ Association agreed Thursday to hire Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services director George H. Cohen as a mediator between the two sides.

“I have had separate, informal discussions with the key representatives of the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association during the course of their negotiations for a successor collective bargaining agreement,” Cohen said in a statement. “At the invitation of the FMCS, and with the agreement of both parties, the ongoing negotiations will now be conducted under my auspices.”

Cohen will attempt to facilitate the agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement prior to the March 4 expiration of the old agreement, starting with the group’s first session together Friday.

“We hope that this renewed effort, through mediation, will help the players and owners reach a successful deal,” said the NFLPA in a statement.

Cohen helped mediate the negotiations between the MLS and its players’ union. NFL labor counsel Bob Batterman was also involved.

Some of the issues the two sides seem to be far apart on include: financial transparency on the part of the owners; expanding to an 18-game schedule; rookie pay scale.

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Gaza City, Palestinian Territory (TML) – Palestinians will outnumber Jews in Israel and the Palestinian territories within four years, a new report by the official Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reveals.

PCBS forecast that the number of Palestinians living in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan-the region containing Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip-will grow from 5.5 million at the end of 2010 to 6.1 million by 2014. The Jewish population, which is put at 5.7 million today, will grow more slowly, reaching the same 6.1 million in four years.

Assuming that population growth remains unchanged from its current rate, Jews will become a minority of 6.7 million, versus 7.2 million Palestinians, by 2002, the PCBS said in a report released Thursday.

Demographic issues have long played a role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Some Israeli leaders, such as former Prime Minster Ehud Olmert, have warned that Israel needs to reach an agreement on a Palestinian state to ensure a Jewish majority for Israel. Many Palestinians believe time is working in their favor and advocate the so-called “one-state solution” because it would eventually leave them a majority.

“These statistics place a challenge both to Israel and the Palestinians,” Basem Ezbidi, a political scientist at Ramallah’s Bir Zeit University, told The Media Line. “It’s a huge challenge to the Zionist project, which always endorsed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, but it could also bring more Palestinians to consider the one-state solution.”

Although officially a statistic report from a government agency, almost all the data presented in the report referred to Israel and underlined how quickly the Palestinian population was growing. They pointed to the high Palestinian birthrate, its declining mortality rate and more youthful population.

Ezbidi said the statistics were likely to be used to pressure Israel into resuming negotiations toward an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel. He doubted the PA would use them to rally support among Palestinians for a one-state solution.

“So far, the one-state solution carries very little appeal on the Palestinian street,” he said. “Two generations of Palestinians were raised on the notion of an independent Palestinian state, and they can imagine nothing else.”

U.S. President Barack Obama’s effort to restart talks failed earlier this month after Israel refused to give into Palestinian and U.S. demands to freeze the construction in West Bank settlements. While the Palestinian Authority, to which the PCBS reports, has stepped up efforts to win support for a unilateral declaration of independence, it remains committed to a negotiated agreement with Israel.

Ghassan Al-Khatib, a Palestinian government spokesman, said the two-state solution is the only realistic plan on the table.

“We will continue to fight the occupation and endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders,” he told The Media Line. “If anything is bringing some Palestinians to consider the one-state solution, it’s not demographics but the failure of negotiations and the stagnation of the peace process.”

The PCBS is confident that the battle of the wombs is going in the Palestinians’ favor because of the high Palestinian fertility rate: an average of 4.1 children per adult woman in the West Bank and 5.3 in Gaza, one of the highest in the world. In Israel, the rate is 2.96 children per woman, but the rate is higher among Israeli Arabs, who constitute about a fifth of Israel’s population and the PCBS counts as Palestinians, than among Israeli Jews.

But some dismissed the new data as no more than Palestinian propaganda. Aryeh Eldad, a member of Israel’s parliament for the right-wing National Union Party, said Palestinians manipulated their data in order to scare Israel into negotiations.

“Policy shouldn’t be confused with propaganda,” Eldad told The Media Line. “The real situation is completely different: Jews constitute 60 percent of the population in the land of Israel, or 65 percent if the Gaza Strip isn’t included.”

Eldad said Palestinians inflated the number of births and underrepresented Palestinian emigration. According to a recent report issued by PCBS, 7,000 Palestinians leave the West Bank and Gaza every year.

But Professor Yehezkel Dror, founding president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, said the exact number of Palestinians made no difference for matters of strategic policy planning.

“One million Palestinians, more or less, makes no difference,” he told The Media Line. “There are lots of Palestinians, and Israel can’t absorb them without destroying the Jewish and democratic nature of the state.”

Dror said both Israelis and Palestinians manipulated the numbers to suit their own political agendas.

“Numbers are a source of power,” he added. “But the real number of Palestinians is unclear since no independent and objective census was ever carried out. I am very skeptical about the numbers presented.”

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – A kickback scheme involving New York’s pension fund culminated in an agreement by Steven Rattner to settle two lawsuits by paying $10 million, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday.

Rattner is the former founding principal of private equity firm Quadrangle Group and used a kickback scheme to win his company the right to manage to manage $150 million in state pension funds. Rattner was previously more widely known for his service as Pres. Barack Obama’s car tsar on the auto task force in 2009. He also worked as a reporter for the New York Times before going to work as an investment banker at Lazard.

State prosecutors had unsuccessfully sought restitution of $26 million and had asked that he receive a lifetime ban from the securities industry.

Along with paying $10 million in restitution to the State of New York, Rattner also agreed to a slap on the wrist by being barred from appearing in any capacity before any capacity before any public pension fund within New York State for the next 5 years.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernard Sanders spent over eight hours denouncing the new agreement to extend Bush-era tax cuts to millions of Americans.

Speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sanders spoke out against President Barack Obama’s efforts, saying the deal only increases America’s debt and fails to solve the underlying economic issues that mire the country.

Reading letters from constituents, Sanders took aim at Obama, Senate Republicans, China and others.

“I’m not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides,” Sanders said.

Nonetheless, the deal will move forward and is likely to clear Congress before the holidays.

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