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A U.S. jury on Tuesday said the National Association of Realtors and several real estate companies, including units of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), must pay $1.78 billion in damages for conspiring to artificially inflate commissions that home sellers pay to buyers' brokers. The verdict followed a two-week trial in the Kansas City, Missouri, federal court, where the case had drawn widespread attention for challenging widely used real estate industry practices. The jury award will be automatically tripled under U.S. antitrust law to more than $5.3 billion, said Michael Ketchmark, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs. "Today was a day...

In the summer of 2017, the Trump Administration proposed and the Congress enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This legislation cut tax rates in every bracket and ensured higher take-home pay for the working and middle classes. The average family of four saved $2,000 in taxes and 91% in the middle income quintile received a tax cut. The US economy boomed. During this week's debate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told viewers that "I'm going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts. The Republican notion that people have a right to keep more of their hard-earned money is mistaken and...

For the past six years, climate change has been on the bottom of the list of concerns for real estate industry professionals. Now it’s on top.

Mergers may increase even more among brokerage firms due to the Labor Department's proposed fiduciary rule A second major insurance company has decided to exit the brokerage business this year as MetLife Inc. announced Monday it is selling its U.S. adviser unit to Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. The sale includes the firm's Premier Client Group, consisting of about 4,000 advisers across the U.S. who sell insurance, annuities and other investment products such as mutual funds, plus its broker-dealer MetLife Securities Inc., according to the company's announcement. Metlife is shedding the unit as brokerage firms face higher compliance costs tied...

The Obama administration is proposing tougher restrictions on brokers who manage Americans’ retirement accounts, reigniting a confrontation with the financial services industry over rules affecting trillions of dollars in 401K and other savings accounts. The change would put brokers—who sell stocks, bonds, annuities and other investments—under the stricter requirements for registered financial advisers when they handle clients’ retirement accounts. In a long-anticipated move, the Labor Department is making the proposal Monday to the White House Budget Office. After an internal review, it likely will be put out for public comment for several months. Obama was scheduled to address the AARP...

<p>Ticket brokers had to call an audible after hundreds of Super Bowl XLIX tickets never arrived, leaving fans with no defense.</p> <p>According to ESPN, several brokers and resale sites had to refuse tickets to fans who they already bought them for the big game today in Arizona. One fan reportedly paid as much as $2,100 for tickets.</p>

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) talk about who can and cannot be health insurance exchange "navigators" in a new batch of proposed regulations. In the proposed regulations, "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Exchange Functions: Standards for Navigators and Non-Navigator Assistance Personnel" (CMS-9955-P) (RIN 0938-AR75), CMS officials also talk about the rules that will govern "non-navigator consumer assistance programs," such as "in-person assister" programs. Officials at CMS -- an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- said HHS eventually might require every Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange to set up...

U.S. futures industry investigators are looking into why Iowa-based collapsed brokerage PFGBest used a tiny accounting firm that appears to be operating from inside a suburban Chicago home to audit its books, according to a person familiar with the matter. Experts said the use of such an auditor should have been a red flag to regulators of a futures brokerage with more than $500 million in assets and several hundred employees across the United States as well as in Shanghai and Canada

I have been getting a lot of emails asking what to do in the aftermath of MF Global. Quite frankly, it is a very difficult question to answer. This game of trading with other people’s money has got to stop. The NY Press will not expose the truth because their biggest client advertisers are the very firms doing this nonsense. Hedge Funds have suffered losses. Readers as far away as Singapore have their funds frozen when all they had were TBills on deposit. Farmers lost hedge positions. Anyone who wants to really compare the damage, it is 1000 times greater...

Harvey Houtkin grew up amid humble beginnings in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. He was always extremely good with numbers. He went on to college and upon graduating headed for Wall Street. In a back-office department, he was responsible for calculating accrued interest on bond trades. This was a laborious task done with primitive electro-mechanical adding machines. When the electronic calculator was introduced, Harvey immediately saw its potential to streamline the department. He pursuaded his boss to buy several of the then $3000 units, and began a wave of automation on Wall Street that continues to this day. Harvey moved up and...

Godfathers of subprimeEstablished in 1979 by Roland Arnall, Long Beach Savings grew rapidly after Wall Street opened the credit tap. It moved to Orange in 1991 and gave up its banking license in 1994, converting to a pure mortgage company.In 1997, Long Beach Savings split into privately-held Ameriquest and a publicly traded subsidiary, which sold for $350 million in 1999 to become the subprime arm of Washington Mutual Inc.Other companies were started by executives who learned the ropes at Long Beach Savings: ResMae Mortgage Corp. in Brea in 2001 and Encore Credit Corp. in Irvine in 2002.  Godfathers of subprimeEstablished...

Click to read article. Would not allow me to excerpt due to copyright. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070518/BUSINESS01/705180389

Typing Error Causes Japanese Firm to Lose $225 Million on a Stock Trade, Roiling Japanese Market TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's government rebuked the Tokyo Stock Exchange and one of the country's biggest brokerage firms Friday after a typing error caused Mizuho Securities Co. to lose at least 27 billion yen, or $225 million, on a stock trade. The glitch roiled the Japanese market, and jitters over the reliability of the exchange's trading system contributing to a 1.95 percent drop in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index Thursday. The Nikkei rebounded 1.45 percent Friday to finish at 15,404.05, but the mishap triggered...

...[I]n almost every other consumer industry-- booksellers, retailers, home appliances, insurance, banking, stock brokers-- the introduction of Internet and discount sellers has been a phenomenal financial benefit to customers.... Economists call this process of squeezing out transaction costs "disintermediation." If any industry is ripe for this, it is the $70 billion-a-year real estate brokerage market. Yes, fees have fallen modestly to about 5.1% on average in recent years. But a new study... concludes that in an unimpeded free market, fees should be dropping much faster -- particularly amid a real estate boom that has doubled home values over the past...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust regulators are preparing to sue the National Association of Realtors (NAR) over policies they believe will illegally restrict commission discounting and harm online competitors, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The effort by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission aims to protect buyers and sellers of homes and could help contain high real-estate costs in a booming housing market, the newspaper said.

Eliot Spitzer, the New York state attorney general, yesterday accused the world's largest insurance broker of cheating customers by rigging prices and steering business to insurers in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks The lawsuit brought by Mr. Spitzer against the broker, Marsh Inc., a unit of the Marsh & McLennan Companies, contends that Marsh conducted sham bidding to mislead customers into thinking that they were getting the best price for the coverage they needed. The lawsuit cites several examples of customers - including Fortune Brands, which sells Titleist golf balls and Jim Beam spirits, and the school district...

A conservative legal group has called for insurance regulators and attorneys general in California and New York to investigate conflicts of interest they say are caused by placement service agreements (PSAs) and the practice of "leveraging." The use of PSAs encourages brokers to steer customers to insurers that will profit the broker, but not necessarily benefit that customer, according to Daniel J. Popeo, the chairman and general counsel of the D.C.-based Washington Legal Foundation. "This is a troubling trend in the insurance brokerage industry," Popeo said. "Insurance brokers are paid to advocate for their customers, not themselves." PSAs compromise a...

J. P. Morgan Chase has dismissed two investment bankers, one of whom was a managing director, after a fellow banker complained that they had sexually accosted a woman who worked with them, current and former employees at the company said this week. The two bankers who were dismissed, Palden Gyuimed Namgyal and Norman Gretzinger, made unwanted and inappropriate advances toward the woman in a bar, these people said. When the woman, a less-senior investment banker at J. P. Morgan, protested, another high-ranking investment banker who was there intervened, they said. He later reported the incident to the firm's personnel department,...

We are terribly sorry to say our prediction of April 2000 of 50-70% of stockbrokers and stock brokerage firms going under before the bear market is over is sadly coming true. Broker commissions are off 80% and payout has been dropped to 23-35%. We hear many stories of alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide and many of these young men and women, who found transitory fame in their 20’s smashed on the financial rocks. The cool bachelor pads of the 1990’s have given way to one-room studios in the suburbs. They now struggle through life in menial jobs trying to...

HOUSTON -- UBS PaineWebber's firing of a broker last summer came after Enron Corp. officials complained that he had warned customers to sell Enron stock, according to the brokerage firm's account of the incident. UBS PaineWebber broker Chung Wu was dismissed for violating company policy by e-mailing 73 clients shortly after midnight last Aug. 21, telling them that he felt Enron was in financial trouble and that they should consider selling some of their stock, UBS PaineWebber's Mark B. Sutton wrote in a letter answering questions from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). Enron officials who had seen Wu's e-mails wrote...