According to reports a woman identified as Teresa Tambunting is suspected of stealing $12 million in gold and gems from her job at Queens jewelry store and then storing them in her basement. The Jacmel Jewelry store found $12 million in gold pieces and other jewelry were missing from the vault.These included 10k gold chain, 18K gold ring and the like.
The woman from Scardale told her family at Christmas dinner that she feared the recession. According to family members Tambunting’s fears stemmed from the Wall Street chaos and her husband Edgardo’s employment at Cantor Fitzgerald. Tambunting was afraid the recession would force her husband to change jobs.
Prosecutors state that during this time Tambunting, her three children and husband were living with raw gold and jewelry hidden in the basement of their home. They say the 50-year-old woman over a six-year time slipped small pieces of gold and jewelry in the lining of her purse. Tambunting was the vault manager from where the $12 million of gold and jewelry was missing since 1991. Apparently she was taking 10k gold chain, rose gold chain, bling bling jewelry and so forth.
She had started working at the store when it opened in 1977, after the audit according to Jacmel President Jack Rahmey Tambunting returned 80 pounds of the missing gold and jewelry in a suitcase.
Here is some potentially bad employment news coming out of Hawaii: According to news reports, Hawaiian Telcom Communications filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday. Hawaiian Telcom Communications of Hawaii is backed by the investment company, Carlyle Group who bought the telecommunications company form Verizon in 2005. This is abad time for such news in Hawaii, with so many other businesses likewise struggling. For example I have noticed the local Nissan dealer seems to have less foot traffic whenever I drive by.
Despite news of Hawaiian Telcom filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy, Carlyle Partners III $4 billion buyout fund is up 230 percent. Carlyle had originally purchased Hawaiian Telcom to expand the network and offer new products and service bundle packages. However, approval delays by regulators caused the company to lose land-line phone customers faster than they anticipated. Time Warner Cable was also proved to be fierce competition for them. Reinvestments by Carlyle of up to $100 million and efforts by them to bring in experts to turnaround management issues also failed. By the way if you live in hawaii and are looking for a Nissan dealer then may I suggest my local Hawaii Nissan dealership. Now is a great time to buy a Nissan vehicle because they have some excellent deals and you will be helping the economy as well.
The Hawaiian Telcom Communications company and seven affiliates filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. According to news reports, they listed $1.4 billion in assets along with $1.3 billion in debt.
According to a letter by President and Chief Executive Eric Yeaman sent to customers on Monday, it was stressed that the company was not going out of business and that service would not be interrupted.
A top Illinois manufacturer, Portola Packaging, has exited thae backside of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The restructuring that took place greatly reduced the total outstanding indebtedness and interest expenses of Portola Packaging. According to state media reports, they were able to eliminate $180 million of their total debt. The US Bankruptcy Court has verified that the Portola Packaging Company’s restructuring plan and the firm converted all of there 8.25% senior notes into equity. All in all, they did not even require funds from Washington, which is a refreshing change.
The Portola Packaging firm which operates in Batavia in the state of Illinois, produces tamper evident closures, cosmetic packaging along with certain items plus various engineering services as well. The Delaware Bankruptcy Court ultimately ruled that the firm in question met its statutory requirements and pre-packaged chapter 11 plan of reorganization and would be emerging from chapter 11 in late October. If you need a washington state bankruptcy lawyers then might I suggest Jason Newcombe. He is a top washington state bankruptcy lawyers around and can assist you with a broad range of cases
Portola was eventually able to obtain exit financing from Wells Fargo Foothill, LLC and Regiment Capital Special Situations Fund IV LP for a $66 million senior secured credit facility.
Investment holders of the Portola existing senior unsecured notes received all of Portola’s common stock which was reorganized. According to their exiting plan, Wayzata was named to become the controlling shareholder when Portola emerged from chapter 11.
I just returned from Washington and here is a new article from an outstanding divorce lawyer
The Y2K Act coupled with the absence of any major or widespread Y2K failures has kept litigation in relative check. Sue and labour clauses are designed to provide the insured with an incentive to mitigate any loss or dam.age to the property insured under the policy.6 The purpose of the clause is twofold: to bind the insured 10 take steps to prevent a threatened loss for which the insurer would be liable if it occurred and when a loss does occur to take steps to diminish the amount of the loss.7 The history of the clause was explained by the California Supreme Court as follows:
The “sus and labor” clause appearing in most marine and inland marine insurance policies is of ancient lineage, its forebears extending back-according to a leading case on the subject-at least into the seven¬teenth century. (Reliance Insurance Company v. The Escapade (5th Cir. 1960) 280 F.2d 482,488-489, fn. 11.) Such a clause makes express the duty implied in law on the part of the insured to labor for the recovery and restitution of dfu’11aged or detained property (Winter, Marine Insurance (3d ed. 1952) p. 393) and it contemplates a correlative duty of reimbursement separate from and supplementary to the basic insurance contract. “Its purpose is to encourage and bind the assured to take steps to pre¬vent a threatened loss for which the Underwriter would be liable if it occurred, and when a loss does occur to take steps to diminish the amount of the loss. Under this clause the assured recovers the whole of the sue and labor expense which he has incurred … and without regard to the amount of the loss or whether there has been a loss or whether there is salvage, and even though the underwriter may have paid a total loss under the main policy. As an aside, do you reside in Washington and require a superb divorce lawyer in Washington then certainly look at the Law firm as he is a wonderful Washington Divorce lawyer
The determination of coverage under all-risk property policies will likely focus, in part, on “sue and labour” provisions. Sue and labour provisions generally provide that “in the event of any loss or damage insured against, it shall be unlawful and
2. A Y2K action is defined as “a civil action commenced in any Federal or State court, or an agency board of contract appeal proceeding, in which the plaintiff’s alleged harm or injury arises from or is related to an actual or potential Y2K failure, or a claim or defense arises from or is related to an actual or potential Y2K failure”.
3. The limitation applies to actions against persons who are not in privity with the plaintiff and who do not suffer the Y2K failure.
4. Mealey’s Year 2000 Report, Vol. 2, Issue 12 (1/00) at 23.
5. Among the causes of loss generally described in such policies are fire, lightning, explosion, windstorm, hail, smoke, aircraft or vehicular injury to property, riot or civil commotion, vandalism, sprinkler leakage, accident, sink¬hole collapse, volcanic action, weight of snow/ice/sleet, and falling objects. A lot for a lawyer to chew on there….
[2000) LC.C.L.R. ISSUE 4 © SWEET & MAXWELL LIMITED [AND CONTRIBUTORS]
PICKER: INSURANCE COVERAGE AND Y2K REMEDIATION COSTS: [2000] I.C.C.L.R. 141
necessary for the insured , .. to sue, labour, and travel for, in and about the defence, safeguard, and recovery of the property insured hereunder … without prejudice to” the insurance. In other words, expenses incurred to avoid a covered loss by accident are recoverable under the policy. It is nice to have a qualified lawyer for those types of situations, and especially in states such as Washington.
October 15, 2007
America Online’s Internet Division to Cut 2,000 Jobs
Filed under: Economic News, Employment News — reformingworkerscomp @ 11:58 pm Edit This
I thought that the following article had a relevent economic and employment perspective as I just returned from Georgia:
According to a report today by the highly respected Bloomber Finacial News network,
the Time Warner Corporation, which just happens to be the globe’s largest media firm,
will cut some two thousand positions over at America Online. This is twenty percent of their overall
workforce so this is obviously a considerable reduction overall. According to the report,
the reason for these drastic measures is due to substantial subscriber defections which have
led to a nearly forty percentage reduction in sales over the previous recorded quarter.
This latest round of job cuts will reduce the web unit’s staff to about eight thousand, which is down from about some
eighteen positions in 2001, when the firm purchased New-York based Time Warner for $124 billion dollars and change. Sometimes it can be good to find aquality Church Fundraiser in Georgia. As an aside this firm supplies a top quality church fundraisers service in the state of Georgia.
Boy, you talk about some serious downsizing going on here. To be honest though I sort of saw this coming some time ago. I saw the customer
service really slipping at this firm. Some of my own friends were complaining that they were having a difficult time nvigating on the world wide web
from America Online and also that it was almost impossible to uninstall the software. I do not know if these things were actually true because I never used them myself
but I felt something was going wrong there, unfortunately. In any case, for whatever reasons the
various unfavorable circumstances led to some one hundred billion dollars or so in losses (not exactly chump change) and a more than sixty percent drop in Time Warner’s stock as
their customers rapidly jettisoned their dial-up internet access. I suppose that times had simply changed.
This is all sort of sad to me because America Online were Internet pioneer’s created back in 1985.
August 12, 2007
Filed under: Economic News, Employment News — reformingworkerscomp @ 3:04 am Edit This
According to the Reuters online news network,
the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers for the month of July showed that some sixty-six percent of
all consumers expect the unemployment rate to remain unchanged (or possibly decline), while another thirty
three percent of them thought that the jobless rate would rise in the coming year.
This information is relevent since Consumers’ employment expectations are a fairly reliable measure of worry
regarding future job and wage prospects, according to expert Richard Curtin of the Univ. of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.
He was quaoted as saying that “”Employment and wage growth rate are the leading factors that will ensure the continued expansion of consumer spending,”
He also stated that this is due to the fact that Consumer spending has been one of the top drivers of the American economic engine.
There are also concerns that the chaos currently happening in the housing market may result in an unfortunate slowdown of GDP growth.
Furthermore, Curtin was quoted as saying that non-farm employment has grown by an average of some 136 positions per month up to this point this year.
The unemployment rate is at 4.6 percent right now.
June 26, 2007
unemployment applications increase
Filed under: Economic News, Employment News, Uncategorized — reformingworkerscomp @ 6:25 pm Edit This
Somewhat surprisingly, the number of unemployment applications has
increased over the past week. In a report on the Hemscott Investors news website,
it was reported that news out of the capital confirmed
that unemployment claims totaled 324,000 the past week, which is up somewhat substantially from the prior week,
to the biggest level since the middle of April of this year.
Such a significant uptick took many experts by surprise.
Nonetheless, they generally agreed that the news did not particularly change their opinion
that the overall labor market is still relatively healthy despite an economic cooling off period so far this year which has been caused primarily by a substantial slide in the new home market as well asnagging problems
in the national automotive manufacturing sector. Like the old saying goes “as General Motors goes, so goes the US economy”, or something to that general effect.
While certain economic & financial analysts stated that they still are expecting layoffs to rise as the year goes on, they chimed in that the week’s upward blip is not necessarily a signal that is happening.
The spike over the past week or so pushed claims to theie highest levels since the week ending on April 21. Meanwhile, the 4-week average for claims rose to 314,500, the highest rate since the first week in May. Unfortunately, claims have posted increases for the past three weeks in a row.
Economic growth in general slowed down to a somewhat medocre annual rate of 0.6 percent in the first 3 months of the year, the poorest rate in some 4 years. Nevertheless, growth is actually expected to have rebounded in the current April-June quarter to a rate of 3 percent or even more, which is certainly good news for the economy, broadly speaking.
June 14, 2007
A troubling Report about Outsourcing
Filed under: Economic News, Uncategorized — reformingworkerscomp @ 1:04 am Edit This
A report by W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and additional analysis by Business Week (as analyzed by the scdigest editorial staff) states that for the past few years anomalies in the way the government accounts for imported goods has had the effect of somewhat overestimating overall economic growth,
domestic manufacturing output, plus productivity growth……………..
This particular news report may in and of itself go a long way towards explaining the seeming contradiction that some individuals have observed between the rather huge increase of imports over the past 3 years, particularly from China and other East Asian nations (though not exclusively by any means), with what seemed to be strong American manufacturing growth but stagnant wages. If the new data holds up, it is quite
probable that it will prompt louder calls for better protectionist policies from the powers that be.
The article summed all this up by saying that
certain statistical data regarding the American economy may not be accurately assesing the overall effect of imports as well as outsourced production. Now precisely how this is the case takes a skilled economist to figure out, yet it appears that there are some real issues here.
GDP growth may therefore be reported at half a percentage point higher than it really is; with reported GDP growth in the 2-3% range or so, this is in reality a substantial mistke, if it is indeed correct. This accounting is basically producing “phantom” GDP.”
The impact on manufacturing data is much larger. In this particular sector, manufacturing output might be overstated by as much as forty percent - a gaping discrepancy.
This, in turn, would say that the impact of imports on US manufacturing levels and competitiveness is much more severe than economic statistics have indicated – and would explain why anecdotal evidence indicated a large impact on US production, but that it didn’t seem that way from overall statistics.
All this combines seems to show that American manufacturing competitiveness in the new information age, global economy may not be in as good a shape as some people were led to believed.
This may, at least in part, explain the difference between statistics and appearance, if further analysis supports the accounting errors, it is quite likely to lead for calls for a heightened set of trade protection laws before the industrial base is futher eroded by GATT and NAFTA.
June 12, 2007
The Latest Data
Filed under: Economic News, Labor Statistics, Employment News — reformingworkerscomp @ 8:07 pm Edit This
The Latest Employment Statistics
According to statistics from BLS.gov,
non agriculatural payroll employment increased by about one hundred and fifty thousand in May, while the unemployment
rate was unchanged at around 4.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States
Department of Labor reported today. The health care & food service industries both managed to adde jobs,
while employment declined in the manufacturing sector, unfortunately. Meanwhile, the average hourly earning rate amanged to rise by
6 cents, or 0.3 percent, in May.
In the same month, employment in general was unchanged at some 145.9 million, and the em-
ployment-population ratio held firm at around 63%. The civilian labor force also
was the same, at 152,000,000, while the labor force participation rate
stayed at 66%. Both the employment-population ratio and labor force
participation rate were down by 0.4% since the end of 2006.
Earning rates are important, but to get a wider perspective you should of course also
take a look at the inflation numbers, since inflation dicates spending power of that earned income.
According to Newsmax online, the MoneyNews publication as well as the Financial Intelligence Report, the dollar has been inflated recently - despite claims that the official CPI is “low”
I do not know if this claim is actually tru, but that was the report.
But whether these reports are true or not, I tend to view inflation a big threat to America’s global strength, and most importantly our wealth as American citizens.
I mean, if you get a 5% raise, but inflation jumps 10%, who really benefits from this. I also find that fact that our manaufacturing base shrunk (yet again)
to be truly troubling, especially in light of the recent reports that so many manufacturing jobs have gone to China and India in recent years.
While this may save some corporations some money and add a few nickels to investor’s dividends, it seems to me that this is bad for the long term economic health of the country.hi from reformingworkerscomp
