Finance

An “ice cream of the future” company which has about 140 retail locations and agreements with 9,952 small vendors who sell the ice cream at fairs, festivals and sports games, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Dippin’ Dots Inc. filed for bankruptcy on Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Paducah, Ky., to evade foreclosure. The company, which has its extreme cooling requirements for the products, fell into procedural failure to pay four years ago at the climax of the economic crisis as its customers were no longer eager to buy a cup of the “future ice cream”. The company filed for bankruptcy to permit to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge to use the cash security and stay functioning operations while the case plays out. Continue

It’s been nearly three years since Bernard Madoff confessed to running a $65 billion Ponzi scheme – the largest financial fraud in history. Thousands of trusting clients who felt safe investing with a financial expert were defrauded. In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies after his arrest on Dec. 11, 2008 and admitted to turning his prosperity management business into a huge Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any real profit earned by the individual or group running the business. Continue

Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison and fined $ 10 million on Thursday for masterminding the biggest hedge-fund insider trading scheme in U.S. history. Rajaratnam will have to surrender to authorities on November 28 to begin serving his sentence. In addition to his $10 million fine, he will have to hand over $53.8 million as forfeited assets and pay a $1,400 court assessment fee. Since it is considered as one of the longest sentences for an insider trader Rajaratnam’s lawyers had meanwhile asked U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell for a lighter sentence referring to health concerns and said a very long prison term would amount to a death sentence. Continue

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis. Slavoj Zizek turned up at Zuccotti Park to address the Occupy Wall Street demonstration on Sunday, offering up a seminar on Radicalism 101 for an enthusiastic crowd. Yesterday, the Occupy Wall Street twitter account said, “Supposedly Zizek is coming to speak tomorrow at liberty plaza. Only a rumor though.” Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein replied to their tweet with, “I’m with him now and it is true. Noon!” Continue

Elizabeth Warren is a Senate Candidate from Democrat who served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren has been the most vocal of 2012 aspirants to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Massachusetts U.S. Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren has come to embody the frustration felt by protesters outside financial sector hubs in cities across America. Asked about her position on the Occupy Wall Street protest at last week’s Massachusetts Senate debate, Warren did not hold back. Warren said that people have to follow the law, then immediately launched into an invective against the banks. “The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it. That’s why I want to run for the United States Senate.” Continue

Shares of Eastman Kodak Co. crashed amid fears that the photography pioneer is headed toward bankruptcy. Shares in the 131-year-old company have tumbled following Kodak’s disclosure last week that it pulled $160 million from a credit line. On Friday, Kodak’s bonds plunged and its shares fell 54%, or 91 cents, to 78 cents, after The Wall Street Journal reported the company had hired restructuring advisers. Kodak had hired Jones Day and said it was “committed to meeting all of its obligations and has no intention of filing for bankruptcy.” Kodak said it was exploring all its options and one of several advisers it was consulting after losing nearly $1.8 billion since 2007.

The photography pioneer has struggled with the move to digital cameras and failed to turn a profit since 2007. It has been exploring a sale of its digital imaging patents, worth an estimated $2 billion. Kodak, whose operations burned $847 million in the first half of the year, had $957 million in cash on June 30. According to this situation, Bloomberg notes that Kodak may need to file a chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to ensure that bidders for its intellectual property are not legally responsible for a fraudulent conveyance claim.

Van Jones who was born on September 20, 1968 is an American environmental advocate, civil rights activist, and attorney. In March 2009 Jones was well-known as he was appointed by President Barack Obama as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality to advance the administration’s climate and energy initiatives and improve vulnerable communities. He resigned the position in fall of 2009.
Recently, the former Obama environmental adviser spent more time venting about his disgust of the Tea Party. He joins The Last Word to discuss what Washington should be doing about jobs. Jones calls the US’ deficit problem “phony” and made up. Jones argues that “the rich” have benefited enough from tax breaks and the time has come for them to start paying America back. Moreover, in his video, Jones calls the Tea Party economic ideas as “alien to the American experience” who want nothing more than to destroy “The American Century” and middle-class Americans. The left-wing campaigner has launched his liberal Tea Party movement, which he’s dubbed the “Rebuild the Dream” movement to refuse what Tea Party has stated about “American Fall” – the federal budget crisis. Van Jones, when he was on MSNBC, stated that the national debt is no problem and warned of an “October Offensive” against the Tea Party.

Starting Saturday, big banks must fulfill a new regulation that limits the fees they can charge merchants for processing debit card purchases which is going into effect on October 1. This new debit card interchange fee regulation will limit the fees to 21 cents with an extra 0.05% of transaction price plus another penny in certain cases to cover fraud avoidance costs. Bank of America is the latest large bank that has announced new fees for debit card usage. Starting early next year, the bank will charge $5 a month, in any month that the customer uses a debit card to make a purchase. However, there will be no fee if customers only use their debit cards at ATMs or if customers have a debit card, but don’t use the card, they won’t acquire the fee.

Bank of America joins banks including SunTrust and Regions in charging the fees. Other institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, are testing them, too. Atlanta bank SunTrust began charging monthly $5 debit card fees this summer on its Everyday Checking and Student Checking accounts, Regions Bank has added a $4 monthly fee on some checking accounts and both JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are testing debit card fees of $3 a month in select markets.

Elizabeth Warren is a United States Senate candidate, attorney, and the Leo Gottlieb law professor. She has taught contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. Recently, she served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren declared that she intended to participate in the Democratic Party’s nomination to go up against Scott Brown for the United States Senate in Massachusetts On September 14, 2011.

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor has become a top search item after her recent remarks about “class warfare”. On September 21, at an appearance In Andover, there was a video of Warren explaining the rationale of her economic policy of debating the Republican criticisms related to President Obama’s “class warfare” which became popular on the internet. Elizabeth remarks were stated after Republican lawmakers have criticized President Barack Obama in recent weeks for engaging in “class warfare.” Warren collapsed the Republican criticism in her statements, “I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” Warren said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.”

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