DealBook Briefing: G.E. Is Accused Of $38 Billion Fraud

The good news is unemployment remains low nationally and even lower in Kansas, especially western Kansas. The Federal Reserve at the national level has a dual mandate from Congress, Wilkerson said. He said the slowing economy in the Kansas City Fed region, which includes Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming as well as western Missouri and northern New…

Wouldn’ t it be nice to be immersed in a career that the American public ranked in the top quintile for ethics and integrity? The Gallup organization has been studying this for decades and the top five professions ranked“ very high” to“ high” have been consistent. Very High/ High Ethics and Integrity.

Frost Equity Growth Fund invests in secular, consistent and cyclical growth stocks. Here’s why most of the fund’s bets are on secular growers.

Mercer Global Advisors Inc. of Denver, Colo., said Wednesday that it has acquired Regent Wealth Management Group, Inc., an RIA based in Woodbridge, Conn. that serves approximately 110 high net worth households with AUM of about $300 million.. The addition allows Mercer, which was put up for sale by its majority owner Genstar Capital a month ago, to increase its…

WASHINGTON— From tax cuts to relaxed regulations to tariffs, each of President Trump’ s economic initiatives is based on a promise: to set off a wave of investment and bring back jobs that the president says the United States has lost to foreign countries. “We have the greatest companies anywhere in the world,” Mr. Trump said at the White House recently.“ They’ re all…

As the stock market faltered recently, gold thrived. But positions were reversed Tuesday morning as investors turned to less bearish vehicles.

When Republicans used a GOP tax bill to kill a provision in the 2010 health-care law requiring most Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty, President Donald Trump boasted that his party had “repealed the core of disastrous Obamacare.” Meanwhile, insurance markets in Ohio and elsewhere remain stable this year. In Ohio, enrollment in the individual market…

–U.S. public pensions posted their weakest performance in three years, falling a percentage point short of their investment targets, and the prospect of rock-bottom interest rates and a trade-war induced recession could put a greater strain on state and city retirement plans. The median U.S. public pension returned 6.2% in the fiscal year ending in June 30…

When the United States declared China a currency manipulator on Monday, long-building trade tensions between the world’ s two largest economies spread to the combustible realm of currencies— with potentially huge consequences for the global financial system should the escalation continue. But the wave of worry around the world has its roots in the…

Aug. 9– The American workforce is graying. The surge in older workers can be attributed to multiple factors, such as the disappearance of company pensions, the increasing age to collect full Social Security and growing lifespans. LaVerne Gaither belongs to the former group and Janet Beebe to the latter.

Chris Sununu has requested a major disaster declaration for Grafton County and other areas hit by severe rain and flash flooding in July. Sununu wrote to President Donald Trump on Thursday, saying the July 11-12 flooding washed out roads and left debris that restricted travel and emergency operations. He emphasized how many of the communities affected are…

—New York state has a new law making it a felony to intentionally cause a car crash in order to collect an insurance payout. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed the legislation Thursday. The bill was dubbed “Alice’s Law” for Alice Ross, a grandmother killed in Queens in 2003 when a driver looking to commit insurance fraud intentionally hit her vehicle.

Data: Money.net; Chart: Axios Visuals The stock prices of AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson plummeted yesterday after Bloomberg reported the drug distributors made an opening offer of $10 billion to settle their portion of the national opioids lawsuit. Between the lines: That figure was a lot higher than Wall Street had expected for those companies, indicating that…

Data: LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios The younger you are, the less retirement security you’re likely to have, as employers accelerate efforts to shed costly pensions and replace them with alternatives that make workers shoulder more of the risk and responsibility. Why it matters: Millennials and members of Generation Z will face less prosperous…

The U.S. stock markets took a freefall on Monday, after China devalued its currency for the first time in a decade, the latest salvo in the trade war with the U.S. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked 767 points Monday, the S&P 500 was down 3% and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 3.5%, bringing back memories of October 2018. I spend a lot of time educating my clients early…

If it followed the path of traditional Medicare, it would end up paying for a lot of coverage that has little medical value. In the first congressional hearing held on“ Medicare for all” in April, Michael Burgess, a Republican congressman from Texas and a physician, called such a proposal“ frightening” because it could limit the treatments available to patients.

New York City has kicked off an initiative that aims to connect the city’s 600,000 uninsured residents with care. 

—New Hampshire residents who get health insurance through Obamacare could see a modest decrease in monthly premiums next year under the latest proposed rates. The New Hampshire Insurance Department says the proposed average premium for a benchmark individual plan in 2020 would be $440, or 2.5 percent lower than this year’s average. Three companies plan to…

Old fears like channel conflict don’t have to apply because the audiences for digital and traditional outreach differ.

Just in: The London Stock Exchange Group agreed to buy Refinitiv, the former financial division of Thomson Reuters, for $27 billion. The Fed cut its benchmark rate by a quarter of a percentage point yesterday, matching analyst expectations. Trump’ s trade war with China.

DeVoe& Company, the San Francisco- based consulting firm and investment bank, reported in its quarterly RIA Dealbook Wednesday that M&A volume in the RIA space is up 30% over the same time period last year, and“ valuations are at an all-time high. “An RIA with $500 million in AUM would have sold five years ago at between five times and seven times cash flow,” he said.

—Workers who retired after years of folding shirts and selling refrigerators for Sears Holdings Corp. banded together earlier this year to complain when the retailer’ s bankrupt shell terminated their life insurance plan. Now the Sears estate has responded with a proposal that would pay them about $135 each. Sears filed for court protection last year and sold…

The most likely Fed meeting outcome: a quarter-point Fed rate cut and modest letdown for the Dow Jones. But here’s what could make for a wild ride:

While the braying pack of fintech startups chase Millennial money, former JPMorgan exec Rhian Horgan has her eyes on Boomers’ cash.

Health care has proven to be an early flashpoint in the Democratic presidential primary, as progressives champion a single-payer, “Medicare for All” program and centrists favor reforms to the Affordable Care Act. If the findings from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s health tracking poll published Tuesday are any indication, the less-ambitious plans from…

Bad investments happen all the time. But when you think about bad investments, your mind likely goes right to the stock market where a lousy stock pick can lead an investment value to $0. Investments come in all forms, including a savings account or other cash-based asset class.

The U.S. economy slowed in the spring to a level of growth that economists say is healthy, but which President Trump has often maligned as inadequate, raising concerns that he might not be able to deliver on his promise of faster growth than during the Obama administration. The economy grew at a 2.1 percent annual rate in the second quarter, a downgrade from the…

Democrats criticizing President Trump’s economic record so far have argued it disproportionately favors the rich. Elizabeth Warren now is making a much bolder claim. The entire expansion, she argued in a Monday post on Medium, rests on a rickety foundation and probably will come crashing down in a year or two..

On Tuesday, Amazon said that it was working with Realogy, the nation’ s largest residential real estate brokerage company and owner of Century 21, Coldwell Banker and other brands, to create TurnKey, a service that will help prospective home buyers find real estate agents. For Realogy, who will pay for those benefits, the partnership is a way of using Amazon to find…

Judy Shelton echoes President Trump’s push. Judy Shelton, President Trump’s intended nominee to fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board, is calling for a large interest-rate cut at the Fed’s July meeting. “I do think global conditions and the clear monetary paths being signaled by other central banks are a factor in considering how much our own Federal…

The House voted to repeal the Cadillac tax on Wednesday, aiming to make permanent what previous Congresses have merely postponed. Why is it called the Cadillac tax? In practice, the Cadillac tax may affect both the Cadillac owner and the worker who assembles the cars.

WASHINGTON – Elizabeth Warren unveiled a policy proposal Thursday to slap new rules on private equity and “useless speculation” on Wall Street while rolling back President Trump’s deregulation of the financial industry.

Over the last four decades, the average income of retiree households significantly outpaced those still in the workforce.

In fact, new client assets accounted for more than five times the amount of new assets for RIAs than did growth of existing clients in 2018, making it unsurprising that advisors’ top strategic initiatives involved boosting business through individual or business referrals, according to a new survey from Charles Schwab. These firms represent $1.1 trillion in…

By Reade Pickert and Katia Dmitrieva. —U.S. retail sales and factory output in June exceeded expectations and underscored steady economic growth even as Federal Reserve officials signal they’ re prepared to reduce interest rates. The value of retail purchases rose 0.4% for a second month, more than the 0.2% median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists,…

Note: Not adjusted for inflation; Data: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Chart: Chris Canipe/Axios The total net worth of the bottom 50% of Americans fell to -$143 billion in the second quarter of 2010 — meaning the lowest 50% of earners had collective liabilities far outpaced their collective assets, largely underwater home and auto loans. Their net worth remained negative…

I hate that it’ s inescapable. What I don’ t hate is the investment opportunities the 2020 election will present us. The latest polls from ABC and The Washington Post show The Donald at his best since taking office, with a 44% approval rating overall.

Retail sales soundly topped expectations in June, pointing to healthy consumer spending. Dow Jones futures remained higher after the data.

Life insurance companies increased their mortgage investments to levels higher than historical norms, creating more potential danger for their portfolios in the event of a real estate downturn, a Fitch Ratings report said.

WASHINGTON ― Bernie Sanders would tax plutocratic estates. Elizabeth Warren would apply an annual “wealth tax” to fortunes above $50 million. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pitched a 70% top tax rate for multimillionaires.  But for Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives, taxing the rich has been more of an abstract goal than an actual policy priority.  House…

An improving economy is boosting an exodus from wirehouses to RIAs.

President Donald Trump’ s top economic adviser praised left-wing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after the political rivals found common ground in urging the Federal Reserve not to worry about low unemployment triggering inflation.“. I’ ve got to give her high marks for that,” Larry Kudlow told Fox News on Thursday, referring to Ocasio-Cortez’ s quizzing of…

•The Fed expects unemployment to stay low and inflation to gradually rise, Mr. Powell told the House Financial Services Committee. •But he added that“ uncertainties around trade tensions and concerns about the strength of the global economy continue to weigh on the U.S. economic outlook.”. “That the Fed is considering a rate cut at a moment when the United States…

But at the White House, President Trump and his health officials are busily using the law to pursue key proposals. Last week, the president highlighted a policy in the works meant to narrow the gaps between what drugs cost in the United States iand overseas. “What they’ re doing now is tolerating this ambiguity between the flat-out rhetoric of‘ repeal Obamacare’ and…

The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution Tuesday emphasizing the importance of state securities regulators in investor protection and urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to collaborate more with these regulators. Ayanna Pressley, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced the resolution last month in…

WASHINGTON _ A top Senate Democrat has some stark advice for Amy McGrath, who said Tuesday she’ll challenge Republican titan Mitch McConnell next year for the Senate. McGrath’s announcement was another in a series of Democratic moves aimed at flipping the Senate, which McConnell and Republicans have controlled for the past three years.

It’ s not just that 21 million people would probably lose health insurance, or that 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions would lose their protection. Those effects would be the major focus of attention if the Affordable Care Act were to be struck down. On Tuesday, a federal appeals court heard arguments from 18 Republican-led states and the…

The U.S. government could run out of money to pay all of its bills by early September if Congress doesn’t rush to raise the debt ceiling, a think tank said Monday, a time frame that could force lawmakers to act much sooner than planned. In May, it had projected that Treasury would have until October or November before it ran into debt ceiling problems.

And one of them, perhaps not surprisingly, is about to be put forward for a seat on the Federal Reserve board by President Donald Trump. In particular, he’s been having a series of Twitter snits regarding Fed Chairman Jay Powell, even going so far as to suggest that he could look to replace the Fed chief, whom Trump named to the top slot, but whose tenure he’s been unhappy…

—Citigroup Inc. economists are growing more confident in their forecast for the Federal Reserve to leave interest rates unchanged this month, a call that leaves them at odds with many investors and fellow analysts. The nation’ s 224,000 surge in payrolls in June and recent de-escalation of trade tensions between the U.S. and China are reasons to think the Fed may…

Dennis Gibb used client funds to pay for his own business and personal expenses, such as mortgage and car payments.

A life insurance company wants a federal judge to decide who should receive a $10,000 life insurance payout for a 2-year-old boy whose parents were sentenced to probation after the toddler overheated and died. The St. Joseph News-Press reports that the Life Insurance Company of North America said in the lawsuit filed Monday that Blaze Saliger’s mother, 24-year-old Kailie Saliger, awoke in October 2018 to find the toddler dead.

A magistrate judge for the Southern District of Ohio recommended that a motion by Ohio National Life Insurance to dismiss a class action lawsuit against it involving the termination of trail commissions on certain variable annuities be denied, according to court documents. Judge Stephanie Bowman issued the report last week in a class action suit filed in…