It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Let me see if I've got this right. USPS failed to deliver a letter to you. If not for the good graces of a neighbor, you never would have known what happened to the letter, let alone recovered it. And you are willing to place any measure of trust in the USPS?I was recently notified by USPS Informed Delivery that a letter from TRP will be delivered. ... I did not receive the said letter... Two days later my neighbor brought over the TRP letter.
...
I would trust USPS over TRP for service reliability.
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2009/feb/late1099bmailings/Until this year [2009], the deadline for sending Form 1099-B, Proceeds From Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions, was Jan. 31, the same as for Form W-2 and other information reporting forms. Congress extended the deadline to Feb. 15 in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which also will require brokers to report the cost basis of securities sold, effective in phases starting in 2011.
Ya see, I didn't start the thread, I am simply reacting to it, and engage in a discussion which you began, presumably because it was relevant to, oh, investing...Well Edmond, why don't you just explain to us exactly why accurate weather forecasts have no investing connection to agricultural or transportation or aviation or insurance or construction or emergency financial operations.
Every month, the federal government serves up a steady diet of economic reports on everything from the price of groceries to the unemployment rate. These reports are closely followed: They can move markets — and the president's approval rating. Businesses and investors put a lot of stock in the numbers, which are rigorously vetted and free from political spin.
Now the Trump administration is calling that trust into question. The government recently disbanded two outside advisory committees that used to consult on the numbers, offering suggestions on ways to improve the reliability of the government data. At the same time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested changing the way the broadest measure of the economy — gross domestic product — is calculated.
Those moves are raising concerns about whether economic data could be manipulated for political or other purposes.
Erica Groshen is one of the outside experts who received a terse email last week saying her services were no longer needed, because the committee she'd served on — the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee — had been folded. Groshen cares deeply about the reliability of government data, having previously overseen the number crunching as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Statistical agencies live and die by trust," she says. "If the numbers aren't trustworthy, people won't use them to make important decisions, and then you might as well not publish them."
The email to Groshen said the commerce secretary had terminated the committee because its purpose had been fulfilled. A second committee that advises the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis was also discontinued.
That puzzled Groshen, who's now a senior labor market adviser at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She says taking an accurate measure of a dynamic economy is an ever-evolving process. "It is part of the mission of statistical agencies to be continually improving," Groshen says.
The email Groshen received came just days after Lutnick said he planned to alter the formula for calculating gross domestic product (GDP). Such a change, however, would be a major break from both long-standing practice and international standards. It could also serve to mask any negative effects of the Trump administration's spending cuts.
Even without any deliberate meddling, government number crunchers have their hands full. Fewer people are answering their surveys these days. Their budgets have steadily eroded. And some staffers have accepted the administration's offer to quit in exchange for seven months' pay.
"They've been really working on a shoestring budget," says Tara Sinclair, a professor at George Washington University's Center for Economic Research. "Now they're facing additional concerns and uncertainty about what their budgets are going to be going forward. Sinclair says those worries were top of mind during a panel discussion last week hosted by the National Association for Business Economics.
"If the data were manipulated, even in a small way, that will affect the credibility of our entire statistical system," she says. "And that's going to have global financial implications, because people around the world rely on the quality of U.S. economic data to make decisions."
@Devo, and while we understand, we miss your monthly articles!in a world of "research" and financial journalism, the team at Mutual Fund Observer, are always a refreshing read. You walk away learning something new EVERY time. Love it.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped its lawsuit against the operator of payment platform Zelle and three of its parent banks, in the latest move by the Trump administration to undo actions of the bureau's prior leadership. The bureau had filed the lawsuit in late December against the operator of Zelle, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo "for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud." Customers of the top three banks lost more than $870 million over seven years due to the banks' failures to protect them, according to the CFPB.
"This is about financial institutions fulfilling their basic obligations to protect customers' money and help fraud victims recover their losses," then-CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said at the time. "These banks broke the law by running a payment system that made fraud easy, and then refusing to help the victims."
However, that was then. On Tuesday the administration dropped its case against Zelle, according to a filing in U.S. District Court in Arizona.
Zelle and its parent banks are just the latest enforcement target to be abandoned by the CFPB, which is currently led by acting director Russell Vought. Last week the bureau dropped cases it was litigating against five companies including Capital One, Rocket Homes and others. It had earlier dropped its case against online lending platform SoLo Funds.
The CFPB has also been decimated in a matter of weeks, with agency's employees ordered to stop essentially all work, while some 150 employees have been fired. The bureau's D.C. headquarters has also been shuttered.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved. Powered by Vanilla
