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How the Government Botched Its Effort to Hold Wall Street Accountable After the Crisis The Department of Justice (DOJ) fell down on many of its efforts to hold Wall Street accountable for mortgage fraud after the crisis, according to a new audit from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The DOJ promised the public that it would place a priority on going after mortgage fraud. But the report finds that "DOJ did not uniformly ensure that mortgage fraud was prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements." One telling example is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest threat in its lowest crime category. The OIG also visited FBI field offices in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York and found that either it was a low priority or not even listed as a priority. Meanwhile, the FBI got $196 million in funding to investigate mortgage fraud between 2009 and 2011, yet the number of agents doing the investigation decreased in the same time, as did the pending investigations. More related issue from Corliss: http://corlissonlinegroup.com/ http://corlissonlinegroup.com/blog/ http://corlissonlinefinancialmag.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.pinterest.com/geraldhussen/corliss-online-financial-mag/

Singaporean corporations are more naive in their approach to anti-fraud and corruption practices in comparison to the Asia-Pacific average, a survey from global accountancy firm Ernst & Young has found. According to the "Building a more ethical business environment survey," only 17 percent of Singaporean respondents acknowledged that planned investments in new markets will expose the company to new risks, compared to an average of around 35 percent for the Asia-Pacific region. "Companies in Singapore don't necessarily lag behind in terms of anti-fraud and corruption practices; what we found is a disconnect between policies that companies already have in place and the enforcement of those policies," said John Tudorovic, fraud investigation and dispute services partner at Ernst & Young. More Economic News: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023271 https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=2de7c127-290e-44c8-b929-e5c04fc7f16e&ps=10

Large banks and trading firms are frantically trying to determine whether they have fallen victim to a suspected commodities fraud emanating from the giant Qingdao Port in northeast China. Citigroup and several other large Western banks are concerned that their loans may lack the appropriate collateral, big stockpiles of copper and aluminum at the port. The banks have inspectors on the ground who are trying to assess whether enough of the metals are there. The worry stems from suspicions that a Chinese companies pledged the same collateral for multiple loans. Chinese authorities are investigating the matter. The case could have broad repercussions for the commodities market and the Chinese economy. Banks have funneled billions of dollars into the Chinese economy through these murky transactions, and commodities prices have been falling over concerns that such lending will dry up. Western banks, including Citigroup, are bracing for any potential fallout. Just months ago, Citigroup fell victim to a multimillion-dollar fraud in Mexico. If the Qingdao developments harm the bank, regulators and shareholders are likely to press it to explain why its controls had failed again. Chinese companies are at risk, too.

Economist: U.S. labor market recovery is a fraud http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2013/10/02/economist-us-labor-market-recovery.html University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith has this to say about the current labor market recovery: It's a fraud. That's because there's more to assessing economic recovery than just monthly payroll job gains and a declining unemployment rate, he said. "You need to look at the number of jobs being created in the context of the potential number of workers in the U.S. economy," Snaith said. "The gap between payroll employment and the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the potential number of workers in the U.S. economy is pretty darn scary right now." If payroll job growth were to persist at the average level of the past three jobs reports and increase at just 148,000 jobs per month, it would take until December 2021 for employment to reach its CBO estimated potential, he added. In his 2013 third-quarter U.S. forecast, Snaith explains that by just focusing on the unemployment rate, many analysts erroneously are predicting a fast recovery that's simply not there yet. That's why it's not surprising that consumers are holding back on spending, which in the past has brought the economy out of the doldrums, he said. Snaith was only one of four national economists to predict that the federal Reserve Bank would continue to funnel billions of dollars into the market on a daily basis as a way to help stimulate the economy and not begin tapering that process until 2014. "Will the Federal Reserve's exit be more like Ginger Rogers gliding across the dance floor or Miley Cyrus awkwardly twerking remains to be seen," Snaith said. "But given the phony labor-market recovery it could be some time before the Fed hits the dance floor." More Related Article: http://www.wattpad.com/25728832-the-corliss-group-stocks-surge-past-economic http://www.yellowbook.com/profile/corliss-group-the_1855

McAfee report paints grim picture of lucrative industry, despite incomplete data. Cybercrime could be costing the global economy as much as $575 billion annually, according to a new report from McAfee. The Intel-owned security company based its estimate on a range of sources, from government agencies to NGOs and academic institutions, counting both direct and indirect costs. The report, Estimating the Global Cost of Cybercrime explained the methodology as follows: "This study assumes that the cost of cybercrime is a constant share of national income, adjusted for levels of development. We calculated the likely global cost by looking at publically available data from individual countries, buttressed by interviews with government officials and experts. We looked for confirming evidence for these numbers by looking at data on IP theft, fraud, or recovery costs. In addition to a mass of anecdotes, we ultimately found aggregate data for 51 countries in all regions of the world who account for 80% of global income. We used this data to estimate the global cost, adjusting for differences among regions." However, the vendor cautioned that "differences in the thoroughness of national accounting", as well as underreporting of incidents and the difficulty of valuing IP all make calculations an imprecise art. High income countries lost more as a percentage of GDP, which could be because they have better accounting systems in place and/or that their IP is more valuable and therefore a bigger target for criminals. The $575bn figure therefore comes from extrapolating a global total from high loss countries. It could be as low as $375bn if McAfee had extrapolated from "all countries where we could find open source data".

The World Bank's most recent Global Economic Prospects (GEP) report, released this week, says a global economic recovery is underway, underpinned by strengthening output and demand in high-income countries. Global GDP growth in 2014 will be 2.8 percent and it is expected to rise to about 4.2 percent by 2016, according to the report, which the World Bank publishes twice a year. Average GDP growth in developing countries has reached 4.8 percent in 2014, faster than in high-income countries but slower than in the boom period before the global financial and economic crisis of 2008. Demand side stimulus or supply side reforms? The global economic slowdown that struck in 2008 was caused by a financial crisis that resulted in large part from the bursting of an enormous, fraud-ridden mortgage lending bubble in the US. The crisis led to varying responses in different countries. The GEP report's authors said that in general, developing countries privileged demand stimulus policies over structural reforms during the past several years. For example, in 2008 to 2009, China implemented a four trillion-renminbi ($586 billion) stimulus program as a direct response to the slowdown in global trade caused by the global financial crisis. Critics pointed to over-investment in China as a risk to continued fast growth. The country is now struggling to contain a real estate bubble of its own. The World Bank wants China and other emerging countries to refocus on structural reforms. "A gradual tightening of fiscal policy and structural reforms are desirable to restore fiscal space depleted by the 2008 financial crisis," the bank's chief economist, Kaushik Basu, has said. "In brief, now is the time to prepare for the next crisis."