Citizen Cartwright

Insurance companies' 'secretive transactions'

New York State regulators are pushing for a national moratorium on transactions that they say life insurers are using to alter their books by billions of dollars.

The regulators are concerned that the deals put policyholders at risk and could lead to another taxpayer bailout.

Banks making money from fraud of older customers

Across the country, banks of all sizes are facilitating billions of dollars of fraud every year — and collecting big fees for doing so, reports The New York Times.

The Justice Department is considering civil and criminal actions against a number of banks for allowing tainted money to flow through branches, for failing to safeguard against suspicious merchants, and for originating transactions on behalf of businesses that they know make unauthorized withdrawals from customer accounts, the Times says.

Risk-adversity among workers, entrepreneurs

Three long-running trends suggest the American economy has turned "soft on risk," says The Wall Street Journal.

Companies are adding jobs more slowly, even in good times. Investors are putting less money into new ventures. And Americans are starting fewer businesses and are less inclined to change jobs or move for new opportunities.

A broad cross section of U.S. economists, from a variety of academic disciplines and political perspectives, agrees that a specific and necessary kind of risk-taking is on the decline, says the WSJ. Historically, risk-taking that supports high rates of "churn" — a lot of hiring and firing, company formation and destruction — gives economies more flexibility to adapt to changing markets.

Tax breaks benefit the wealthy most

That's the word from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The top 10 major tax breaks "are distributed unevenly across the income scale," and the top 1 percent of households — those taking in more than $450,000 annually — are getting more than 17 percent of the savings this year, CBO says.

Lawsuit filed over IRS targeting

The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative watchdog group, filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of 25 Tea Party groups against the Internal Revenue Service and Obama administration officials.

The complaint alleges that the Obama administration overstepped its authority and violated the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution.

The suit is the latest legal challenge against the IRS’ admitted practice of targeting groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a suit last week in federal district court asking that the IRS clarify its rules on tax-exempt nonprofits.

Feelin' good about the economy

In a year when tax increases and spending cuts by the federal government were expected to "bleed life out of the economy," the strengthening housing and financial markets are proving to be more powerful than acts of Congress, says The Washington Post.

Home prices increased at the fastest rate in seven years in March, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index.

And consumer confidence is at its highest level in five years, according to the Conference Board, a New York-based private research group.

Bank lobbyists helping write financial bills

One bill to ease financial rules that was approved earlier this month by the House Financial Services Committee contained some nearly word-for-word language from Citigroup, according to e-mails examined by The New York Times.

"The lobbying campaign shows how, three years after Congress passed the most comprehensive overhaul of regulation since the Depression, Wall Street is finding Washington a friendlier place," the Times says.

Closed Friday: IRS, EPA, HUD, OMB

For the first time since the government shutdowns of the 1990s, a large segment of the government will be closed to the public on a weekday.

The mass furlough of 115,000 employees at the four agencies — 5 percent of the federal workforce — is the result of budget cuts under sequestration.

Apple CEO wows 'em on the Hill

Tim Cook's carefully prepared testimony on his company's tax payments apparently paid off on Tuesday.

Politico's headline: "Apple’s Cook shines in D.C. spotlight."

And from The New York Times: By the end of Cook's testimony, "the big cats on a Senate committee were practically eating out of his hand."

Apple's tax avoidance

Not illegal.

But "unbelievable chutzpah.” That's the description of Apple's tax maneuvering by Edward Kleinbard, a former staff director at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation who now is a law professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Apple CEO Tim Cook makes his inaugural Capitol Hill appearance Tuesday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which released on Monday a report saying that between 2009 and 2012, the company shielded at least $74 billion in profits from U.S. tax laws by setting up subsidiaries in Ireland.

“Apple does not use tax gimmicks,” says the company's prepared testimony.

Here is Politico's article on Apple's preparation for the hearing's "nasty optics."