By Anthony Bond
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Lucky break: Timothy Yost has been told he can keep the $70,000 he found
When people are homeless, they are lucky if a passer-by throws them a bit of spare change in the street.
But when one homeless man in the U.S. decided to visit a Texas park, he could not have expected how lucky he would be.
Timothy Yost found a bag full of money, but it was confiscated off him and a police investigation started into its origins.
But following a vote at Bastrop city council last night, the 46-year-old was told he could have the stash - worth an astonishing $77,000 - back.
According to the American-Statesman, Mr Yost's attorney Aleta Peacock said: 'It is a great day for Bastrop; it is a great day for Mr. Yost.'
The homeless man went to wash his feet in the Colorado River in January when he came across the bag.
He decided to investigate further and kicked the bag, upon which it jingled.
Inside, the homeless man found a mound of South African coins and wet cash.
Mr Yost then took the bag of money to a bank, where he tried to swap the damp bills for fresh money.
However, the bank clerk became suspicious and called the police.
X marks the spot: Bastrop Fisherman's Park, where Mr Yost made his find
Krugerands: One of the South African gold coins Mr Yost discovered
The city of Bastrop then kept hold of the money while detectives tried to find the owner of the haul and see if a crime had occurred.
Speaking to Your News Now, Bastrop Police Chief Michael Blake said: 'Under common law in Texas, typically if it is buried and we are not able to find the rightful owner for the funds within the prescribed time period, then the finder of the funds can petition to be awarded those funds.'
However, Mr Yost was left having to celebrate his new found wealth in prison.
He has since been jailed for public intoxication and criminal trespass.
Exclusive: Syria prints new money as deficit grows: bankers - Reuters
AMMAN |
AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria has released new cash into circulation to finance its fiscal deficit, flirting with inflation after violence and sanctions wiped out revenues and led to a severe economic contraction, bankers in Damascus say.
Four Damascus-based bankers told Reuters that new banknotes printed in Russia were circulating in trial amounts in the capital and Aleppo, the first such step since a popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.
The four bankers said the new notes were being used not just to replace worn out currency but to ensure that salaries and other government expenses were paid, a step economists say could increase inflation and worsen the economic crisis.
The United Nations says Assad's forces have killed at least 10,000 people in a crackdown, and the government says more than 2,600 members of its security forces have died.
The four bankers, along with one business leader in touch with officials, said the new money had been printed in Russia, although they were not able to give the name of the firm that printed it. Two of the bankers said they had spoken to officials recently returned from Moscow where the issue was discussed.
"(The Russians) sent sample new banknotes that were approved and the first order has been delivered. I understand some new banknotes have been injected into the market," said one of the bankers. All requested anonymity.
Two other senior bankers in Damascus said they had heard from officials that a first order of an undisclosed amount of new currency had arrived in Syria from Russia, although they were unable to confirm whether it had entered circulation.
Outgoing Finance Minister Mohammad al-Jleilati said last week that Syria had discussed printing banknotes with Russian officials during economic talks at the end of May in Moscow. He said such a deal was "almost done", without going into details.
However, the central bank later denied through state media that any new currency had been circulated.
Goznak, the state firm that operates Russia's mint and has exclusive rights to secure printing technology, regularly prints money for other countries. It declined to comment.
"LAST RESORT"
Russia is one of Syria's major political backers and a close trading and economic partner. There are no sanctions in place that would bar a Russian firm from printing money for Syria.
Syrian money was previously printed in Austria by Oesterreichische Banknoten- und Sicherheitsdruck GmbH, a subsidiary of the Austrian central bank. That order was suspended last year because of European Union sanctions, an Austrian central bank spokesman said.
One of the four bankers described the decision to use newly printed money from Russia to pay the deficit as a "last resort" after several months of consideration.
Syria's deficit has swollen because of declining government revenues and loss of oil exports hit by sanctions. The government is loathe to impose unpopular measures to fight the deficit, like cutting subsidies or raising taxes.
"The deficit is there and it is already increasing and increasing quickly. And to finance it they have decided to print currency," said the senior businessman, who is familiar with the subject and in touch with monetary officials.
Bankers say a priority has been to continue salary payments for over 2 million state employees among a workforce of 4.5 million in a country of more than 21 million people.
"You cannot allow the public sector to collapse," said one of the bankers."
"People are getting their wages and there are no complaints if they are paid at the end of every month. If we reach a stage where they are not paid there will be a crisis."
Syria's $27 billion 2012 budget was the biggest in its history, taking many by surprise. Bankers say the spending surge was motivated by a desire to create more state jobs and maintain subsidies to help ward off wider discontent.
The private sector has suffered large scale layoffs, but workers in the public sector have kept their jobs and had steady wages despite a salary freeze.
Financing the spending has proven difficult. The central bank has exceeded borrowing limits from public banks, and private banks are reluctant to buy government bonds, one of the bankers said.
Inflation is already running at 30 percent, although the central bank considers it manageable.
Authorities have spent state funds on subsidies to keep the prices for household utilities and petrol unchanged, and have announced planned price controls on basic commodities. However, electricity prices for big industries have risen by 60 percent and the price of subsidised diesel fuel has also risen.
The authorities plan to inject only a small amount of new currency to prevent runaway inflation, said one of the bankers.
"But there is a limit to how much fresh money could be injected into the economy in such highly uncertain times. Reckless printing of money as a way of buying short term reprieve could be economic suicide," the banker added.
(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Editing by Oliver Holmes and Peter Graff)
Money wasn't key to winning in primaries - Morning Sentinel
Money wasn't key to winning in primaries
By John Richardson jrichardson@mainetoday.com
State House Bureau
PORTLAND -- Tuesday's primary elections proved again that money doesn't necessarily equal success in Maine politics.
But spending at the right moment appeared to help at least one candidate.
An analysis of money raised by candidates and how many votes they got shows that state Sen. Cynthia Dill of Cape Elizabeth, who won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, raised the least money per vote, $1.91, of any major party candidate.
Dill ran one of the leanest campaigns and got the most votes -- more than 22,000.
Her closest competitor, former Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap of Old Town, raised $5.56 per vote. State Rep. Jon Hinck of Portland, who finished a distant third, raised $18.37 per vote.
"It's interesting to see how well Dill did with how little money she had," said Jim Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine at Farmington.
What mattered more than money was the fact that Dill was seen as a fierce partisan, so she appealed to the core primary voters, Melcher said. "I don't think you've got to have a lot of money to win a primary. I think you need people with passion behind you, and I think Dill's experience showed that."
The winner of the Republican primary, Secretary of State Charlie Summers of Scarborough, wasn't among the top money raisers in his primary. However, a cash infusion right before the election did allow Summers to air more television commercials.
Melcher and other political experts said the low turnout for Tuesday's primary also limited the impact of money.
The official voter turnout won't be calculated until the end of the week, according to the Secretary of State's Office. But with 95 percent of precincts reporting as of Wednesday, unofficial results showed that just 13.1 percent of Maine's registered voters -- 120,076 -- cast ballots in the Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate primaries.
That number doesn't include independent voters who cast ballots on local referendum questions but could not vote in the party primaries.
A typical June primary draws about 20 percent of Maine voters.
While Dill got a lot of bang for her campaign buck, she didn't have to keep up with any big-money rivals.
Mark Brewer, a political scientist at the University of Maine, said money was less of a factor for the Democrats because none of the four bought pricey TV spots. Hinck raised the most money -- more than twice Dill's total -- but "it clearly didn't help him," Brewer said.
Four of the six Republican candidates put commercials on television, including Summers. The Republican winner raised far more than Dill, but he wasn't in the top tier of fundraisers in the GOP race.
Summers got 29 percent of the vote, and raised the second-least per vote, $7.72, among the GOP candidates.
State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin of Georgetown, the Republican runner-up, raised $17.45 per vote. Third-place finisher Rick Bennett, a former state Senate president from Oxford, raised $16.71.
Scott D'Amboise, the businessman from Lisbon Falls who got 11 percent of the vote, raised a whopping $92.27 per vote, although he was in the race considerably longer than any other candidate because he was challenging Sen. Olympia Snowe before she announced her retirement in February.
"D'Amboise raised the most and nobody knows what he did with his money, so he clearly did the worst with his money," Brewer said Wednesday. "But I think you could say that it mattered for Summers because he needed to get on TV and that probably helped him fend off Poliquin. But this race was more about name recognition than money."
Summers' success makes it apparent that money spent at the right time does help. Campaign finance reports show that Summers donated $50,000 to his campaign in the two weeks before the primary. His campaign spokeswoman, Jen Webber, said that money went directly to TV ads in the finals days of the race.
Poliquin came up short for the second time after outspending opponents. He finished sixth in the seven-way GOP gubernatorial primary in 2010 despite spending the second-most money, much of it his own.
This time, Poliquin self-financed about half of his campaign and used that money largely on TV and other advertising.
Brewer said money played even less of a role in the Republican primaries in Maine's two congressional districts.
And in Saco, state Rep. Linda Valentino easily defeated state Rep. Donald Pilon in the Democratic state Senate primary, even though a pro-racino political action committee spent $9,513 to support Pilon.
Money could play a larger role in November's U.S. Senate election, a race between Dill, Summers and independent Angus King, who was Maine's governor from 1995 to 2003.
Three lesser-known independent candidates -- Steve Woods, Danny Dalton and Andrew Ian Dodge -- also have qualified for the ballot.
Brewer said the big question is whether King's presence and popularity will scare off big Republican and Democratic donors.
"The party money will be what to watch. I don't think we'll see any national party money," he said. "Maybe if Summers can convince them that with some help, he can take down King, someone might cut him some checks, but they won't want to throw that money away."
Nationally, the Democratic Party has not committed to investing in Dill's campaign. A campaign spokesman said it will be decided in "a careful set of meetings" between Dill and national party leaders.
Melcher said he thinks that plenty of money will be spent in Maine, in general election campaigns and on referendum questions, in part because "Maine is such a cheap media buy."
On the other hand, he said, "I think to some extent people here are a little more immune to that kind of flash and that kind of advertising."
Money Management: What's a Bank Account For? - Huffington Post
It's traditional for bankers and their customers to think about banking as centered on the bank account. Even policy makers talk about "banking the unbanked" as if opening a bank account immediately changes a person from financially excluded to included. The bank account is the top line indicator examined by the Global Findex, the new survey of financial access by 150,000 adults from over 148 countries. The finding that 43 percent of adults in the developing world have bank accounts has quickly become the reference point for financial inclusion.
For decades, balancing one's checkbook has been the cornerstone of personal finance for conscientious adults in the developed world. When I first opened an account of my own, I received a little checkbook-sized booklet in which to write down every deposit and withdrawal. I learned that keeping track of the bank balance was like the personal hygiene of finance, like brushing your financial teeth.
The implicit message, not just for me, but I think for society at large, was that the bank account was the locus of money management. All one's main financial transactions would pass through the account, and the account would serve as a kind of running financial statement, showing not only income and expenses but also personal solvency. (I'm setting aside for now the very important function of accounts as savings vehicles. That's a story for another day.)
I believe this 1950s image of the bank account is an unacknowledged presence in the minds of bankers and policy makers like the G-20 financial inclusion group when they advocate banking the unbanked. There is an assumption that opening an account equates with using an account to manage personal finances.
But what if the low income people who don't have bank accounts -- and many who do -- don't see things that way?
Consider three observations that suggest that the image of the bank account as the central money management tool is simply not relevant for many low income people:
• The Global Findex shows that many bank accounts in the developing world are relatively inactive. While in high income countries, 72 percent of accounts have more than two withdrawals per month, in low and middle income countries that figure plummets to 16-17 percent. Many people appear to be using their accounts simply as a way to get paid.
• Yet Portfolios of the Poor reveals that low income people have complex financial lives in which they manage many financial arrangements at the same time. Individuals often have multiple, complicated transactions going on at once - cash stashed away somewhere, a loan from a friend, sales on credit, etc.
• In many countries that have introduced them, "no frills" bank accounts designed as starter accounts for the poor have experienced very low usage.
This raises the very important question: for low income people who are "unbanked" where does "money management" reside? And what is money management, anyway?
Money management is an essential component of financial capability. I propose the following definition: money management is the ongoing process of keeping track of one's financial status so that as new financial decisions arise one can make them appropriately and maintain personal solvency. The focus is on maintaining a consolidated view of where one's financial assets and liabilities are at any given time.
If I have a bank account that keeps track of deposits and pay outs, I can consult my bank statement whenever I have to make an important financial decision, and therefore I do not need to keep the money management function in my head. I can outsource a big part of my money management process to the bank account.
But what if I am a first time user of an account? I might prefer to keep track in the way I am used to, which in all likelihood means keeping a running tab in my head. Unless I already keep a written record of my financial transactions (probably rare except for sophisticated microenterprises) it might not occur to me to use an account as a money management tool. Moreover, if most of my transactions remain informal, a bank account would not be a very good representation of my financial life.
The implications of this observation for providers and policy makers are profound. Providers and policy makers should not expect people to shift their locus of money management in a twinkling. It is likely to be a gradual process, involving financial education (how to use an account as a money management tool) and, perhaps even more important, the formalization of transactions so more of them flow through the account.
This observation also shows the fallacy of no frills accounts: perhaps the low demand for the money management support provided by an account shows that many people are satisfied with the money management function that resides between their ears. It also poses a challenge to payments innovations like mobile money or remittances sent through money transfer organizations. If provided outside the context of a bank account, such transactions do not result in consolidation of the money management function, but instead require a person to continue to keep track in the head (or somewhere else).
I am finally left with a question I do not know how to answer, but it is a question that should occupy anyone working on financial inclusion. If we want to assist people in their efforts to be competent money managers, what is the best mix of services? I would welcome your thoughts.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee meets insurers as losses mount - Economic Times
Mukherjee made this observations after meeting with the head of state-run insurance firms. He said that the overall profitability is clearly driven by the investment income, with continued deterioration in the core business of premium underwriting.
"The ministry has suggested certain welcome steps to curb the unhealthy competition in underwriting premiums and it will help restore the sustained business growth," he said.
The finance minister cautioned that India is the only country in Asia with a combined ratio of 105 and above consistently during the last five years and all the four PSU general insurers have been largely responsible for such a trend.
"It is well understood that growth in top line cannot be at the cost of bottom line," he said.
Mukherjee also said that state-run insurers shall necessarily have a presence in all the towns up to tier IV classification as per census.
"Such an early foothold will be advantageous in business sense," he said, adding that the ministry has already asked insurers to reorganise the existing loss making branches.
Financial services secretary DK Mittal said that insurers have been given the deadline of June 30 to expand their reach in tier IV cities. Mukherjee also appraised the insurers that the government is working with the insurance sector regulator on a number of regulatory issues.
The minister said India will be the fastest growing general insurance market during this period with an average growth of 15% and insurers should expand their reach through all mechanism available.
"Out of the available 80,000 bank branches, less than 7000 are being used by PSU insurers and we need to scale up bancassurance immediately," he said.
He also stressed that insurers should strengthen coverage of agriculture insurance. Mukherjee said that in order to tap the growing segment of insurable population that is IT savvy, insurers must immediately take to the e-governance route.
Moody's: Spain's credit rating could be cut to junk within three months - Daily Telegraph
Mr Rajoy also published a letter to EU leaders calling for action from the ECB, which is forbidden by treaty to take instructions from politicians.
“Businesses and households need access to liquidity. That is impossible if doubts persist over the sustainability of the debt of sovereign states,” he wrote to Herman van Rompuy, the EU president, and José Manuel Barroso, chief of the European Commission. Mr Rajoy said: “Today, the only institution we have with the capacity to assure the required conditions of stability and liquidity is the European Central Bank.”
Spanish yields, or implied interest rates, on its bonds this week reached euro-era highs, as investors shunned the debt after the weekend announcement that the country had asked for a €100bn (£80bn) bail-out to rescue its banks.
Intended to shore up confidence in Spain, the move has stoked worries about the government’s ability to finance itself, since it required outside help.
Spain will soon follow Portugal, Ireland and Greece in seeking a sovereign bail-out, according to a majority of economists polled by Reuters. Of the 59 analysts canvassed, 35 said it was likely or very likely Spain will do so in the next 12 months.
Yields on Spanish 10-year debt were on Wednesday trading over 6.7pc, close to Tuesday’s record highs. Anything past 6pc is seen as unsustainable.
Italian borrowing costs have also risen as investors lose faith in its position, with yields on its 10-year debt trading over 6.2pc.
Rome had to pay interest rates of almost 4pc - up from 2.3pc in a similar auction last month - to borrow €6.5bn for a year from the debt markets.
German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Italy was safe it it sticks to its path of austerity and reforms. But Mario Monti, Italy’s technocrat leader, warned Europe is at a “crucial” moment.
Can't think what he'll spend the money on....
- I would do anything for love, But I won't do THAT, 14/6/2012 00:17
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