Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t be robbed.
Identity thieves steal the personal information of about 2.4 million deceased Americans each year, according to a new report from fraud prevention firm ID Analytics. That amounts to a rate of more than 2,000 thefts per day.
Using these stolen identities, criminals typically apply for credit cards, cell phones and anything else requiring a credit check, the report found.
About 800,000 deceased Americans get their identities stolen intentionally, and another 1.6 million identities are stolen by chance — when an identity thief uses a Social Security number that happens to match that of a deceased individual, for example.
Debt after death: Banks chase down mourners
Lenders are typically the main victims when thieves use identities of deceased people to apply for credit products. But surviving family members should also be careful, said Stephen Coggeshall, chief technology officer at ID Analytics bad credit personal loan lenders.
"Surviving family members can also be the victims of this identity fraud as they are left to manage the estates of their deceased loved ones," he said. "It’s important for people to monitor their deceased family member’s identities for at least one year."
Social Security pays millions to dead people
To determine how many deceased people get their identities stolen each year, ID Analytics collected the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers on 100 million credit applications.
It then calculated how many of these applications used information that was associated with deceased individuals listed in the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File — a government database of deceased Americans.
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European Central Bank President Mario Draghi comments on inflation, monetary policy and the region
Searchers on Thursday found three more bodies in the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that capsized off the Italian coast, an official said, raising the number discovered to 28 and leaving four still missing.
Civil Protection agency chief Franco Gabrielli did not give details on the sex or ages of the victims, and it was not immediately clear where the bodies were spotted. The remaining missing are presumed dead.
The ship hit a rocky reef, took on water and turned over just outside the port of the tiny island of Giglio off Tuscany on Jan. 13. Divers and searchers have been combing the half-submerged ship, from passenger cabins to elevators to the decks where many of the 4,200 passengers and crew gathered during the delayed and frantic evacuation.
Even before the latest bodies were found, eight discovered in recent weeks were awaiting official identification. Weeks in the water badly decomposed the remains, and forensic authorities have used DNA sampling to try to identify them.
Among those listed missing or unidentified are a crew member from India and several passengers, including an elderly U.S. couple and others from Italy and Germany.
The Concordia capsized in a protected sea sanctuary, and salvage teams have been removing fuel since Feb. 12 in hopes of sparing the pristine waters from pollution. Costa Crociere SpA., the Italian cruise company, and Italian officials said fuel removal was expected to be completed by Friday evening.
Occasional bad weather and choppy seas have at times forced suspension of both the search for bodies and the fuel removal.
The operation to remove the wrecked Concordia itself could take as long as 12 months. Bids for the job are being evaluated.
The Concordia’s Italian captain is under house arrest near Naples. Capt. Francesco Schettino is under investigation for alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship during the evacuation. Schettino has denied wrongdoing and claimed that the reef wasn’t marked on charts.
Investigators are probing allegations that Schettino deliberately came too close to the island as part of a publicity stunt for the cruise line. Costa Crociere officials have distanced themselves from Schettino.
Salaries of 70 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives will be limited to $500,000 per year and their annual bonuses eliminated amid pressure from Congress to stop the big payouts.
The pay and bonus structure of the government-controlled mortgage giants came under fire this fall after it was revealed that 12 executives got $35.4 million in salary and bonuses in 2009 and 2010. Fannie’s chief executive, Michael J. Williams, received about $9.3 million for the two years. Freddie’s chief executive, Edward Haldeman Jr payday advance low fees., was paid $7.8 million.
The government rescued Fannie and Freddie three years ago after they nearly folded because of big losses on risky mortgages. Taxpayers have spent about $170 billion to prop up the two companies, the most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis.
U.S. home prices fell 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, as sales were boosted by investors seeking lower-cost distressed properties.
Prices dropped 0.1 percent from the prior three months on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said today in a report from Washington. In December, prices retreated 0.8 percent from a year earlier, while increasing 0.7 percent from the previous month.
Foreclosures (FORLTOTL) are boosting the supply of properties on the market and dragging down values for all houses. Banks may seize more than 1 million U.S. homes this year after legal scrutiny of their foreclosure practices slowed actions against delinquent property owners in 2011, RealtyTrac Inc. said last month.
Distressed properties, comprising foreclosures and short sales in which the lender agrees to a transaction for less than the mortgage balance, accounted for 35 percent of all existing- home purchases in January, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday payday loan lenders.
The FHFA
Japan
Sri Lanka unexpectedly raised interest rates for the first time since 2007 to curb credit growth in the nation and ensure inflation stays low.
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka raised the reverse repurchase rate to 9 percent from 8.5 percent and the repurchase rate to 7.5 percent from 7 percent, the Colombo-based bank said in a statement on its website today. All seven economists in a Bloomberg News survey predicted rates would be unchanged.
Central bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal
Europe is getting tougher on government debt. After more than two years struggling to rescue financially shaky governments, leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro are ready to agree on a treaty that will force member countries to put deficit limits into their national laws.
At first glance, it seems logical _ after all, the crisis erupted after too many governments spent and borrowed too much for too long.
But a number of economists _ and some politicians _ say the focus on cutting deficits is misplaced and that more fundamental problems are being left unaddressed.
It’s how the euro was set up in the first place, they say _ one currency, but multiple government budgets, economies moving at different speeds and no central treasury or borrowing authority to back them up.
Until those institutional flaws are tackled, the economists say, the euro will remain vulnerable. So far, Greece, Ireland and Portugal have turned to other eurozone governments and the International Monetary Fund for emergency funds to avoid defaulting on their debts.
Nonetheless, Europe’s leading countries are pushing a new Europe-wide treaty that would as the leading edge of their effort to reassure markets. European Union leaders hope to agree on the treaty’s text at a meeting starting Monday, and sign it by March.
The proposed treaty pushes countries to limit “structural” deficits _ shortfalls not caused by ups and downs of the business cycle _ to a tight 0.5 percent of gross domestic product or face a fine. That comes on top of other recent EU legislation intended to tighten observance of the eurozone’s limits: overall deficits of 3 percent of GDP and national debt of 60 percent of GDP.
European leaders are also urging countries to improve growth by reducing regulation and other barriers to business.
Yet economists like Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Brueghel think tank in Brussels, says it’s striking that governments are focusing on budget rules, given Europe’s earlier experience with them. An earlier set of rules were largely ignored at the behest of France and Germany in the first years after the euro’s 1999 launch.
And some of the countries that now are in the deepest trouble _ such as Spain and bailed-out Ireland _ stayed well within the debt limit for years.
“This suggests that the simplistic view _ that a thorough enforcement of the rules would have prevented the crisis _ should be treated with caution,” Pisani-Ferry wrote in a recent article for Brueghel.
Some European politicians are also voicing doubts about focusing primarily on deficits. They include new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, who has warned that growth is the real answer to shrinking debt in the long term. International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde has urged a broader approach. She calls for a willingness to share the burden of supporting banks and other financial risks so troubles in one country don’t become a crisis for the entire currency bloc.
Here are four reasons for concern cited by economists _ but not yet on the summit agendas of the eurozone’s leaders.
NO COMMON BORROWING: Without a central, pan-European treasury, there’s no steady central source of support for eurozone countries that run into economic or financial trouble. Many economists say issuing jointly guaranteed “eurobonds” would make sure no one country would ever default and governments would always be able to borrow. Governments would give up some of their sovereignty, allowing review of their spending and borrowing plans, to get the money.
Pisani-Ferry argues that this would protect governments from the kind of self-fulfilling bond market panic fueled by fears of default, that pushed Greece, Ireland and Portugal over the edge.
Yet the idea of more collective responsibility remains unpopular in prosperous EU countries such as Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. They can borrow cheaply due to their strong finances and would likely pay more to borrow at the rate that includes the shaky ones.
Eurobonds would also likely require a time-consuming change to the European Union’s basic treaty _ which currently bans members from assuming each other’s debts. There would also have to be a mechanisms in place to stop countries with shoddy finances from borrowing too much.
Opponents say that’s unrealistic. “If you have mutual debt responsibility, and freedom of each country to borrow, then each country can drive the eurozone into bankruptcy,” said Kai Konrad, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich.
BANK BAILOUTS: Europe currently has no safety mechanism that would stop a country from sinking under the weight of having to bail out banks based in that country.
At the moment, each country bears the brunt of rescuing its own banks. This can create serious problems in a crisis.
For example Ireland’s loosely regulated banks borrowed heavily and loaned out money freely for speculative real estate projects. When the real estate market collapsed and the loans were not paid back, the Irish government had to step in to guarantee the bank’s bonds _ and quickly went broke. Ireland had a very low debt level of only 25 percent of annual economic output in 2007. As bank losses moved to the government’s balance sheet, by 2011 debt hit 106 percent of annual GDP. The country remains on EU-IMF life support.
Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform in London draws an analogy with U.S. insurer AIG, which was bailed out by the U.S. federal government in 2008. AIG was incorporated in the U.S. state of Delaware, yet Delaware did not go bankrupt handling the rescue. The central government stepped in.
TRADE IMBALANCES: Economists point out that gaps in how well countries compete and trade with one another have steadily widened since the euro was created.
Greece’s current account deficit _ the broadest measure of trade _ is even worse than its budget deficit. It buys and borrows far more than it sells and earns abroad.
Normally trade imbalances are evened out by fluctuating exchange rates _ but that can’t happen within the euro. Countries can improve their competitiveness by doing what Germany did in the 2000s _ cut labor costs to business by cutting general unemployment benefits. They can cut red tape and taxes. But that takes years.
Meanwhile, the region is also hampered by an inflexible pan-euro interest rate. Low interest rates _ set by the European Central Bank to see Germany and France through stagnation in the early 2000s _ were too low to control wage inflation and reckless borrowing in places like Greece and Ireland. Wage costs and debt levels rose. Competitiveness and exports declined, weakening the economy and undermining government finances.
CENTRAL BANK POWERS: Yet another structural issue is the limited power of the European Central Bank to support governments.
The bank resisted calls to buy larger amounts of government bonds. That resistance observes the spirit of the EU basic treaty, which forbids the central bank from financing governments.
But it’s a constraint that central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England don’t have. They can buy up their country’s debt, a move that can push down government borrowing costs and reassure markets the state will always pay its debts.
The ECB remains “a limited-purpose central bank,” says Tilford.
He notes that Britain has more debt than Spain, 81 percent of GDP versus 67 percent, yet borrows at just over 2 percent annual interest for its 10-year bonds, while Spanish debt for the same period has a 5 percent-plus interest rate. One difference: markets know the Bank of England has the ability to support the government in a crisis by buying bonds and driving down interest rates.
Many of these issue were raised before the currency was launched in 1999, then got less attention.
Tilford says that “the tendency has been to say the currency union needs all these things but in practice it’s not necessarily the case” so long as countries obey budget rules and manage their finances well.
“It’s become harder to maintain that kind of argumentation now, given how bad things have got.”
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Egyptian soldiers clashed with hundreds of rock-throwing protesters in central Cairo for a second consecutive day on Saturday, in a resurgence of turmoil just days after millions voted in parliamentary elections.
The clashes underlined simmering tensions between activists and security officers and threatened to ignite a new round of violence after two peaceful days of voting in balloting considered the freest and fairest in the country’s modern history.
Hundreds of protesters threw stones early Saturday at security forces that have sealed off the streets around the country’s parliament building with barbed wire. Soldiers on rooftops pelted the crowds below with stones, prompting many of the protesters to pick up helmets, satellite dishes or sheets of metal to try to protect themselves.
The violence first began early Friday morning after soldiers stormed an antimilitary protest camp outside the Cabinet building near Tahrir Square, expelling demonstrators demanding an end to military rule and an immediate transfer of power to a civilian authority. At least seven protesters were killed in the violence, activist said. Scores have been injured.
The military took over after longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular revolt in February. Rights groups and activists charge that the military is carrying on the practices of the old regime, including arresting and beating dissidents.
Mustafa Ali, a protester who was wounded by pellet shot in clashes last month, on Saturday accused the military of instigating the violence to “find a justification to remain in power and divide up people into factions.”
The young activists who led the protests against Mubarak have not translated that success into results at the polls, where Islamist parties won a clear majority of seats in the first round of voting last month over the more liberal parties that emerged from the uprising. Results from this week’s second round are expected in the coming days, with the rest of the country set to vote next month.
Images of troops protecting polling centers and soldiers carrying the elderly to the polls have served to boost the military’s image as guardians of the country. The military remains the ultimate authority on all matters of state in absence of a president.
The second round of voting took place Wednesday and Thursday in nine of the country’s 27 provinces. It covered vast rural areas where the religious stand of Islamist parties has strong support.
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