Finance Globe

A bogus sweepstakes that duped consumers into paying a “processing fee” to collect “prize money” has been halted by a federal judge at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, the agency reported on Wednesday. According to FTC allegations, the company sometimes posed as a government agency, and used tricky language and official-looking documents and seals to fool consumers into paying $20 to collect a fake multi-million dollar sweepstakes prize. According to the FTC’s complaint, the...

A debt and mortgage relief operation that allegedly sent 5.5 million illegal spam text messages has been halted by a federal judge at the request of the Federal Trade Commission. The unsolicited text messages were allegedly sent over a 40-day period by the defendant, Phillip A. Flora, at an average rate of 85 texts per minute ‘round the clock. The FTC calls the number of texts in such a short period, “mind-boggling.” According to the FTC’s...

Despite all the education on the importance of protecting our sensitive personal information - identity theft must to be paying off for crooks because the crime remains at the top of the list of consumer complaints for 2010. Identity theft continues to be the most reported complaint for the 11th year in a row, according to an annual report released by the Federal Trade Commission. Out of the over 1.3 million complaints received by the FTC...

In his budget speech today at George Washington University, President Obama said that his goal was to cut the federal debt by $4 trillion over the next twelve years, phased in over time to avoid hampering the economic recovery. To deal with the nation’s $14 trillion deficit, Obama said he would not extend Bush-era tax cuts for high earners - set to expire at the end of 2012. “In the last decade, the average income of...

Most U.S. cities have seen a drop in the unemployment rate over the past year, a government agency reported on Thursday. The unemployment rate dropped in 317 of the 372 metropolitan areas surveyed by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics in the twelve-month period beginning in March 2010. It was higher in 44 metros, and remain unchanged in 11 areas. The national average unemployment has dropped 1 percentage point in that same time period -...

Though getting a summer job has been a student tradition for generations, the tough jobs market has particularly affected young people looking for employment. Youth job participation in July - normally the peak employment month for people ages 16 to 24 - was the worst since the government began keeping track in 1948. Among the civilian noninstitutional population, less than half (48.8%) of young people were employed last month, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics...

Most Americans are skeptical about whether President Obama’s $447 billion American Jobs Act will actually help the nation’s employment situation, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted last weekend. The unemployment rate has stagnated at around 9% since the beginning of the year. The president’s approval rating has dropped to 45 percent, and Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy by 62 percent to 33 percent - a nine point increase from six months ago,...

As consumers depend more on electronic communication, mail volume has plummeted by more than 43 billion pieces in the past five years - and continues to fall. The U.S. Postal Service said on Thursday that they plan to make serious changes to their infrastructure in order to cut costs and stay financially sustainable. Though it’s considered a federal enterprise, USPS receives no federal tax dollars and depends entirely on the sale of postage, products, and services...

As the cost of health care continues to rise, consumers flocked to tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts in record numbers last year. J.P. Morgan Treasury Services said the average Chase HSA balance of $1,547 in 2011 is 4% higher than it was in 2010, and that the average balance of nearly $1000 for new Chase HSA accounts rose to its highest level in 7 years. The bank said that the average taxpayer in the 28% tax bracket...

More than one in four American households do not have a savings account and one in ten don’t have a checking account, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation found in a 2011 survey released on Thursday. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. households have both a checking and savings account. The findings are the result of the second National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, sponsored last year by the FDIC and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The...