Structured Settlement: 2009

Mar 24, 2009

Top AIG executives agree to give back bonuses - after calls from A.G. Andrew Cuomo's office

People are suffered by global recession as they get huge and huge bonus.

Bonus extracted from tax payer pockets!

Complete story here

Mar 11, 2009

Human error led to fatal train collision, spokeswoman says

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Friday's two-train collision killed 25 people and injured more than 130 others near Los Angeles after an engineer failed to heed a traffic signal, a spokeswoman for Metrolink commuter trains said.
A commuter rail car lies on its side after a collision Friday near Los Angeles, California.

The engineer was guiding the Metrolink train that slammed head-on into a freight train and is not believed to have survived, Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said on Saturday.

"It was human error," Tyrrell said, adding this was Metrolink's belief "barring any new information" from an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

NTSB spokeswoman Kitty Higgins said the agency would "look at everything before we rule anything in or out."

From CNN

Mar 9, 2009

Annuity and Structured Settlement Recipients Use Cash From Sale of Future Payments to Pay for Education Costs

Image via Wikipedia

More than 80 student lenders have stopped making frederally guaranteed student loans temporarily or permanently as a result of a distressed credit market.

According to a May 22 article in USA TODAY -

Sallie Mae’s shares jumped Wednesday after it became known that the Bush administration is preparing to help struggling lenders in the student lending market by having the government buy up their loans.

As families feel the increased cost of living fueled by raised prices in wheat, corn, fuel, and household consumer goods, many families that have children who are preparing to graduate and continue on to a college education are finding alternate ways to provide for tuition.

Full article can be reached at Articlebase

Mar 7, 2009

Can General Motors survive?

GM's annual report filed with the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) included this chilling statement: "There is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

Given the billions of taxpayer dollars being poured into GM, the relevant paragraph from the company's filing is worth a closer look:

Our independent public accounting firm has issued an opinion on our consolidated financial statements that states that the consolidated financial statements were prepared assuming we will continue as a going concern and further states that our recurring losses from operations, stockholders' deficit and inability to generate sufficient cash flow to meet our obligations and sustain our operations raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.

Such ominous sounding language is not used lightly or casually, but is required by accounting rules. If a company doesn't have the cash to make it to the next month or the next quarter, investors expect management to tell them so. And a company's auditors are expected to force management to offer such an admission, even when they would rather not. Auditors who sign off on filings that fail to offer such a caveat when clearly warranted risk sanctions themselves.

Read full article in Guardian

Mar 4, 2009

Structured Settlement at a glance

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Some of you could be familiar with structured settlement term. I'm trying to make a brief note about structured settlement in order to help everyone who need it. The note was extracted from public media such as Wiki.

Some media says that Structured settlement refers to financial arrangement, including periodic payments, that a claimant accepts to resolve a personal injury claim or to compromise a statutory periodic payment obligation.

The history of structured settlement was begin in Canada and US as an alternative lump sum of settlement.