TV News LIES

Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.

U.S. securities regulators took their boldest step yet in a long-running insider trading probe against Steven A. Cohen, declaring Friday they would try to bar the hedge fund mogul from managing other people's money.

Legal experts said the charges represented a strategic calculation by the SEC that some action had to be taken, but that the agency could end up struggling to prove its case.

France has failed to secure backing for tough new international tax rules specifically targeting digital companies, such as Google and Amazon, after opposition from the US forced the watering down of proposals that will be presented at this week's G20 summit.

Senior officials in Washington have made it known they will not stand for rule changes that narrowly target the activities of some of the nation's fastest growing multinationals, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

A federal judge has approved HSBC Holdings Plc's (HSBA.L)(HBC.N) record $1.92 billion settlement with federal and state investigators of charges that it flouted rules designed to stop money laundering and thwart transactions with countries under U.S. sanctions.

While noting "heavy public criticism" of the settlement, which enabled HSBC to escape criminal prosecution, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, called the decision to approve the accord "easy, for it accomplishes a great deal."

Financial regulators are taking aim at Jon Corzine for his role in the 2011 collapse of brokerage MF Global, announcing on Thursday that they are filing civil charges against the former New Jersey governor and senator.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is suing Corzine, who was MF Global’s chief executive, and the firm’s former Assistant Treasurer Edith O’Brien for the unlawful use of about $1 billion in customer funds that “harmed thousands of customers and violated fundamental customer protection laws on an unprecedented scale.”

Apple is not alone.  Dell, Microsoft and Fifteen Other Fortune-500 Corporations’ Financial Reports Indicate Their Offshore Profits Are In Tax Havens; Hundreds More Likely Do the Same

Recent Congressional hearings on the international tax-avoidance strategies pursued by the Apple corporation documented the company’s strategy of shifting U.S. profits to offshore tax havens. But Apple is hardly the only major corporation that appears to be engaging in offshore-tax sheltering: seventeen other Fortune 500 corporations disclose information, in their financial reports, that strongly suggests they have paid little or no tax on their offshore holdings. It’s likely that hundreds of other Fortune 500 companies are also engaging in similar strategies to take advantage of the rule allowing U.S. companies to “defer” paying U.S. taxes on their offshore income.