Word: last
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Last May the North American Securities Administrators Association cited viatical scams as one of the country's top 10 financial cons. "I like a lot of people in this industry, but I don't trust a lot of them, and that's sad," says Carole Fiedler, of Sausalito, Calif., an established viatical broker who each year helps about 100 people find buyers for their policies. "I hope there's a weeding-out process...
There will be, if regulators and prosecutors in states from Florida to California get their way. Late last summer a federal grand jury in Florida indicted Frederick Brandau and his company, Financial Federated Title & Trust, for allegedly defrauding thousands of viatical investors across the country in an elaborate, $115 million Ponzi scheme. Brandau's attorney denies the allegations. Just a month ago, two officers of Justus Viatical, a Pompano Beach, Fla., firm, were charged with selling investors $2 million worth of fraudulently obtained life-insurance policies. Their lawyer calls the indictment a farce. And insurance heavyweights like American General...
This is still hard for many to acknowledge. Ontario Premier Mike Harris raised Canadian eyebrows last month when he suggested that his province placed its highest priority on relations with the states of the U.S. Midwest. "I really see you as very, very strong allies," he told a meeting of Great Lakes Governors in Cleveland. "More so than many parts of Canada." The implication that Ontario might line up with Michigan, Wisconsin or Ohio against sister provinces--or even Ottawa--if economic interests required it was hard to miss. Was this sedition...
...really. Political boundaries have not defined economic relationships on this continent for decades, and the Michigan-Ontario relationship is the paramount case in point. Since the Canada-U.S. auto pact was signed in 1965, the two places have been economically intertwined. Last year two-way trade between Ontario and Michigan amounted to an astonishing $52 billion, much of it related to the automotive industry. The so-called automotive alley of assembly plants and partsmakers that stretches from Toronto and London, Ont., to Detroit is one of the world auto industry's most productive centers. But autos are nothing like...
...this has occurred with a minimum of government planning. But that may have to change. An early sign of the complications ahead is the expected demise of external tariffs sheltering the auto pact, after last month's World Trade Organization interim ruling that they discriminated against Japanese and other automakers. While Ottawa ponders whether to appeal the ruling, doomsayers are predicting the end of the "sweetheart" tariff holiday that they claim has underwritten Great Lakes prosperity for the past three decades. But the tariff ruling is probably irrelevant...