Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs made huge profits during the financial meltdown through subprime, or higher-risk, mortgage backed securities that have been linked to the origin of the crisis, Senator Carl Levin said on Saturday.
Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs made huge profits during the financial meltdown through subprime, or higher-risk, mortgage backed securities that have been linked to the origin of the crisis, Senator Carl Levin said.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Goldman Sachs with fraud earlier this month, sending the company's share price into a tailspin.
"These emails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market," said Levin in a statement alongside the internal messages that were released ahead of a hearing next week focusing on the role of investment banks in contributing to the crisis.
The SEC accused the Wall Street investment giant of "defrauding investors by mis-stating and omitting key facts" about a product based on subprime securities.
THE world of work is changing. More people are working into their so-called retirement years. Many wish to embark on new career paths. I know of people who have said good-bye to high-stress jobs to follow their passion.
For others who are less financially secure, work is a necessity. Perhaps they didn’t save enough for retirement or maybe their investments have soured.
Age matters
Unfortunately, older employees are not always valued in today’s fast-moving world.
In many instances, employees in their late 40’s or 50’s find it hard to find a company that understands how valuable they are.
Unless the person has special experience or credibility that is sought after for management, directorship or advisory positions, their employability value has decreased.
Age discrimination in the workplace still persists in many companies. All young employees will ultimately age and they will experience similar treatment if we do nothing to change the negative perception aged employees currently suffer. You could soon become a victim of that discrimination.
There is a need to promote ideas for employing older employees and extending the retirement age. Savvy employers must recognise that their success depends on their employees’ contributions. It is the result of team effort, with old and young employees contributing their best. Yesterday’s employer-of-choice concept needs to be refined because the shifts in age demographics that have characterised the early 21st century have brought new challenges to the workplace. For instance:
·Brain drain: Baby Boomers and Generation-X migrating to other countries contributes to the country’s lack of talented and experienced human resource;
·Responding to the marketplace: A salaried ageing workforce will lead to more consumers. Only if businesses create job opportunities – with necessary take-home pay – for aged consumers will there be sufficient cash and demand for the products and services that are designed for that demographic;
·Manpower shortages: Employers with high percentages of older employees have begun to feel the impact of lost talent as Baby Boomers near the retirement age of 55 and above. Their concerns are exacerbated by fewer employees from the younger generation who are keen to work in routine or mundane jobs with unattractive salary packages. Sometimes, it is no longer the “work hard” but the “work easy” attitude for the young ones; and
·Lack of interest: Employers in industry sectors like agriculture, manufacturing or labour-intensive industries are facing difficulties in attracting young people. They resort to hiring foreign workers instead of retirees, who are often fully trained and capable of productive work.
It takes both hands to clap
Stereotypes of older employees have made us believe ageing brings with it physical and attitude limitations (not to mention a lack of being technology savvy). Sometimes this can lead to disengagement at work with other colleagues.
But this may not be necessarily true. There are Baby Boomers with positive mental health and attitudes, superb technical and people skills that are not being given second opportunities to excel.
Unless employers accept that age is just a number and continue the employment relationship as long as the employee can make valuable contributions to the company, nothing much can be done.
While older employees can adopt new paradigm shifts in mindset to be more engaged with young colleagues, employers can consider aligning older employees’ competencies with specific business strategies that take advantage of their wealth of experience. Whether you call them “know-how”, “gut feel” or “instinct”, these attributes are often lacking in younger employees.
Multi-generational workforce
Companies in some western countries with ageing populations are now adopting a new work culture – a multi-generational workforce – and policies that provide alternatives for both young and old employees to improve their work-life balance.
These measures have proven to help overcome manpower shortages, retain employees who want to spend time with family and attract retirees to work.
These new approaches have led to a healthy work culture for employees of all ages with different life priorities and are non gender-biased.
Employers benefit from less staff turnover and salary costs, while work gets done with multi-generational engagement ideas such as:
·Flexible work options: Flexi-time or reduced-hour options like part-time positions, job shares and phased retirement (part-time work designed for older employees to ease the transition into retirement);
·Work on project or contract basis where an employee is “self-employed”;
·Jobs with different sets of responsibilities to develop new competencies, or less demanding jobs due to health or personal reasons; and
·Work from alternative locations or home to reduce commuting time and ecological footprint.
For the 21st century multi-generational work culture to be successful and rewarding for Malaysia’s business and work community, human resource managers must implement these new concepts as soon as possible.
Employment agencies or online job portals will need to specialise in flexible work option job matching.
These are small hurdles but the result is a healthy society with higher number of employed people including retirees, leading to improved economic growth for the country and consumption growth for individuals. It is at this point that we can all stand and give ourselves a self-congratulatory clap – with both hands!
BY CAROL YIP ·Yip is a personal financial coach and also founder and CEO of Abacus for Money.
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Australia will tighten rules on foreign investment in real estate, and introduce penalties to enforce the changes, to ensure pressure isn’t placed on housing availability for local residents.
Temporary residents will require approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board to buy property, and will have to sell when leaving the country, Assistant Treasurer Nick Sherry said. It ensures “working families are not being priced out of their own family homes,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in Canberra today, a transcript from his office shows.
Treasurer Wayne Swan eased restrictions on non-residents in late 2008, making it easier for foreigners to buy property without government approval. Surging house prices, which advanced more than 10 percent last year, were among reasons the Reserve Bank of Australia boosted the benchmark interest rate this month for the fifth time in six meetings.
“Foreign purchasers can play an important role in supporting the development of new rental properties,” Aaron Gadiel, chief executive of Urban Taskforce Australia, said in an e-mailed statement. “Given that our national housing undersupply is reaching 200,000 homes, we should welcome any investment by foreign residents or businesses in boosting our supply of newly built homes.”
The lack of housing supply is the underlying issue for housing affordability, Gadiel said. Urban Taskforce Australia is an industry group representing property developers and equity financiers.
‘Foreign Speculators’
“We want to make sure that foreign speculators are not going to force up prices for Australians seeking to buy their own home, buy their first home, and we think this is the right course of action,” said Rudd, who faces an election within a year.
Australia will back up the changes with compliance, monitoring and enforcement measures including civil penalties, Assistant Treasurer Sherry said in a statement today. These include compulsory sales of property purchased in breach of the new investment regime, Sherry said.
Temporary residents will be required to start construction on undeveloped land within two years of purchase or be forced to sell, he said. The tighter rules will also apply to people on student visas, Sherry said.
Overseas Buyers
Overseas buying may have contributed to rising house prices, Sherry told reporters in Melbourne today. The measures are precautionary and won’t have a “major impact” on the housing market in Australia, Sherry said.
David Airey, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia, is among those blaming gains in home prices on an increase in investment from overseas buyers, particularly Chinese. The institute today supported stricter rules. Prices jumped 12.7 percent in the year through February, a March 31 report by real-estate monitoring company RP Data-Rismark showed.
Overseas purchasers accounted for about 0.62 percent of transactions by LJ Hooker in 2009, David Maher, business analyst at the real estate agency, said in a telephone interview on April 15.
‘Ridiculous Claims’
“Claims that overseas buyers are pricing people out of the market are ridiculous,” Maher said. “There’d have to be a mammoth increase in the level of overseas investment to have any real effect on affordability in the Australian market. The numbers don’t show that.”
An increase in housing through the release of more land, and measures to reduce the amount of money and time it takes to develop new projects, are required to ease prices, Charles Tarbey, local chairman of Century21 Real Estate, said April 6.
The average sales price of houses and apartments its agents sold between Jan. 1 and March 29 this year was A$407,228 ($378,000), an 18 percent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Century21 data.
--With assistance from Nichola Saminather in Sydney. Editors: Jim McDonald, Ravil Shirodkar
By Ben Sharples To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net
