Redmond, U.S.A. — Major global brands, including Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, Johnson & Johnson Services, Rooms To Go, Bank of America and PCL Constructors, are among the early adopters deploying Windows 8-based apps to address their business needs and engage consumers in new ways.

From offering partners sneak peeks at TV shows and movies, to staying in lockstep with consumers at retail, to helping keep workers safe by preventing construction site incidents, these companies are discovering how Windows 8 apps can improve the way they do business.

“It’s so great to see a number of the world’s most well-known companies choosing Windows 8 to advance their businesses,” said Erwin Visser, senior director of Windows Commercial Marketing at Microsoft. “Windows 8 opens new doors for businesses to improve the way they collaborate and share information, enhance customer experiences, uncover new business opportunities, and much more.”

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, a division of Twentieth Century Fox responsible for the global distribution of its library of television series and feature films, has developed a Windows 8 app for its industry-leading customer site, FoxFast.com. FoxFast.com was created to give broadcast partners 24/7 access to screen the vast library of programs, as well as to easily access all the marketing materials needed to create and support launches.

With an increasingly mobile business landscape and the division’s transition to a fully digital distribution model, the studio needed a simple method for broadcasters to securely screen its products and download their marketing assets on-the-go. Creating the Windows 8 app was the next natural evolution for FoxFast.com — a touch-first app that scales to work on a variety of devices — making the site’s offerings accessible anytime, anywhere around the world. Like FoxFast.com, the new app provides customers with an authenticated user experience to securely screen content and manage marketing assets. The FoxFast app is now available in the Windows Store for download.

Johnson & Johnson Services

Johnson & Johnson has developed a new Windows 8 app called the Digital Health Scorecard. Available in the Windows Store, the app provides consumers with a simple way to understand the state of their health and what they can do to lessen their long-term risk for developing chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. According to the World Health Organization, these common conditions account for three out of every five deaths around the globe. The insight gained from the Digital Health Scorecard can help engage and motivate people to make small changes that can lead to healthier, happier lives.

The Digital Health Scorecard has been designed to be fast and easy to use. The app can and should be reused on a regular basis so that people can understand their progress over time. Johnson & Johnson has led the effort to develop the science behind calculating the score and will update it over time as new data becomes available.

Rooms To Go

Rooms To Go, a furniture retailer, has developed a Windows 8 line-of-business app that provides an intuitive, touch-enabled point-of-sale experience for customers, taking advantage of continuous connectivity. The app consists of a suite of mini-apps that allow the sales associates to stage the sales process and transaction in-store without leaving the customer’s side. Customers can also seamlessly browse the full line of available inventory through the app and conceptualize different room settings. This allows for a cost-effective solution for all sales associates across 175 stores.

Bank of America

Bank of America has developed the Bank of America Mobile Banking app for Windows 8 that gives customers a digital experience that is optimized for the Windows 8 user interface and takes advantage of features such as Live Tiles.

Customers have the convenience and accessibility of checking balances, paying bills, making transfers, locating ATMs and banking centers, making deposits, receiving alerts, and redeeming BankAmeriDeals offers from tablets, laptops and desktops.

PCL Construction

PCL Construction, a construction company based in North America and Australia, relies on technology to enable the business. PCL considered Windows 8 a promising new platform for improving the capabilities available to its employees, with a particular focus on field staff, executives and frequent travelers. The company developed a Windows 8 line-of-business app called the Safety Management Center that allows its field staff to record observations while on the construction site and simultaneously fill out inspection forms remotely — helping employees address potential incidents on the job site before they occur. More importantly, Safety Management Center is helping PCL deliver on its ongoing goal of zero safety incidents.

Read more about Windows 8 enterprise customers developing apps on the Windows for your Business blog. More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

The article Power Brands Deliver New Experiences With Windows 8 Apps appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

During this year’s State of the Union speech in January, President Obama announced the creation of a special unit of prosecutors and state attorney generals which would investigate abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages. President Obama stated: ”This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.” Yet no significant results have been announced by the task force and no criminal charges have been filed against any top financial institution executive.

Two of Americans’ most important banks, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have already agreed to pay large amounts of money to compensate for their discriminatory practices, but these damages do not seem to be enough to convince them to discontinue these practices.

In a speech in September 2008, when Barack Obama was only a presidential candidate, he declared: “The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a financial crisis as serious as any since the Great Depression. The lack of oversight in Washington and on Wall Street is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.” Some thought this meant the government could enforce a more aggressive policy against Wall Street.

Bank of America acquired Countrywide Financial in 2008, but this  acquisition had a negative impact. The New York Times explains that, “In December 2011, the Justice Department announced that Bank of America had agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that Countrywide discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom. This was the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history.” But no criminal charges were filed against any executive of the company.

US Attorney General Eric Holder stated: “The settlement provides $335 million in compensation to victims of Countrywide’s discrimination during a period when Countrywide served as one of the nation’s largest single-family mortgage lenders and originated more than 4 million residential mortgage loans.”

Bank of America denied their responsibility in this issue, one of their spokesman’s Dan Frahm said that “we reached this settlement to resolve issues about Countrywide’s alleged historic practices that occurred before Bank of America acquired the company.  Bank of America’s practices are not at issue.”

Angelo Mozilo, Former Chief executive of Countrywide Financial, had been investigated in Los Angeles by federal prosecutors, who, after two years of investigation, dropped the case after concluding that Mr. Mozilo did not engage in criminal conduct while directing Country Wide Financial.

Just a few weeks ago the Department of Justice announced that Wells Fargo had agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations that it discriminated against minority borrowers (Hispanic and African-Americans). The economic compensation the bank has agreed to give does not seem like a lot of money compared to their second quarter profits which are $4.6 billion.

The Department of Justice accused Wells Fargo for charging higher mortgage rates and fees against African-American and Latino customers, and the bank agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations. But like Bank of America, Wells Fargo denied any wrongdoing and no executive from the company was taken to Court.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez declared that “this is a case about real people – African American and Latino – who suffered real harm as a result of Wells Fargo’s discriminatory lending practices.” The Assistant Attorney General explained that “”if you were African-American or Latino, you were more likely to be placed in a subprime loan or pay more for your mortgage loan, even though you were qualified and deserved better treatment.”

Mike Heid, president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, said in a statement that “Wells Fargo is settling this matter because we believe it is in the best interest of our team members, customers, communities and investors to avoid a long and costly legal fight, and to instead devote our resources to continuing to contribute to the country’s housing recovery.”

So would seem hope is fading for those who believed that President Obama would be the one to finally end discriminatory practices in the banking industry. None of the banks accused have accepted any wrongdoing and they only accepted the economic compensation to avoid contested litigation, but no criminal charges have been filed.

The article The Obama Reality of Banks Discriminatory Practices appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

On Friday, February 9, administration officials stood alongside state attorneys general to announce a $25 billion mortgage settlement. It was reminiscent of a big announcement by administration officials three Februarys ago involving an even bigger number: $50 billion. That money was supposed to go to the administration’s signature mortgage modification program, which eventually became HAMP.

Three years later, HAMP (the Home Affordable Modification Program) is widely considered a failure. That failure provides key context to  Friday’s announcement.

According to the state attorneys general and the administration, a major selling point of the new settlement is that it won’t repeat HAMP’s mistakes. This deal, they say, is different.

“If people are eligible for a loan modification, the banks won’t screw up those decisions anymore,” said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper made a rather pointed reference to HAMP: “I think strong, court-ordered enforcement with teeth distinguish this deal from those earlier efforts to help homeowners.”

As we’ve reported extensively over the past several years, homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure by gaining a loan modification have often been frustrated by banks’ errors and delays. In the worst cases, the banks’ shoddy mortgage servicing has led to wrongful foreclosures. The errors have sometimes continued even after homeowners got an elusive modification.

When HAMP was launched, it came with the promise that mortgage servicers would have to abide by clear rules. The handbook laying out these rules now approaches 200 pages. But as we’ve detailed, enforcement of those rules has been lacking.

According to the state attorneys general, the settlement directly addresses that. The five big servicers 2014 Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) 2014  that will sign on to the not-quite-finalized deal have agreed to follow a raft of new rules. Some of these rules, like how quickly a bank must respond to a homeowner’s completed modification application, come straight from HAMP.

What’s different this time, they say, is that there are clear consequences for rule-breaking. But plenty of questions remain, and only time will tell if the latest promises of mortgage-servicer accountability will be kept.

“The big picture is that these new rules are only good if servicers follow them,” said Alys Cohen of the National Consumer Law Center. “Enforcement will really matter.”

As critics like Firedoglake blogger David Dayen have pointed out, the new system relies to some extent on “self-assessments” by the banks to identify violations of the new rules. But Miller, the Iowa attorney general, notes that consumers will be able to complain to their state’s attorney general, who will make sure their complaints are heard.

The settlement does create a “monitor” who will have the power to impose penalties. The administration says a bank could be fined up to $1 million per violation and up to $5 million for repeat violations. But the details released so far don’t show how violations will be applied or counted. (If thousands of homeowners, for instance, have been wrongly denied modifications, will that be counted as one violation or thousands?)

HAMP came with no penalties for participating mortgage servicers that broke the rules. It was only in the past several months that the Treasury Department decided to address servicer noncompliance 2014 by temporarily withholding the program’s subsidy payments. (As for the millions of dollars in incentives that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the other servicers were paid over the previous years, they get to keep that.)

The settlement is not only supposed to have more sticks than HAMP, it’s also a chance for the administration to breathe life back into the old program. Treasury recently made major revisions to HAMP to allow more homeowners to qualify for modifications.

“The extension and expansion of HAMP are designed to be complementary to the settlement,” said Treasury spokeswoman Andrea Risotto.

For instance, the program was set to end at the end of 2012 but now will accept new homeowners until the end of 2013. (The banks will operate under the umbrella of the settlement through 2014 or so.) In addition, Treasury has broadened some of the criteria to make it easier to qualify.

Some of the millions of homeowners who were rejected might be eligible for a second shot. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners were originally granted “trial modifications” through the program in 2009 and early 2010, only to be denied permanent modifications many months (and sometimes more than a year) later.

Most of those homeowners started those trials by just giving their income information over the phone. They’ll be eligible to reapply, according to the proposed rules. One of the recent changes to HAMP could reduce the cost of the settlement for banks 2014 and leave taxpayers footing a chunk of the bill.

As part of Friday”s deal, the five banks agreed to reduce billions in mortgage debt for homeowners in danger of foreclosure. Most of those principal reductions 2014 about 85 percent according to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan 2014 will likely be for loans that the banks hold on their own books.

HAMP also has long offered investors incentives to encourage principal reductions. For loans owned by banks, the money goes right to them. In January, Treasury tripled those incentives. In cases in which a loan qualifies for HAMP, the government will now pay investors, often the banks themselves, up to roughly two-thirds the cost of a principal reduction.

The banks have agreed to perform at least $10 billion worth of principal reductions as part of the settlement. Because it’s unclear how many of the principal reduction modifications will be done through HAMP, it’s impossible to say how much of that will be covered by the government subsidies.

So far, about 40,000 HAMP modifications have been done through HAMP’s principal reduction program at a median reduction of $67,196, meaning that roughly $2.7 billion in principal has been reduced. If the banks find HAMP more attractive because of the increased incentives, that amount might increase sharply, and HAMP could experience something of a renaissance.

by Paul Kiel, ProPublica, Feb. 10, 2012, 10:55 a.m.

The article Will Mortgage Settlement Avoid Repeating Obama’s Foreclosure Failures? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

A match offer from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation proved to be the motivating factor in nearly $1 million in personal financial contributions – from more than 8,000 donors across the country – and helped to provide more than 26 million meals this holiday season through Feeding America’s “Give A Meal” campaign.

The campaign was launched this past holiday season and proved to be an overwhelming success. The program was a collective effort to fight the pressing issue of hunger in large and small communities through combined personal donations via Feeding America and Bank of America websites.

As the campaign’s signature partner, Bank of America, through its Gift for Opportunity fund, contributed $2 for every $1 donated via feedingamerica.org/BankofAmerica or bankofamerica.com/give.  Combined with Bank of America’s initial $1 million donation to Feeding America at the outset of the campaign, the successful outcome is a final donation of $2.5 million towards hunger-relief in the United States.

At a time when many individuals and families are struggling to put food on the table, the opportunity for donors to contribute funds locally to food banks, and extend this support through the company’s matching donation, helped motivate and increase donations to the fight against hunger.

Jennifer Mason, who owns the Best Ink Store in Virginia Beach, Virginia, has given to her local food bank (the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia) in the past, but when she saw the chance to more than double her donation; she immediately jumped on the opportunity.

“The Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia serves one in four people in our community who do not know where their next meal is coming from.  As a supporter of the food bank, I wanted to leverage my gift of $5,000 and activate Bank of America’s matching donation to generate more revenue to the food bank in support of their programs to feed the hungry,” she said.

Similar stories of motivated donors were heard from across Feeding America’s network of more than 200 member food banks nationwide.

“With one in nine residents in eastern Massachusetts now at risk of hunger, we are grateful to Bank of America’s efforts to help The Greater Boston Food Bank end hunger in our community,” said Catherine D’Amato, President and CEO, The Greater Boston Food Bank. “Their support not only helped to raise additional funds, but also helped to raise more awareness around the critical issue of hunger in America. With their help, we can end hunger here.”

Bank of America’s support of the “Give A Meal” campaign stems from its longstanding commitment to serve pressing needs in the communities it serves.  “Give A Meal” provided an opportunity to engage individuals – on a local level –to help fight hunger in the United States.

“We are thrilled with the response to the Gift for Opportunity fund, and more importantly we are pleased that a significant number of families in need will have access to meals thanks to the generous contributions of individuals across the country,” said Kerry Sullivan, president of the Bank of America Charitable Foundation. “With nearly 49 million people in America struggling with hunger, we continue to look for meaningful ways to be part of the solution to help those at risk of hunger and other critical needs.”

Along with Bank of America, a number of other corporate partners, such as Dillard’s, HMSHost, Honey Baked Ham, and Winn-Dixie teamed up with Feeding America for the initiative.

Emmy Award winning talk show host Rachael Ray, celebrity Chef Mario Batali, host of ABC’s The Chew, Australian chef and television star Curtis Stone, rock sensations Benji and Joel Madden, Entertainment Tonight correspondent Samantha Harris, Grammy Award winning singer Monica, Food Network star Ellie Krieger, chef and TV host Sara Gore, TV food critic and host Katie Lee, Extra Virgin husband and wife hosts actress Debi Mazar and chef Gabriele Corcos, and the platinum selling band OneRepublic also lent their name to the effort.

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/FeedingAmerica

The article “Give A Meal” Campaign Proved Motivating appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Obama Administration unveiled a revamped home loan refinancing program, Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), that aims to help “underwater borrowers” whose home values have been declined. The program was first introduced in 2009.

HARP 1.0 was supposed to be the simpler part of the complex plan to revitalize the nation’s housing market when launched two years back. It was intended to help borrowers whose mortgages were owned or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. This time HARP 2.0 aims to do more – to lower the mortgage payments as a way to free up cash for other spending that could potentially insulates faster economic recovery.

“If you met certain requirements, you will have a chance of refinance at lower rates, which could save you hundreds of dollars a month and thousands of dollars a year in a mortgage payment” President Barack Obama said in Las Vegas as he unveiled the plan there.

Also, this time around Fannie and Freddie removed or eliminated certain upfront fees charged for weaker credits, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Said. The big four banks combined to write $175.4 Billion in new Mortgages during the three months ended September 30.that is 24% lower than what these lenders wrote last year.

A quick check at the top five mortgage lenders in a 2011 quarterly report shows that Wells Fargo and Company tops the list with $65,662 in lending, followed by Bank of America with $41,425 million, Chase’s lending volume being $35,985 million, and finally CitiMortgage Inc. with $12,211 million of lending volume.

HARP never took off or performed as expected. Many believe numerous factors were responsible for its lukewarm performance over the last two years. Reportedly, the biggest threat was posed by falling home prices acting as a major obstacle to refinance. It helped just 800,000 homeowners, well below the 4 million plus mark originally targeted.

The changes announced on Monday by the FHSA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, lift a cap that had limited the HARP 1.0  program borrowers whose homes had lost no more than 25 percent of their value relative to their outstanding mortgage. Luckily This limit has been changed.

The FHSA also said that Fannie and Freddie will eliminate certain fees borrowers who refinance into shorter-term-duration. In the big picture, rejuvenating how we oversee the housing marketing plays a pivotal role in repairing to damages we’ve experiences in this sector., Fixing and modifying working of refinance system might provide cushion to consumer spending in the days to come.

The article Obama Unveils HARP 2.0 to Boost Housing Market appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Recently, a group called U.S. Uncut has been organizing protests at Bank of America and other corporations for the past month.  The movement began with U.K. Uncut, which was formed by British workers angry at the draconian austerity measures targeted at the middle class.  U.S. Uncut was formed and quickly followed suit.

On March 26, U.S. Uncut joined in an international day of protest “targeting corporate tax cheats connected to cuts in valuable public services.”  The primary target of the group has been local Bank of America branches although there were some protests at other so-called tax dodgers like Verizon and FedEx.

“Bank of America is bankrupting America,” said US Uncut DC organizer and spokesperson Armand Biroonak, “When they don’t pay their fair share, just like the rest of us, then we are forced to cut $1.7 billion in early childhood education (Head Start & Title I). In America, do we want tax cheats or teachers?”

U.S. Uncut has used primarily social networking sites to get their message out.  They have not received much press, but already has over 16,000 fans on their Facebook page.  “Big corporations in our country dodge up to $100 billion every year,” said US Uncut Seattle organizer and self-described populist Laurie Dunivant-Larsen, “If they paid their taxes this year like the rest of us do, we could also stop the $100 billion in cuts to college loans. With all these tropical tax havens, US corporations make profits in America but barely pay any taxes here. That’s cheating – it’s immoral and un-American.”

The protests have also spread to other parts of the world.  Netherlands, Canada, Portugal, France, Ireland, and Australia all have branches of the group.  The U.K. group is still the largest.  On Saturday, during the international day of protests, demonstrators in London brought the city to a halt.  The Guardian estimates that over 250,000 people were at the protests however some activists suggest the number was closer to 500,000.  In the U.S., one of the largest protests was held outside a local Bank of America branch in Washington, D.C.  The demonstrators carried a large banner that read “Tax Dodger,” and screamed, “Pay your Taxes.”  The group handed out fact sheets on how Bank of America does not pay taxes and was successfully able to shut down the branch.  One member of the protests attempted to get into the bank in order to close his account.  Although, he showed his Bank of America card to security, he was denied entry.

“The government say there is no alternative to the cuts,” said Laura Carpenter of UK Uncut, “The government is making a political choice to cut and privatize public services whilst there are clear alternatives, like making the banks pay for the crisis that they caused or clamping down on tax dodging by corporations and rich individuals.”

“Maybe there isn’t a spending problem. Maybe it is a revenue problem,” said Carl Gibson, Co-Founder of US Uncut from Mississippi, “We The People just have to make sure that corporate tax cheats pay up.”

The article U.S.Uncut Organizing Protests at Bank of America appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The latest outrage comes from General Electric.  Joining companies like Bank of America and Verizon, G.E. did not pay any taxes for 2010, the second year in a row.  The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.  But, they did not pay a single cent.  Instead, they claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

In a statement, General Electric said that it “pays what it owes under the law and is scrupulous about its compliance with tax obligations in all jurisdictions.” The company claims that its zero-dollar tax bill is largely a result of losses at its financial arm, GE Capital, due to the Wall Street meltdown.

Low taxes are not new for the huge corporation.  They have been reducing their tax burden for years by employing former officials from the U.S. Treasury, the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.  They also lobby aggressively for tax breaks.

The top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, and Republicans often remind us that the rate is one of the highest in the world.  However, the U.S. tax code is also full of loopholes such as tax credits and subsidies so that most corporations pay for far less.

G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals.  And even this might be overstated.  These figures include taxes that will be paid only if G.E. brings its overseas profits back to the US.

“Two things are disconcerting. One is, there’s disproportionate amount of profits being reported offshore. And then, even for the profits that are reported onshore, they’re paying less than 35 percent,” said Martin Sullivan, a contributing editor for Tax Analysts.

Tax loopholes, along with changes in tax laws, have decreased the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts—from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid 1950’s to 6.6 percent in 2009.  But, many companies still complain that the tax rate is still too high.  They claim they are not able to compete with foreign rivals.  Although, many in the federal government have been pushing for a balanced budget and spending cuts, they are also talking about lowering tax rates.  President Obama has said he is considering changing the corporate tax system, by lowering the top rate and ending some of the tax loopholes.  In the end, he feels the changes would generate the same amount of revenue.

Another concerning issue is that G.E.’s CEO– Jeffrey Immelt—has been advising the president and serves as the chairman of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.  White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the president is “bothered” by the idea that a U.S. company could pay no taxes, but he wouldn’t talk about GE specifically. Carney was also quick to say that Immelt’s council advises the president on job growth and not on tax policy.

“It is part of the problem of the corporate tax structure that companies hire, you know, armies of tax lawyers to understand how it works and to take advantage of the various loopholes that exist, that are legal in order to reduce their tax burden,” Carney said.

While G.E. has been paying no taxes and still making profits, they have also been laying off workers and closing American factories.  Under Immelt’s leadership, the corporation has laid off 21,000 workers and closed 20 factories.  More than half of GE’s workforce is now outside the United States.

The article General Electric Tax Bill-$0 appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.