Hear that sound? That is the clock ticking on Mo’ Money’s ongoing status as a business in North Carolina.
Mo’ Money Taxes of North Carolina has until 5 pm today to decide if it will continue to defend itself from an enforcement action brought against the tax preparation chain by the North Carolina Department of Justice. DOJ is pursuing the case on behalf of the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks.
A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday, May 13th in Raleigh. If it goes forward, Mo’ Money will face the possibility of losing its license in North Carolina. The impact of such a ruling would likely have greater consequences. If North Carolina prosecutes Mo’ Money, it only stands to reason that attorneys general of Virginia, Tennessee and other states would review their business practices.
The Department of Justice sent testers into Mo’ Money shops in North Carolina. The testers all came back with the same story. Mo’ Money never displayed the costs of its refund anticipation loans. This is a violation of the North Carolina Refund Anticipation Loan Act. The (more…)
On Tuesday, BankTalk slammed the recent surge in Pacific Capital shares (see “Is there a Bubble at Pacific Capital?). Pacific Capital has soared from less than $1 to over $4 this year. On Wednesday, Pacific Capital shares closed at $4.07. On Thursday morning, they opened at $1.98, and today they are trading at about $1.85. The game-changing news: Pacific Capital accepted a massive stock-diluting investment from Texas financier Gerald Ford. Ford will now own 91 percent of PCBC, providing that shareholders (including the Treasury Department) approve the sale.
North Carolina slam-dunked the initial round of Census 2010 turnout. Census reports that 74 percent of North Carolina households returned their form. By the way, the Old North State is in a race with New Jersey to claim a Congressional seat. Jersey didn’t get out the count, with just 72 percent of households mailing back before the deadline.
I am shocked at the loan volumes in the new HMDA data. The banks might have been trying to say otherwise, but they really didn’t make a lot of loans in 2009. Case in point, Bank of America made 3,683 conventional home purchase loans for single-family houses (owner-occupants, first lien) in its hometown in 2008. In 2009, they made 1072 in Charlotte. Same town, different bank: Wells/Wachovia made 3,064 such loans in 2008, but just 1,047 in 2009. Pinch me and tell me the data is wrong!
I’m wondering about how wise it was for Arizona to decide to be so draconianright now. (I’m also wondering how wise it is, ever.) If your state stands to win or lose hundreds of millions of dollars depending upon how well it can get out a count of its residents, don’t you think you’d want to put off plans to deport them until after Census 2010? Yes, the bill will not go into effect until 90 days after the end of the current legislative session. Even so, I would imagine that its threat will be felt right away. How receptive are immigrants going to be when a government worker knocks on their door, asking to record who lives at this address?
Early analyses of Census 2010 participation rates are promising for North Carolina.
You can go to the Census 2010 page to see how many of your neighbors have returned their forms. The return rate is very important, as budgets for the next ten years will be weighted by the results of this count. Right now, approximately 67 percent of households have already replied.
North Carolinians should be paying close attention to their results. As of April 14th, 69 percent of households in the state have sent their forms back in. That is already higher than the 66 percent of households that replied in 2000. The fact that North Carolina is trending slightly above the national average is good news. Still, a higher rate of return would mean a lot for our state. North Carolina is one of the states on the edge of gaining an additional seat in Congress. In 2000, Utah mounted and then lost a challenge to wrest a Congressional seat from North Carolina. This time, North Carolina is seen as competing with New Jersey. That is promising, as New Jersey is responding at just 67 percent to date. Some say that Texas could gain as many as four new seats. That promise looks to be endangered by their participation, though. Only 62 percent of households have responded.
There are some significant variations in regional response rates. The counties between Chatham (75 percent) and Buncombe are all recording rates above 70 percent. In Davie County, 75 percent of households have replied. That is good news. By contrast, the Sand Hills are lagging. Only Moore County is above 70 percent. Robeson (61 percent), Hoke (63 percent), (more…)
The latest gathering at North Carolina’s Institute for Emerging Issues challenged leaders to evaluate how creativity can transform businesses and local communities. This is an important question in the era of globalization. It attempts to solve a big problem – employment and growth for a state continues to shed traditional manufacturing jobs.
I believe that these questions also hold relevance for our non-profit community. Non-profits should be engines for innovation, but all too often, their environment put little emphasis on change. That emphasis may be a product of the funding culture that they work within, but it also reflects how non-profits manage their own entities.
Non-profits should be where we work out problems. They can use their ability to gather funding without having to answer to shareholders. Is that how it always works? Well, sometimes. Ask yourself – does your non-profit solve new problems, or does it meet needs at lower costs? Does your non-profit reproduce something that could be done by a private business?
The promise of non-profits is that they are freed, by their non-profit status, to produce results without market incentives. They can solve public good problems. Remember those – the ones that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable? Think of clean air. Think about “orphan drugs.” Think about the application of knowledge.
We need a solution to prevent the onset of tuberculosis in HIV-positive patients. The market may not find the answer. Pharmaceutical companies are not putting adequate resources to the task of finding a solution because it is unlikely that such a vaccine would treat consumers with the ability to pay enough for the cost of the research. Instead, our pharmaceutical companies seek to find the next diet pill or something to treat shortcomings in bed. We have more research spent on baldness than on malaria. Baldness affects older men. Living to be old is a luxury in many parts of the world. Moreover, if you have money to spend on resolving baldness, you probably are not someone with really big problems. Malaria impacts poor children, often those living without adequate housing, and often in developing countries.
The restructuring of North Carolina’s workforce is one of these problems. Long-term, the only way that we are going to get to a Creative Workforce is through a commitment over many years to changing how we educate our children. We need to focus on problem solving, and not merely on mastering tasks. Businesses will ultimately benefit from that achievement. Our local economy will benefit. Who pays for the cost of finding those remedies? Who pays the cost of teaching our young people, and re-training our older workers, for a period of time that can legitimately turn around their capacities? The Leandro decision tells us that we are not getting it done. We have a 30 percent dropout rate and a 50 percent drop out rate among minority men.
Bill Gates (at TED, here) wants to know how “we can make a teacher great.” It seems like an important problem, he says, but the fact is that we don’t spend money on this problem and we really don’t even know what factors make
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teachers effective. Our workforce’s value comes from the top 20 percent, but businesses are increasingly going to where they can find skilled workers. If our teacher’s can’t produce, then businesses will go to Bangalore or Vienna or wherever they are located.
Non-profits should go where business won’t. They can solve problems in places where there are not adequate market incentives. Everyone benefits, because there are instances when no firm will bear the costs of innovation. Venture capital, by contrast, will pay for innovation in some instances – when there is a clear opportunity to make a fortune (more…)
CRA-NC has prepared a video documenting the efforts of North Carolina housing counselors seeking to prompt changes in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).
Our motivation was simple: we wanted to get the word out to the leaders in DC that loan modifications have been slow. We wanted to let people hear the voices of housing counselors.
Housing counselors are the foot soldiers in the battle against foreclosures. Housing counselors meet with families that are in trouble. Housing counseling is mainly funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Unfortunately, funding pays for operational costs but not for the sunk costs of office space and utility bills. Counseling agencies are constantly strapped. They cannot charge their clients, and they must outfit their operations to meet HUD standards. Most housing counselors are paid very little, even thought they can make a big difference in keeping a family in their home.
The work is tireless. The work is ground zero for the foreclosure crisis. Housing counselors negotiate with servicers. Housing counselors know what is working, and what is not working.
If you click on the movie below, you’ll be able to see a short documentary highlighting the Modify This Tour.
Housing counselors from non-profits across North Carolina rolled out to the Capitol to talk about loan modifications. More than 50 counselors were there, along with staff from CRA-NC and NCHFA. We were joined by ChangeMakers, a community organizing group from Brooklyn, New York. The counselor led the show. They asked the questions and made their opinions known to our invited guest:
We look forward to continuing this fight. Change is not instant, but incremental. More foreclosures are expected. HAMP is not working. Our national leadership now acknowledging that the servicers are dragging their feet. They are “not doing a good job,” according to Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Michael Barr.
