Jobless benefits set to expire Dec. 1
Jobless benefits set to expire Dec. 1
WASHINGTON
Jobless benefits will run out for 2 million people during the holiday season unless they are renewed by a Congress that’s focusing more attention on a quarrel over preserving tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 a year.
It’s looking iffy at best whether Congress will renew jobless benefits averaging $310 per week nationwide that are presently claimed by almost 5 million people who have been out of work for more than six months.
An extension of jobless benefits enacted this summer expires Dec. 1, and on Thursday, a bill to extend them for three months failed in the House.
FBI agents arrest 2 Madoff associates
NEW YORK
Two longtime back-office employees of Bernard Madoff were arrested Thursday on charges that they helped the disgraced financier dupe investors for decades by making fictitious investments — and that they cashed in on the epic Ponzi scheme themselves.
FBI agents arrested Joann Crupi, 49, at her house in Westfield, N.J., and Annette Bongiorno, 62, was picked up at her home in Boca Raton, Fla.
Half drop out of mortgage program
WASHINGTON
More than half of the 1.4 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship foreclosure-prevention program have fallen out.
The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. But the latest report from the Treasury Department shows that the effort is still plagued by high failure rates.
Approximately 755,000 borrowers, or 54 percent of those who tried to get their payments lowered through the program, have been cut loose through October. That compared with a 53 percent disqualification rate through September.
Associated Press