As the legislative session drew to a close last June, a bill that would affect every New York driver was quietly introduced.

It allowed insurance companies to hike auto insurance premiums by as much as 5% a year without state approval.

At the time, New York had the second-highest premiums in the nation.

Still, there were no public hearings and little public debate – and it took just 12 days for the measure to become law.

The bill was introduced in the Senate on June 18 and the Assembly a day later. On June 24 it passed both houses and Gov. Paterson signed it into law on June 30.

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Dear Bruce: A financial planner has advised my wife and me to take out a reverse mortgage on our home, which we own free and clear. They recommend we use the funds to purchase a $350,000 life insurance policy on my wife. This, they advised, would allow our daughter to inherit the $350,000 with no tax liability. We could then invest the remaining money and have more income. We own some rental property that is free and clear and have approximately $700,000 in cash assets. We would like to know if getting a reverse mortgage is a good investment strategy for our situation. – R.P., via e-mail

Dear R.P.: Maybe I’ve missed something, but it seems to me that your financial adviser is an insurance salesman. Why in the world would you pay the rather high interest and fees, which are perfectly proper on a reverse mortgage and are desirable for many people, to produce a life insurance policy? Unless your assets are considerably larger than you’re describing, properly set up there would be no federal income tax at least for the next couple of years, and, depending on what Congress does about extending the death benefits, there may never be. Until such time as you know that, the only guy that benefits as I see is the insurance salesman selling a rather substantial life insurance policy. I would be very happy to listen to any arguments beyond those that you have mentioned here. I can see no advantage to anyone but the insurance guy.

Found here.

With 30-year fixed mortgage rates diving below 5 percent, local lenders have been swamped with new refinancing business.

No floodgates have been opened in the metropolitan area home buying market, however.

“I don’t see rates as the magic bullet that’s going to compel people to enter the residential real estate market en masse,” said Dan O’Dell, an agent with Realty Executives of Kansas City. “If they’re not coming in at 5 (percent), they’re not going to come in at 4.5 or even 4.”

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Frequent Filers Draw Ire of Courts and Spur Calls for Crackdown; Small Investors Say Companies Need Policing

Some shareholders seem to have unusually rotten luck. They repeatedly invest in companies where management is allegedly inept — or worse. Some head to court, filing suit after suit in a seeming quest to hold corporate officers and directors accountable.

Some judges see it differently: that some plaintiffs are little more than pawns for lawyers in search of big settlements. Last year, New York federal judge Denise Cote dismissed a suit against J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., after the lead plaintiff, an elderly Arizona investor, admitted he thought his owns claims lacked merit.

Should courthouse doors be closed, at least slightly, to some shareholder plaintiffs? A number of lawyers and academics say they should. They argue that too many shareholder suits are filed by repeat or unqualified plaintiffs — investors whose efforts generate fees for lawyers but don’t do enough to address genuine grievances.

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About $11 billion of defaulted or foreclosed commercial properties were being offered for sale last month as landlords struggled to refinance loans, Real Capital Analytics Inc. said.

About $5.7 billion worth of properties defaulted, were foreclosed upon or entered bankruptcy in February, the New York-based research firm said in a report Tuesday.

The situation “is likely to only worsen over the near term since behind the statistics are sellers that are rapidly morphing from pressured to distressed, while buyers are content to wait,” Real Capital analysts said.

With U.S. unemployment at 8.1 percent, the highest in a quarter-century, and more than 100,000 people and companies filing for bankruptcy in February, commercial property defaults are poised to rise. That may lift the vacancy rate at office buildings to 16.7 percent this year from 14.5 percent at the end of 2008, analysts at New York-based Reis estimate.

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Editor: A certain Merced widow is a 74-year-old cancer survivor with a Social Security benefit of $1,197 per month. Her only medical coverage is Medicare, and she needs Medi-Cal to assist with her maintenance medications.

She is not eligible for Medi-Cal unless she spends $126.06 per month on private medical or dental insurance premiums. She cannot buy private medical insurance because of her age and health history, so she purchases three private dental policies. She cannot use the benefits from these policies, as she has dentures and requires no dental care.

The Medi-Cal workers, the insurance broker, and Hi-Cap are all aware of these requirements and call it an inequity in our system.

When there are such pressing issues with state revenues and a desire to cut the spending on Medi-Cal programs, why would there be regulations requiring our elderly citizens to purchase insurance they cannot use to qualify for benefits?

It appears to me this is another faulted law that was written to favor wealthy insurance companies and harm our elderly.

What is wrong with our system?

Found here.

You’ve heard the saying a man’s best friend is his dog. For Steve Hogan, his horses are his best friends.

“I’m kind of a homebody. I love to come home and play with my horses,” said Hogan.

It’s really the only hobby he has. Like a lot of Americans, Hogan works two jobs so he can provide for his kids and pay the bills, including a hefty mortgage.

“It’s hard to come up with that payment every month after month and it’s close to $1,000 and I’d just like to get it back down to where it was at one time, that I could afford.,” Hogan said.

A year ago, Hogan’s monthly mortgage was roughly $600. When he divorced, he had to refinance his home.

“I had to pay out some equity, so I ended up with about $400 more in my house payment than what I previously had,” said Hogan.

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Massachusetts’ health insurance law will not be sustainable over the next five to 10 years unless the state takes significant steps to reduce health care spending growth, government and industry officials say, the New York Times reports. Architects of the 2006 law said that it would not have been feasible to include heavy cost control measures in the legislation. According to the Times, “Now those stakeholders and the state government have a huge investment to protect. But the task of cost-cutting remains difficult in a state with a long tradition of heavy spending on health care.”

Spending on health insurance programs in the state is expected to increase by 42%, or $595 million, this year, compared with 2006, and nearly 60% of the newly insured are covered by public health insurance programs. Since the law took effect, about 432,000 people have obtained coverage, leaving about 2.6% of the state’s population uninsured — about one-sixth the national average.

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Landlords Lobby to Keep Current 210-Day Accept/Reject Time Frame Intact

“Circuit City Unplugged: Why Did Chapter 11 Fail to Save 34,000 Jobs?” was the title of a hearing held last week by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. At the hearing, Representative Jerrold Nadler (Democrat, NY) and Harvey Miller, a partner specializing in bankruptcy law at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, recommended that Congress consider lengthening the 210-day deadline bankrupt retailers have under bankruptcy protection to accept or reject a lease.

Until the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) went into effect on October 17, 2005, retailers that filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 had an initial 60 days to accept or reject a lease; but extensions were routinely granted, allowing the decision to be delayed for months, and in some cases, years. With the premise that the previous rule presented an onerous financial burden against landlords, by allowing the fate of a space sit in limbo for months or even years, BAPCPA extended the initial accept/reject deadline to 120 days with a one-time optional extension of only 90 days (unless the landlord grants further consent), bringing the maximum decision deadline to 210 days.

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Connecticut lawmakers say they hope to change a state law that’s being partially blamed by insurance giant American International Group as a reason for paying $165 million in retention bonuses to its executives.

House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr. says while it’s too late to stop this latest round of bonus payments, he hopes the General Assembly can revamp the Connecticut Wage Act to exempt bonuses before AIG issues another round of bonus checks.

AIG has said it’s bound by Connecticut law to pay the bonuses because its financial products division is headquartered in Wilton. If the bonuses aren’t paid, employees could sue for double the damages.

Cafero says Connecticut law should not be used as a “scapegoat” by AIG for its decision to pay the bonuses.

Found here.