In brief: New consumer protections will receive fast track
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is promising to move quickly to simplify the paperwork consumers receive when taking out a home mortgage.
Obama adviser Elizabeth Warren and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday that the administration was committed to implementing, as soon as possible, several consumer protections that are part of the sweeping overhaul of the financial system that Congress passed in the summer.
Geithner and Warren made the comments at a forum at the Treasury Department.
One of the requirements of the new Dodd-Frank law is to combine and simplify two overlapping mortgage disclosure forms, one required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the other by the Federal Reserve. Despite a decade of efforts, the government has yet to combine the two overlapping forms.
The forum was the first event Warren has held since being selected to serve as the overseer of the effort to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Associated Press
Hack infiltrates Twitter
NEW YORK – A new way to cause mischief quickly spread through short-messaging service Twitter on Tuesday morning before the site could fix the problem, as mysterious “tweets” of blocked-out text propagated themselves and caused popup windows to open.
Twitter said on its “safety” feed on the site that the attack had been shut down. It also said it does not believe that any user information was compromised, rather, the “vast majority” of the breaches were pranks or promotions.
The hack had been extra nefarious because the tweets activated without being clicked on – it was enough for Web surfers to move their mouse cursors over them. But it only affected visitors to Twitter.com. Various third-party programs used to send and read tweets were unaffected.
Associated Press
Data company moves to Valley
Jigsaw Data Corp.’s Post Falls operation has relocated to the former General Dynamics site in Spokane Valley.
Jigsaw acquires, maintains and sells work phone number and e-mail information about business executives and employees to marketers and other clients. The Web-based company was acquired by Salesforce.com earlier this year.
Since 2005, Silicon Valley-based Jigsaw has had a large sales, support and operations group in its Post Falls office. A Salesforce.com spokesman said the company’s Spokane operation has more than 100 workers.
It’s moving into a building built for Spokane-based Itronix, which made ultra-rugged computers. General Dynamics acquired the company, but then shut the doors in mid-2009.
Tom Sowa
Briefcase
From wire reports
• More union votes are on tap for Delta Air Lines Inc. A union that wants to represent roughly 14,000 ramp workers says their election will run from Oct. 14 through Nov. 18. The International Association of Machinists also said it will file cards on Tuesday to trigger an election for a group of more than 16,000 workers including reservation and gate agents.
• Adobe Systems Inc. earned $230.1 million, or 44 cents per share, in the three months that ended Sept. 3. That’s up from $136 million, or 26 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.
• Brisk sales of do-it-yourself repair parts lifted AutoZone Inc.’s profit almost 14 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter.
• ConAgra Foods Inc. reported a disappointing first quarter on Tuesday, saying intense discounting and higher costs pushed the food maker’s net income down 12 percent.
• The busy summer season didn’t disappoint Carnival Corp., as better demand spurred rising prices and led to a 22 percent increase in its third-quarter net income.