Obama and Romney Tax Plans Are Pie-in-the-Sky [Bloomberg]
U.S. presidential elections often produce half-baked proposals. The campaign websites of President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney are loaded with 10-point plans to reform everything from education and Social Security to energy policy. But not their tax plans. Both offer the vaguest of nostrums for the most important issues of our day: What size government do we want? How will we pay for it? And how should the burden be fairly distributed? Rather than engage in serious discussions of such overarching questions, the candidates offer confection.
Knight Gets $400 Million Lifeline [WSJ]
The Jersey City, N.J.-based firm told regulators in a filing Monday that the firm had entered into a "securities purchase agreement" on Aug. 6, selling $400 million worth of 2% convertible preferred stock in itself to a group of investors. Those securities will be convertible into about 267 million shares of common stock in the company. Knight currently has about 89 million shares outstanding. The deal was anticipated to be "consummated" Monday, according to the filing from Knight.
Auditors question PwC reform role [FT]
The involvement of a PwC expert in the political process of reforming European accounting law has prompted fresh concern about links between the biggest auditors and those who are supposed to regulate them. The Cypriot government borrowed a PwC technical expert to assist it with pushing forward accounting reform during its six-month presidency of the European Union, which began last month. The month-long secondment, which occurred shortly before Cyprus took the EU helm, alarmed some rivals to PwC, the world’s biggest auditor and consultant by sales. One senior figure at another auditor said the arrangement risked opening the door for PwC to influence reform or respond quicker to regulatory developments than competitors. Mazars, another rival, called for a “thorough review” of secondments by the four biggest auditors – PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG – to government departments, regulators and accounting standard-setters. “At the very least, increased transparency is long overdue,” Mazars said.
A Canadian man was arrested late Thursday for exposing and fondling himself in front of two young girls as they rode a bike and a scooter around a Key Largo campground, according to a news release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. The girls told their parents, who notified the Sheriff's Office. Deputies arrived at the campground just before midnight and met with the girls who described the man to them, who they said had his pants down and fondled himself. The girls fled but waited several hours before telling their parents because they said they were afraid of their parent’s reaction to the information, the release stated. The man, Philippe Charron, 23, was found at his campsite and positively identified by the girls.