The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report.

In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in benefits payments to deceased federal annuitants, according to the agency’s inspector general. Total annual payouts range between $100 million and $150 million.

Inspector General Patrick E. McFarland, who previously reported on the improper payments in 2005 and 2008, urged OPM to more closely track such mistakes.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Washington Post

Oil rose to the highest level in almost four weeks in New York, advancing with gasoline and heating oil as East Coast refineries worked to restart after Hurricane Irene and on signs the housing market is stabilizing.

Crude futures increased as gasoline jumped after Sunoco Inc. shut a fuel-making unit at its Philadelphia refinery and other terminals slowed rates. ConocoPhillips’s plant in Linden, New Jersey, remains shut after Irene, according to the Energy Department. The decline in home prices in June matched the previous month, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index.

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U.S. finance companies saw their performance improve even as the overall economy stumbled in the second quarter, according to an industry report from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.

Lower credit costs and favorable funding markets allowed finance companies to issue and refinance more debt, the ratings firm said, even amid sluggish economic output and persistently high unemployment rates. Concerns about a renewed economic slowdown have rattled investors in recent months, especially during an extremely volatile August.

At the same time, S&P said persistent economic worries could cloud credit markets during the rest of the year, particularly for speculative-grade financial companies.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Wall Street Journal

The former chief financial officer of a major U.S. home builder accused of committing accounting fraud five years ago is giving back roughly $1.4 million in bonuses and stock profits.

James O’Leary, the former CFO of Beazer Homes USA Inc., agreed to return the money to the company in a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday. He admitted no wrongdoing.

O’Leary wasn’t charged in connection with the accounting violations. But an anti-fraud law enacted in 2002 requires senior executives to repay bonuses, other incentive pay and stock profits received during a period in which their company violated financial reporting rules. The SEC is empowered to recoup the money for the company.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Huffington Post

Brent crude rose to the highest level in nearly a month on Tuesday, boosted by concerns about gasoline supplies and the threat of another tropical storm.

Further support for prices came after Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said he favored strong central bank accommodation for a substantial period of time, as the U.S. economy looks to be moving “sideways.”

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Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks about the U.S. housing market and economy, and his prescription for government action to boost growth and employment.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Bloomberg

Americans are depressed about their economic prospects but continue to spend their way through their latest downturn in sentiment, new consumer confidence data showed Tuesday.

The latest survey from the New York-based Conference Board, a business-research center, had its Consumer Confidence Index plunging almost 15 points to 44.5 in August, down from 59.2 points in July. The steep drop reflected the lowest point in consumer confidence since April 2009, a month when the economy shed 539,000 jobs amid recession and financial crisis.

Blame for the steep drop fell on Congress and Washington’s political brinksmanship over the debt ceiling, which took the nation to the verge of a first-ever debt default. Having left Washington at the end of the flap, members of Congress are set to return next week for more bickering over federal finance.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Miami Herald

Stocks end a touch firmer having chopped in mixed trading as Wall Street digested mixed economic data and cloudy Fed comments. Equities returned to red in the immediate wake of the afternoon release of Federal Reserve meeting minutes, then firmed anew.

Cautious comments from one regional Fed chief, in which he showed his support for more help for the economy, sparked early volatility. Meanwhile, meeting minutes show there was no clear consensus among Fed members at their August 9 session about what the next easing step would be.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Seeking Alpha

S&P/Case-Shiller Indices for US housing market rise for the third consecutive month (non-seasonally adjusted).

The 10-city composite for June (which is the three-month average of April, May and June) rose by 1.1%, while the 20-city composite rose by 1.1% on a month-on-month basis. On a seasonally adjusted basis, however, the 10-city composite is basically flat, and the 20-city composite declined slightly by 0.1% vs. the expectation of 0% change.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Business Insider

Alan Krueger, the Princeton economist recruited to lead President Obama’s economics team just before the president is set to announce a major new jobs initiative, has done some influential research on unemployment.

In one of his most recent studies, a January working paper with Andreas Mueller of Stockholm University, Krueger found that the longer the jobless were out of work, the less time they devoted to searching for a new job.

Read the whole story: Courtesy Huffington Post