From the link:

What is a reverse mortgage? It’s a loan on your house that lets you tap your home’s equity. Like a cash advance, a bank fronts you the money—either as a lump sum, a line of credit or monthly draws—and you have to repay it eventually, with interest.

Unlike a traditional mortgage, you don’t have to repay the loan during the term of the reverse mortgage. Instead, you pay it off all at once at the end of the loan. There are no income or credit qualifications, but homeowners must be 62 or older.

You retain title and ownership of your house. You are still responsible for paying the property taxes and the costs of insurance and repairs. If you still have a regular mortgage, you either have to pay it off before taking the reverse mortgage or use part of the proceeds from the reverse mortgage to retire it

These things have been around forever, and I usually get to laugh at, or get annoyed by at least a few each year since as a freelance writer one way I increase my client base (and the least preferred method compared to clients seeking me out or getting referrals from other clients or colleagues) is responding to blind ads seeking freelance content or other writing services. A lot of these ads are justhorseshit companies looking to not pay for any services rendered, but every once in a while I come across a full-blown scam. Typically not very veiled for anyone with any amount of background in online scams.

The moral here? If you are looking for work, don’t let your situation allow you to let your guard down against scams and identity theft threats.

From the first link:

“We have seen a large proliferation of these scams over the past six to nine months because of the employment situation,” says Lyn Chitow Oaks, chief marketing officer of TrustedID, which provides identity-theft protection services to individuals, families and businesses.

She notes that identity thieves are targeting job seekers because they’re vulnerable and willing to share personal information as part of the job search process.

Two types of job search scams are most common, according to Oaks. One is a phishing scam, where identity theft perpetrators e-mail would-be victims to tell them about potential jobs and opportunities to make extra money. The e-mails direct recipients to websites that identity thieves have created specifically for gathering personal information, just as if it were a job application, says Oaks.

These fake applications request all the information job seekers would expect to provide, such as their name, address and phone number, as well as for information they may not expect to offer so early in the process, she adds, such as their Social Security number, permission to conduct a background check and bank account information.

“They tell you they need your bank account information so they can make sure your check can be direct deposited,” she says, adding that they’ll sometimes go so far as to say that they’ll place money in your account and then remove it just to make sure it work

A Democratic US senator on Friday unveiled details of a plan to create a tax credit for businesses that create jobs, as the White House has called a December summit to tackle sky-high unemployment

Senator Russ Feingold’s proposal would establish a tax credit over the next two years for businesses that hire new employees, expand work hours for current employees, or raise worker pay, his office said.

“While there’s no easy way to solve the unemployment problem, the jobs tax credit would be a targeted and responsible tool to help businesses hire workers and bring down unemployment,” according to Feingold.

The credit would amount to 15 percent of eligible payroll for 2010 and 10 percent in 2011 — and would exclude pay increases for very highly salaried workers, as well as the wages of firm owners or family members.

From the link:

The Obama administration, under pressure to show it is serious about tackling the budget deficit, is seizing on an unusual target to showcase fiscal responsibility: the $700 billion financial rescue.

The administration wants to keep some of the unspent funds available for emergencies, but is considering setting aside a chunk for debt reduction, according to people familiar with the matter. It is also expected to lower the projected long-term cost of the program — the amount it expects to lose — to as little as $200 billion from $341 billion estimated in August.

The idea is still a matter of debate within the administration and it is unclear how much impact it would have on the nation’s mounting deficit levels. Still, the potential move illustrates how the Obama administration is trying to find any way it can to bring down the deficit, which is turning into a political as well as an economic liability.

Disappointing.

From the link:

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs cut their small business loan balances by a collective $10.5 billion over the past six months, according to a government report released Monday.

Three of the 22 banks make no small business loans at all. Of the remaining 19 banks, 15 have reduced their small business loan balance since April, when the Treasury department began requiring the biggest banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding to report monthly on their small business lending.

From the link:

For the first time since the recession began, the portion of companies planning to add employees in the next six months outnumbered those expecting to cut jobs, according to this month’s quarterly survey of economists at 78 firms by the National Association for Business Economics.

Ray Kurzweil to receive The Economist’s Innovation Award

KurzweilAI.net, Oct. 29, 2009 The Economist’s Innovation Award for Computing andTelecommunications will be given to Ray Kurzweil today in London for contributions to optical character recognition (OCR) and speech recognition technology. In 1974, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the world’s first omni-font OCR, and in 1984, he created the world’s first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition technology. “Ray Kurzweil has used the advances in basic electronictechnologies to pioneer a range of innovative products inoptical character recognition, speech recognition,music, text to speech synthesis, and medicine,” said Andrew Odlyzko, Professor, School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota. “His vision and sense for how fast technology wasprogressing led to products that were usually not only first to market, but were commercially successful, and have assisted the handicapped, advanced the arts, and stimulated the imaginationof countless other technologists and entrepreneurs. His work is a stellar example of the achievements that The Economist’s Innovation Awards are intended to recognize and encourage.” “I am deeply honored to receive this recognition,” said Kurzweil, Founder, Kurzweil Computer Products (now Nuance), currently CEO, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. “In my work in optical character recognition and speech recognition, my goal was to provide new modalities for the transmission of human knowledge. As an inventor, I quickly realized that timing was critical to success, so I sought to develop models of how information technologyevolves. With these projections, we can use ourimaginations to envision inventions of the future, and I have tried to do that in my books and web sites such as KurzweilAI.net.”

From the link (hit the link for an analysis of the ongoing economic crisis and how to get out of it):