The department said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave it a $60,000 grant to help with the cost of USDA certification. The money will be used to help cover up to 75 percent of farmer or product handler’s costs up to a maximum of $750.

The money can be used for new certification or a renewal that occurs in the federal fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

Anyone interested in finding out more should contact the state Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Marketing and Promotion

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment compensation dropped to 421,000 for the week ending Dec. 4, a decrease of 17,000 claims from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Not all jobless workers are insured by the unemployment compensation program. The advance seasonally adjusted rate of insured unemployed workers was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, which was a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.4 percent, the DOL said in a statement.

The DOL also released the figures for the week ending Nov. 27 for the advance number of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, which was 4,086,000. That was a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week’s revised number of 4,277,000 insured unemployed.

Advance unadjusted figures for the week ending Nov. 27 showed the percentage of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment compensation was 3.3 percent. However, the unemployment rate during that week was 9.6 percent.

Figures for the number of unemployed Americans claiming benefits under all unemployment compensation programs was from a week earlier, or the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938.

Extended unemployment compensation benefits, for jobless Americans who are covered by that insurance program, were available in 35 states and the District of Columbia for the week ending Nov. 20.

Those states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is pursuing near- and long-term goals to improve financial accountability, according to a testimony to Congress delivered Wednesday from the department’s top financial official.

Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Robert Hale told a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that he understood that, “There are enterprise-wide weaknesses in DoD financial management that demand an enterprise-wide business response.”

Citing a “new and focused” methodology, Hale said, “This new approach, I think, has established a demanding, but meaningful, goal,” adding, “It will lead, for example, to auditability for the statement of budgetary resources in all the services.”

“The new approach is one to support senior military and civilian personnel; it’s been generally endorsed by Congress, and it’s been called a reasonable approach by the Government Accountability Office,” he told Congress.

Hale stressed the need “to implement that goal,” adding, “That’s the challenge in a department that is rightfully focused on winning the war in Afghanistan and completing the mission in Iraq.”

On the weaknesses in the present system, Hale said, “The lack of auditable financial statements is an indication of those weaknesses, and it’s one of the business management weaknesses that must be resolved.”

“I think our new, focused approach and our implementation plan justifies our optimism. We are all personally committed to moving forward,” Hale added with optimistic flavor.

Earlier on the question of the present drawbacks and weaknesses in the working of the DoD, a Pentagon official told AHN that there is always scope for improvement and that the department is striving to improve in all departments.

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The House panel, in a vote of 39 to 29, approved the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 (H.R. 3126), a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s pursuit to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system.

The approved legislation would create a new federal agency, the CFPA, which would have centralized oversight of various forms of consumer credit, such as mortgages and credit cards, as well as private student loans.

The New Consumer Financial Protection Agency

The CFPA would have the authority to write new consumer lending protection rules, monitor financial institutions for compliance with these rules, and penalize institutions for any infractions. The CFPA would also have the ability to ban products, marketing tactics, and other business practices that it deems “unfair, deceptive, or abusive.”

“The Consumer Financial Protection Agency will prevent predatory lending practices and other abuses and will ensure that consumers get clear information they can understand about financial products like credit cards and mortgages,” President Obama said in a commendation of the House committee’s approval of the bill.

The measure passed despite strong Republican opposition and forceful lobbying from banks and business groups.

“It’s not about protecting consumers; it’s about a new government bureaucracy making decisions for us,” said Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House panel.

Consumer Groups Back Oversight of Private Student Loans

A number of student and consumer advocacy groups had been urging the House committee to approve bringing the CFPA’s oversight to private student loans — non-federally guaranteed education loans issued by banks and private lenders rather than by the U.S. Department of Education.

Until this year, when private student lenders have been forced to make their credit requirements much more stringent in response to skittish investors and a risk-averse credit market, private student loans had been steadily attracting more and more borrowers as families struggled to meet ever-rising college costs.

“Private student loans are one of the riskiest ways to pay for college, yet a growing number of students have private student loans as well as, or instead of, federal student loans,” a coalition of student and consumer groups wrote in a joint letter to Representative Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

“Private student loans are expensive, mostly variable-rate loans that cost more for those who can least afford them,” the letter reads. “They lack the fixed rates, consumer protections and flexible repayment options of federal student loans, and are not financial aid any more than a credit card is when used to pay for textbooks or tuition.”

The Fight for Regulation of ‘Gap Loans’

In their letter to Frank, the consumer and student advocate groups also pressed for a legislated clarification that school-sponsored “gap loans” wouldn’t be exempted from the CFPA’s oversight.

“Gap” student loans — so-called because they’re intended to cover students’ financing gaps, any attendance costs that aren’t covered by other financial aid such as grants and federal student loans — are increasingly being offered by for-profit colleges and vocational schools to boost enrollment as these institutions encounter a growing flood of unemployed and low-income students looking to return to school.

For-profit schools that provide gap financing, say that their financing programs allow students to attend school who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a higher education.

But these gap financing programs are risky and expensive for students, consumer advocates maintain. Gap loans typically carry high interest rates and large monthly payments that the schools’ generally low-income students often aren’t able to handle — all while allowing the schools to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money from the federal financial aid that students use to pay the bulk of their attendance costs.

Concerned about the potential for student loans made by for-profit schools to be exempted from the CFPA legislation under a small-business clause in the bill, consumer and student advocate groups had been lobbying in support of an amendment, sponsored by Democratic Representative Maxine Waters of California, that would have specifically placed gap loans under the authority of the CFPA.

“We just want to make sure that the risky financial products that some colleges, for-profits in particular, have been making to students are still covered by this agency,” said Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access & Success.

Proprietary colleges argued against the proposed amendment, saying that gap student loans are already regulated by the federal Truth in Lending Act. New TILA rules, mandated under last year’s Higher Education Opportunity Act (H.R. 4137) and which will go into effect in February, will require student lenders to disclose more details about their private loan programs, including interest rates and estimated monthly payments, and to inform applicants for private student loans about federal student loan options.

Consumer advocates, however, hold that TILA regulations aren’t sufficient and that the stricter oversight of the CFPA is necessary in order to protect student loan borrowers.

“To effectively protect consumers, the CFPA must have full authority to regulate private student loans regardless of the institution offering them,” the consumer and student advocate groups wrote in their letter to Frank. “For consumers, a private student loan can pose the same serious risks whether issued by a financial institution or by a school. The CFPA should apply and enforce standards based upon the product and not the issuing institution.”

Jeff Mictabor is an enthusiast on the topic of student loan issues in the news. He has been writing for the past 10 years for a variety of education publications. He now offers his writing services on a freelance basis.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/loans-articles/expanding-federal-regulation-of-private-student-loans-1456931.html