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Ameriprise Financial Chairman and Chief Executive Officer to Present at the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference 2011
MINNEAPOLIS – December 2, 2011 – Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE: AMP) today announced that Jim Cracchiolo, chairman and chief executive officer, is scheduled to speak about the company’s business and strategy at the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference 2011 in New York City on Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at approximately 10:50 a.m. (ET). A live audio webcast of Mr. Cracchiolo’s presentation will be available to the general public through the investor relations section of the Ameriprise Financial website at ir.ameriprise.com. An audio replay will be available through the same website later that day. At Ameriprise Financial, we have been helping people feel confident about their financial future for over 115 years. With a network of 10,000 financial advisors and outstanding asset management, advisory and insurance capabilities, we have the strength and expertise to serve the full range of consumer financial needs. For mor Read more…
Pfizer acquires Excaliard
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately owned biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel drugs for the treatment of skin fibrosis, more commonly referred to as skin scarring.
“We are excited that Pfizer will continue to develop EXC 001, which has shown evidence of reducing scar severity in Phase 2 clinical trials.”
“It is imperative at Pfizer that we continue to develop new and innovative treatments to address unmet medical needs, and there is currently no FDA-approved treatment for excessive skin scarring,” said Jose-Carlos Gutierrez-Ramos, senior vice president, Biotherapeutics, Worldwide Research and Development, Pfizer. “Ac
A tale of two generations
“This book is about being middle class. Our immediate concern is to see what money really is and to learn how to live with it so that we may avoid the experience of living without it. It is also about how most Americans will die destitute, in poverty, or at best suffer a precarious old age, unwitting losers in a game with very unfavorable odds.”
Those words were not written recently. They are the opening paragraph of my first book. It was published in 1972, nearly 40 years ago. Since then, Social Security has improved, Medicare has grown, housing prices have soared (if you bought yours long enough ago), and a whole generation of retirees has gone on to live with a monthly pension check that today’s youth will never see.
Today, the young are endangered. And while everyone — and I mean everyone — may feel endangered these days, an increasing body of evidence shows that we’ve done a pretty good job of improving the condition of the elderly over the past 40 years.
Sadly, we appear to have done it at the expense of the young. Inc
Goldman Sachs Facts
A cynic would point out that both the new Greek and Italian leaders are Goldman Sachs insiders. As is the new European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi. Press Europe has the details:
Draghi was Goldman Sachs International’s vice-chairman for Europe between 2002 and 2005, a position that put him in charge of the “companies and sovereign” department, which shortly before his arrival, helped Greece to disguise the real nature of its books with a swap on its sovereign debt.
Monti was an international adviser to Goldman Sachs from 2005 until his nomination to lead the Italian government. According to the bank, his mission was to provide advice “on European business and major public policy initiatives worldwide”. As such, he was a “door opener” with a brief to defend Goldman’s interest in the corridors of power in Europe.
The third man, Lucas Papademos, was the governor of the Greek central bank from 1994 to 2002.
Time to focus on life underinsurance again
Life insurance advisers need to concentrate on the underinsurance problem and not get bogged down worrying about the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, says CommInsure GM Retail Advice Tim Browne.
“The key issue for our industry is underinsurance, and after FOFA it is back to the status quo,” he told an adviser briefing in Melbourne last week.
“We won the commissions battle but we haven’t taken the underinsurance problem forward.”
Mr Browne says advisers must confront the arguments clients use to avoid taking up life insurance.
“I estimate that if you have a cup of coffee a day, it will cost $90 a month,” he said. “Insurance for a younger person with no illness history is $29 a month. Advisers have t
Fact-Checking Michele Bachmann
In a speech in Ottumwa (IA) on October 29, Michele Bachmann claimed that in 1950, “the average amount of taxes that the average family (paid) was 5 percent overall.” Our analysis shows that this claim may be misleading; the actual total federal, state and local tax burden was 24.6 percent in 1950. While Bachmann is correct that total tax burdens have increased since the 50s (the tax total tax burden this year is 27.7 percent), the “5 percent” claim seems to be a gaffe.
The DesMoinesRegister.com covered this in a recent article, where they opined that perhaps Bachmann meant to refer to just federal tax collections as a percentage of GDP, which stood at 5.8 percent in 1950.