Tell It To Al

A Chicago tax lawyer says his client simply forgot about the $32 million he had stashed away in an offshore bank account, according to a report on the Chicago Tribune’s website.

See, this is why we the IRS has an amnesty program for people who simply can’t keep track of all of their assets after hiding them for so many years.

Robert McKenzie of Arnstein & Lehr told the Tribune he’s representing 78 people who want to come clean about their secret offshore accounts under the soon-to-expire program.

“The question I ask my clients is, ‘What’s it worth to sleep at night?’” McKenzie told Tribune blogger and reporter Ameet Sachdev.

Of course, it’s easy to sleep at night if you really can’t remember your $32 million offshore account.

The IRS is extending the deadline on its tax amnesty program – originally set to expire this week – until Oct. 15. The IRS says it’s to give tax cheats – I mean, you know, guys who just forgot – to get their paperwork together.

So far, more than 3,000 people have lined up for the program, which offers reduced penalties and no jail time. The IRS says it will not extend the program again. Click here to read more of those details in a report by the Associated Press.

The program may be a sign of just how bad the economy has really gotten

When the economy was humming a long, and everybody was getting rich from stock options and mortgages, the IRS did not seem the least bit concerned about offshore bank accounts. Now, instead of dinking around with little offshore banks in the Caribbean, it’s gone right for the jugular at Swiss banking giant, UBS AG.

In August, UBS agreed to turn over details on 4,450 accounts suspected of holding undeclared assets from American customers. In February it to pay a $780 million fine and turn over up to 300 client names.

The IRS is trying to send a clear message: The days of dodging taxes via offshore bank accounts is over. Pay up. We’ve got an $11 trillion deficit over here on the mainland.

The Conference Board - the people who bring you the Consumer Confidence Index, the Leading Economic Indicators and the Help-Wanted Indexes among other economic barometers – today released its “guiding principles” for companies considering executive compensation.

Apparently CEO pay has gotten so out of hand, even the CEOs at the Conference Board are noticing that nobody really trusts corporations any more.

“Real – and perceived – abuses in executive compensation have contributed to this loss of trust,” said Robert E. Denham and Rajiv L. Gupta, co-chairs of The Conference Board Task Force on Executive Compensation in a joint statement. “Task Force report provides a practical set of guidelines that, if appropriately implemented, can make significant progress in restoring credibility in our corporations.”

Denham is a partner of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP; the former chairman and CEO of Salomon Inc; and a director at Wesco Financial Corp., Chevron Corp., Fomento, Economico Mexicano S.A.B., and The New York Times Co.

Gupta is former Chairman and CEO of Rohm and Haas Co. and a director at The Vanguard Group, Inc., Tyco International Ltd., and the Hewlett-Packard Co.

At the risk of stating what has long been the obvious, here are their guiding principles for companies that want to restore trust after years of mindlessly paying their executives anything they ask for:

* “Establish a clear link between pay, strategy and performance;

* “Provide compensation that is fair, affordable and clearly aligned with actual performance;

* “Eliminate controversial compensation practices that conflict with the notions of fairness and pay for performance – such as excessive golden parachutes, overly generous severance arrangements, gross-ups of parachute payments or perquisites, and golden coffins – unless specific justification exists;

* “Demonstrate credible board oversight of executive compensation; and

* “Foster transparency with respect to compensation practices and appropriate dialogue between boards and shareholders.”

The Conference Board delivers information to more than 18,000 senior executives annually. Maybe some of this will read this. It may just give them just one more thing to laugh about on their way to the bank.

There are a half a dozen proposals winding their way through Congress to extend the first-time homebuyers’ credit that has been propping up a troubled real estate market. I talked about it with Shawn Patrick of Denver’s 9News.

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Engineering genius Eddie Sturman wants to take the internal combustion engine into the digital age.

He says the engines we’ve been using in our cars for 100 years would be up to 50% more efficient if we simply replaced their cam-driven valves with digital technology. Emissions would be a lot cleaner, too.

Sturman argues it’s a better alternative than hybrids and electric cars. And his motors could burn just about any fuel from natural gas to biofuels.

Click here to read column.

(PHOTOS: Eddie Sturman and his wall of patents. Sturman’s name is on 90 patents. Below, an engine modified with Sturman’s technology.)

I make a brief appearance in this report on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s remark that the recession is very likely over on Denver’s NBC affiliate 9News.

The bad news is that Bernanke added plenty of caveats, saying unemployment and credit would remain challenging. In other words, the nation’s gross domestic product may be going up, but you are not.

Lending has declined for six consecutive months at the banks that got the biggest bailouts.

The Obama administration says it would have declined even more if it were not for the bailouts.

The nation’s unemployment rate is zooming toward double digits.

The Obama administration says it would be soaring even higher if it were not for the jobs it was saving.

The economy has remained in a deep recession since December 2007.

The Obama administration says if it would have been a depression were it not for the unprecedented actions it has taken.

Maybe all of this is true. But how is anyone to know? I mean, no matter how bad things get, things can always be worse.

Wendell Potter was once a spokesman for a health insurance company. Now he’s an industry critic and a champion of health care reform. President Obama even cited Potter’s words in his health care address last week. Click here to read my column on what’s eating Potter about the health care industry. I also talk about his epiphany with David Asman on Fox Business.

OK, so instead of being sick as a dog, you may be sick as a pig.

Other than that, swine flu, or A(H1N1) is just another flu, say researchers at Stratfor Global Intelligence.

“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believes that hospitalization rates and mortality rates for A(H1N1) are similar to or lower than they are for more traditional influenza strains,” Strarfor notes in an analysis released today.

“Influenza data are incomplete at best and rarely cross-comparable, so any assertions of the likelihood of mass deaths are little more than scaremongering bereft of any real analysis or, more important, any actual evidence,” the report said. “There is no indication that A(H1N1) will cause even a shadow of the disruption that the hysteria of months past suggested.”

The key distinctions to be made about swine flu is that affects people 24 and younger, and pregnant women, more than the elderly. And it comes from pigs. Oink!

I’ve been calling swine flu a media hype job since folks first started squealin’ about it last April. We’ve got to have something to write about besides the global economic collapse. And our sleight-of-hand government always needs to keep the people scared about the wrong things.

But hasn’t this swine flu hysteria played itself out already?

Here’s what I told David Asman on April 28 on Fox Business when the swine flu was new:

First a couple loses their fortune to Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, then they must surrender their $12 million Malibu, Calif., beach home to Wells Fargo Bank. The bank – which still owes taxpayers $25 billion – has yet to put the property on the market. Instead, a Wells Fargo executive has been using the home as a party pad, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. I talked about it with Shawn Patrick of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

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A reader just left a message on my voicemail, calling one of my columns, “incredibly outrageous and insulting.”

She is somehow under the impression that I support using tax dollars to give billions in bonuses to the very bankers who just helped destroy the global economy.

“I am so disgusted. … You’re not even a billionaire. Why are you supporting these guys? It’s your tax money too.

“You used to be a good, fair writer,” she said. “Now that you’re under (Rupert) Murdoch, it’s so incredibly slanted. It’s gotten to be noise. Just like Fox noise.”

Click here to hear her voicemail. She makes quite an argument.

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