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The Senate held two votes yesterday on measures to ensure that student loan rates do not double in July—and the issue remained exactly where it began: stuck, The Washington Post reported yesterday. The measures each failed to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to move forward, as the parties remain at loggerheads over how to pay for the $6 billion loan subsidy. If unresolved, loan rates will rise from 3.4 to 6.8 percent on July 1. Leaders in both parties have said they want to freeze rates for another year. Democrats have proposed paying for the additional year of loan subsidies by ending a tax provision that allows executives of some small businesses to collect some of their income as business profits instead of wages. On a 51-43 vote, the measure failed to advance. The Republican proposal would have paid for the loan-rate freeze by eliminating the preventative health care fund created in the 2010 health care act. The White House has said Obama would veto that bill, but it failed to move ahead in the Senate on a 34-62 vote.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been sued by a homeowner who accused the bank of forcing the holders of mortgages it services to pay for “excessive amounts of flood insurance coverage,” Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Mathew Scheetz of Fort Collins, Colo., sued the bank on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan. He is seeking to represent a nationwide class of mortgage borrowers and asked for unspecified damages. The suit follows the announcement by New York state regulators of its investigation into rates for so-called force-placed insurance, which is taken out on homes by banks or mortgage servicers when, for example, a homeowner’s policy lapses or the bank decides the borrower doesn’t have enough coverage.

Most Americans at least occasionally spend more than they make, but they're mostly OK with that, Fox Business reported today. The May 2012 COUNTRY Financial Security Index indicated that while 52 percent of respondents spent in excess of their monthly income in at least a couple of months of each year, only 9 percent said their lifestyle is more than they can afford. On a positive note, the survey found 51 percent of respondents had a household budget in place. "Half of Americans have taken an important first step in setting up a budget," said Keith Brannan, vice president of financial security planning for COUNTRY Financial. "But a budget is only helpful if it's realistic and tailored to your situation." COUNTRY Financial identified a "perception gap" between how individuals view their finances and their actual spending habits. Perhaps because most families have a budget, they don't see their overspending as a problem. To compensate for excess expenses, those surveyed used a variety of tactics: 36.2 percent used money from a savings account, 21.7 percent used a credit card, 12.3 percent delayed bill payments and 7.8 percent borrowed money.

The Times-Picayune, a 175-year-old fixture in New Orleans and a symbol of the city’s resilience during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has buckled under the pressures of the modern newspaper market, The New York Times reported yesterday. Advance Publications said Thursday that it would scale back the printed edition to three days a week and impose staff cuts as a way to reduce costs as well as shift its emphasis to expanded online coverage. The decision will leave New Orleans as the most prominent American city without a daily newspaper, but it also reflects the declining lure of the paper as a printed product. In 2005, before Katrina, the paper had a daily circulation of 261,000; in March 2012, the circulation was 132,000. The developments were the latest instance of reorganization in a rapidly changing industry, which continues to struggle with declining advertising revenue and the changing preferences of readers for online news outlets. Data tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed that papers with a circulation of 25,000 or more had a 21 percent drop in circulation between 2007 and 2012.

The trustee for MF Global Holdings Inc.'s brokerage unit said he has received $168 million in cash from JPMorgan Chase & Co, which had been the commodities and futures brokerage firm's main bank prior to its October bankruptcy, Reuters reported on Friday. James Giddens, the trustee for the MF Global Inc. unit, said that the money represents proceeds of excess collateral that the largest U.S. bank held when the unit began to liquidate. He said that the payment will help his efforts to return money to former MF Global customers, and that he remains in talks with JPMorgan on other claims. An estimated $1.6 billion of customer funds has disappeared from MF Global, which had been run by Jon Corzine, a former New Jersey governor and senator.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said that a bankruptcy judge did not "clearly err" when he ruled in favor of Tousa's unsecured creditors, reversing a district court ruling, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The creditors had successfully challenged a series of financial transactions in connection with Tousa's ill-fated purchase of rival Florida builder Transeastern Properties Inc. The decision is a win for Tousa bondholders, including hedge fund Aurelius Capital Management. Mark Brodsky's $2.5 billion hedge fund owns several hundred millions of Tousa's bond debt and stands to reap big profits if the appellate ruling stands.

To read a detailed summary the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision and obtain a copy of the ruling, make sure to visit ABI's Volo site:
http://volo.abi.org/senior-transeastern-lenders-v-official-committee-of…

A group of Delta Petroleum's securities investors who say that the company's stock traded at artificially high prices have been given approval by a bankruptcy court to proceed with a lawsuit against Delta Petroleum's top executives, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. On April 18, shareholders filed a case with the U.S. District Court in Colorado against Delta Petroleum's chairman, chief executive and chief financial officer.

K&L Gates LLP must face a lawsuit over drink maker Le-Nature's Inc.'s collapse, a Pennsylvania appeals court ruled in reinstating a $500 million case against the law firm, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy trustee Marc Kirschner sued K&L Gates in September 2009 in Pennsylvania state court, alleging that the firm's failure to detect fraud at the company resulted in losses of more than $500 million. K&L Gates was hired by Le-Nature's to investigate allegations of improper conduct in 2003, according to court documents. The trial court's December 2010 dismissal of the complaint was an error, the appeals court said yesterday.

Bankruptcy Judge Cecilia G. Morris on Friday turned down hedge-fund manager Claren Road Asset Management's demand for unfettered public access to all of a scathing examiner's report into Dynegy Holdings LLC's pre-bankruptcy dealings, saying that the desire for public access were outweighed by Dynegy management's needs of confidentiality, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Friday. While reading her ruling, Judge Morris repeatedly capped sentences with the phrase "at this time," echoing arguments by Dynegy lawyers that full public access--if deemed necessary--could be determined at a later date. Independent examiner Susheel Kirpalani's report, released in March, denounced Dynegy Holding's transfer of its coal assets before its bankruptcy proceedings to publicly traded parent Dynegy Inc. His findings threw Dynegy Holdings' already contentious chapter 11 case into more disarray but, after mediation sessions with Kirpalani himself, the company last month disclosed a deal with most objecting groups to shift the coal assets back to creditors.

Pfizer Inc.'s bankrupt Quigley Co. unit will continue its eight-year bankruptcy, and seeks to challenge a federal appeals court ruling, a Pfizer lawyer said, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Jay Goffman told Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein yesterday that Pfizer may challenge a higher court's ruling in April that found Pfizer is not entitled to protection from some asbestos claims related to Quigley. Pfizer also plans to proceed with Quigley's bankruptcy, and seeks to have it exit court protection in September. Quigley, founded in 1916, made three products for the steel industry from the 1940s to the 1970s that contained asbestos. Pfizer bought Quigley in 1968, and the company stopped most operations in 1992, filing for bankruptcy in 2004. Pfizer has said that it never made or sold any Quigley products, and some claimants had not released Pfizer from alleged "derivative liability." Judge Bernstein had ruled in bankruptcy court that Quigley's chapter 11 case barred certain lawsuits against Pfizer. A May 2011 decision in district court reversed the order, and Pfizer had appealed that ruling.