jinkyulee's Xanga

Monday, August 29, 2005

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 07:34:05 GMT

==> my opinion

watch out /

I serch the map and the Giient will take effect on your place..

As you and I heard and was tought from father

safty is the most important thing in our life..

Powerful Storm Threatens Havoc Along Gulf Coast

By JOSEPH B. TREASTER and ABBY GOODNOUGH

Published: August 29, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 28 - Hurricane Katrina, one of the most powerful storms ever to threaten the United States, bore down on the Gulf Coast on Sunday, sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the approach of its 160-mile-an-hour winds and prompting a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, a city perilously below sea level.

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Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The normally bustling French Quarter was nearly deserted Sunday night as New Orleans residents sought shelter from Katrina. More Photos >

The Potential Impact of Hurricane Katrina
New Orleans's distinct terrain makes it particularly vulnerable to the storm surges, heavy rains and high winds of a hurricane.

WEB RESOURCES
National Hurricane Center (nhc.noaa.gov)
Tracking Hurricane Katrina (nhc.noaa.gov)
Hurricane Photos (flickr.com)

New Orleans Prepares for Hurricane Katrina

Thousands Flee Hurricane's Path

Storm Imperils Gulf Coast

Casinos: In Slot Machines' Silence, a Storm's Economic Cost (August 29, 2005)

Oil and Gas: Approaching Storm Slows Oil Output in Gulf of Mexico (August 29, 2005)

The Storm: With Few Warning Signs, an Unpredictable Behemoth Grew (August 29, 2005)

Forum: Hurricane Katrina

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

As Katrina approached, three Atlantic bottlenose dolphins were evacuated from the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Miss., to a Holiday Inn pool. More Photos >

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," said Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who issued the order to evacuate. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

The hurricane's eye was expected to make landfall around daybreak on Monday in southeastern Louisiana, possibly squarely in New Orleans.

The city has avoided a direct hit from a powerful storm since Hurricane Betsy in 1965. In addition to the dangerous winds, Mr. Nagin said, Hurricane Katrina could bring 15 inches of rain and a storm surge of 20 feet or higher that would "most likely topple" the network of levees and canals that normally protect the bowl-shaped city from flooding.

That possibility was enough for many of the city's 485,000 residents to heed the mayor's call to leave, paralyzing traffic along major highways from just after daybreak and into the evening.

"I probably won't have a house when I go back," Tanya Courtney, 25, who lives in the city's French Quarter, said Sunday in Gulfport, Miss., where she and a group of friends bound for Atlanta stopped for a rest.

The approaching storm shut down much of the oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, which is responsible for one-quarter of American oil production. The price of oil rose more than $4 a barrel on Sunday. (Related Article)

Many in New Orleans, including stranded tourists, stayed behind, with as many as 10,000 of them crowding into the Superdome arena, which the city designated as a shelter of last resort.

People five and six abreast waited in line for hours to get into the arena, clutching children, blankets and pillows, oversize pieces of luggage or plastic bags filled with belongings.

"When you are on a holiday you don't really follow these kind of things," Neil Coffey, 35, a tourist from Britain, said as he stood in line to get into the Superdome. "We were surprised. We don't get hurricanes like this at home."

Ernest Paulin Jr., a 55-year-old unemployed welder from New Orleans, said he looked around his three-bedroom wood-frame house where he has lived alone since the death of his wife last year and decided to head for the Superdome.

"I just didn't want to take a chance," said Mr. Paulin, who like many arrived with hastily packed possessions. He was carrying a small plastic bag containing his eyeglasses, medication and a paperback book, the Tony Hillerman novel "First Eagle."

After crossing South Florida late last week, killing nine people as a weaker storm, Hurricane Katrina intensified over the warm waters of the gulf, growing early Sunday morning into a Category 5 storm, the strongest step on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Since records have been kept, there have only been three Category 5 storms to hit the United States - Hurricane Andrew, which ravaged Florida and Louisiana in 1992; Hurricane Camille, which cut a path through parts of Mississippi, Louisiana and Virginia in 1969; and an unnamed storm that hit the Florida Keys in 1935.

President Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Texas, declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast, a move that cleared the way for immediate federal aid. Mr. Bush also urged people in the storm's potential path to head for safer ground.

"We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities," he said.

The president also participated in a videoconference on Sunday with disaster management officials who were preparing for the storm. And he spoke by telephone with the governors of the four states under immediate threat: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

In an unnervingly quiet New Orleans, many restaurants and stores in the French Quarter were shuttered and hotels, almost all fully booked, struggled to accommodate visitors whose flights had been canceled. The hotels were also a refuge for many residents, who sought rooms above ground level in hope of staying dry.

"We call it a vertical evacuation," said Joseph Fein, owner of the Court of Two Sisters, a French Quarter restaurant. Mr. Fein said the city was responding much as it had to many previous hurricane threats, but that Hurricane Katrina was "the most threatening we have seen."

At the Omni Royal Orleans hotel, all 346 rooms were booked, with the hotel putting up about 100 employees and members of their families, said Amiri Hayden, the concierge. "Between guests who are stuck and employees who are staying here, every room is taken," Mr. Hayden said.

Some out-of-town guests took taxis as far as Baton Rouge, 75 miles away, to find rental car agencies that were open, he said.

Louisiana state officials said that at one point during the evacuation of New Orleans on Sunday, more than 18,000 cars an hour were leaving the city.

"I think this storm is bigger than anything we have dealt with before," Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said. "This is not a minor problem."

Officials in Attorney General Charles Foti's office said they were investigating about a half-dozen cases of price gouging, including increased prices on gasoline-powered generators and hotel rooms. The Louisiana Legislature recently passed a law stiffening penalties for price gouging when hurricanes are in the gulf.

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Hurricane Katrina kicked up waves in Gulfport, Miss., as it approached the Gulf Coast. More Photos >

New Orleans Prepares for Hurricane Katrina

Thousands Flee Hurricane's Path

Storm Imperils Gulf Coast

Casinos: In Slot Machines' Silence, a Storm's Economic Cost (August 29, 2005)

Oil and Gas: Approaching Storm Slows Oil Output in Gulf of Mexico (August 29, 2005)

The Storm: With Few Warning Signs, an Unpredictable Behemoth Grew (August 29, 2005)

Forum: Hurricane Katrina

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Sean Gardner/European Pressphoto Agency

Mike Naranjo boarded up an antique lamp shop in the French Quarter on Sunday. More Photos >

Marko Georgiev for The New York Times

New Orleans residents who were unable to evacuate the city today lined up to take shelter in the Superdome. More Photos >

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Cheryl Gerber for The New York Times

People trying to leave New Orleans on Sunday morning ran into heavy traffic. More Photos >

Farther east on the coast, the party atmosphere promoted by the region's many casinos was nowhere in evidence. Casinos built on barges were dark on Sunday, and people all along the Mississippi Coast were ordered to evacuate.

In Gulfport, about 55 miles east of New Orleans, residents feared a repeat of Hurricane Camille, which smashed into the Mississippi Coast in 1969 with winds of 200 miles an hour, killing more than 250 people over several states.

"I'm afraid this is the one we've dreaded," said Robert R. Latham Jr., the director of Emergency Management Operations for Mississippi. "I don't think the scenario could be any worse for us."

In Gulfport, the authorities were making about a dozen schools and other public buildings available as shelters. But Joe Spraggins, the director of emergency operations for Harrison County, which includes Gulfport and Biloxi to the east, urged residents to go to shelters only as a last resort. Most of the buildings were built years ago, Mr. Spraggins said, and not designed to withstand the anticipated winds of 140 to 150 miles an hour.

"We're asking people to get out of the area," he said, "and to get out fast."

Yet Mr. Spraggins and other emergency officials acknowledged that the hurricane could chase evacuees on a northeasterly route. Mobile, Ala., expected a storm surge of up to 20 feet, much higher than any it has experienced to date, that could flood its historic downtown. Farther east in the Florida Panhandle, residents of barrier islands were urged to evacuate as Hurricane Katrina began sloshing water onto coastal roads and near homes.

"We're all getting a little tired of going through this drill," said Eric Landry of Pensacola, who was shuttering his house on Sunday afternoon, not quite a year after Hurricane Ivan ravaged that city. "But we're not at the point of moving away. This is just what you have to live with."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose director, Michael D. Brown, flew to Baton Rouge on Sunday, was waiting to determine where the agency would need to deploy supplies and specialized personnel. A spokeswoman said FEMA had mobilized several hundred specialists, including about 20 medical teams and a smaller number of urban search and rescue teams.

The agency has also begun moving water, ice and military Meals Ready to Eat to sites in the Southeast, said the spokeswoman, Natalie Rule. Outside the Superdome, which holds 70,000 people, long lines of evacuees were still waiting in the rain by evening as security forces searched everyone entering for drugs, weapons and other contraband.

Cara Every Calderon and her husband, Axel Calderon, flew to New Orleans from their home in Smithtown, N.Y., on Saturday to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. They had reserved four nights at a hotel in the French Quarter, and when Ms. Calderon called to inquire about the storm, she said, the hotel told her, "Come on down."

The couple ended up at the Superdome, roller suitcases in tow, after finding themselves trapped.

"We're resilient," Ms. Calderon said. "We're New Yorkers. But this is a little over our heads."

==> my opinion

watch out /

I serch the map and the Giient will take effect on your place..

As you and I heard and was tought from father

safty is the most important thing in our life..

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Sat, 27 Aug 2005 15:38:53 GMT

Settlement Seen on Tax Shelters by Audit Firm

By JONATHAN D. GLATER

Published: August 27, 2005

KPMG, the accounting firm under investigation for selling questionable tax shelters, will pay $456 million and accept an outside monitor of its operations under terms of an agreement with prosecutors that heads off an indictment of the firm, people briefed on the deal said yesterday.

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Forum: Accounting

The agreement means that KPMG has dodged a potentially fatal indictment and avoided the fate of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that collapsed after prosecutors charged it with obstruction of justice in their investigation of Enron, an Andersen client.

The KPMG settlement, which is expected to be announced on Monday, moves KPMG closer to finishing a painful chapter in its history, after having grappled with a federal investigation for more than a year and a half.

"That's a big victory for a company," said Jonathan S. Feld, a former federal prosecutor who practices at Katten Muchin Rosenman in Chicago and who is not involved in the case. "Especially in light of the problems that we witnessed with Andersen with a criminal indictment, you've avoided a significant accusation that could potentially undermine an entire accounting firm."

Still, the agreement preserves the possibility of criminal charges for KPMG in the event the firm violates the terms and it includes a strong acknowledgment of wrongdoing, according to people briefed on the deal. But importantly, these people said, the firm will not name any former partners involved in the tax shelter transactions, several of whom may face criminal charges that could be announced as early as Monday.

The settlement is the latest step in the government's investigation of questionable shelters, which were created and sold by accounting firms in the late 1990's, and allowed wealthy investors to evade billions of dollars in taxes. The stock market boom had minted quick riches and clients eager to shield their gains from taxes. Regulators soon caught up to the new tax schemes - typically complex swap transactions to create losses on paper - and several accounting firms settled. KPMG, at first, resisted regulators.

In 2003, a Senate subcommittee report on four KPMG shelters found that the firm sold the shelters to some 350 people from 1996 to 2002, depriving the Treasury of at least $1.4 billion in unpaid taxes. KPMG earned fees of $124 million on those sales, the Senate report said.

Prosecutors have indicated that their investigation is continuing, suggesting that others involved in the transactions - banks, law firms, other accounting firms and possibly individual taxpayers who bought the shelters - may face criminal charges in the future.

Prosecutors have already increased pressure on former KPMG partners with the guilty plea this month by an executive in the New York office of HVB, one of Germany's largest banks. The executive, Domenick DeGiorgio, told a federal judge in Manhattan that he participated in a conspiracy to commit tax fraud that involved some transactions of the type sold by KPMG, and that he committed other tax-related crimes. Mr. DeGiorgio is almost certainly assisting prosecutors in their investigation of former KPMG partners and perhaps others, as well.

Under the terms of the agreement expected to be announced on Monday, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Richard C. Breeden, will serve as an independent monitor of KPMG's operations, according to people briefed on the deal. The agreement would also impose restrictions on the scope of its tax practice.

A spokesman for the United States attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment, as did a spokesman for KPMG.

KPMG's tax business expanded rapidly in the late 1990's, at a time that all of what were then the Big Five accounting firms were adding to revenue by offering businesses other than audits, including technology consulting and, of course, tax services. (KPMG spun off its consulting arm, now known as Bearingpoint, through a public stock offering in 2001.)

In the wave of corporate scandals that followed the collapse of Enron late in 2001, KPMG had its share of trouble with audit clients. The firm paid $22.5 million to settle S.E.C. charges that it helped executives at the Xerox Corporation - one of its audit clients - manipulate and distort financial statements, and in October, the firm agreed to pay $10 million to settle regulators' charges that it and four of its accountants did not properly audit the financial statements of Gemstar-TV Guide International.

KPMG also audited Fannie Mae, which was forced by regulators to restate earnings dating back to 2001.

The specter of the Andersen prosecution - and the Supreme Court's decision this summer reversing the firm's conviction - has loomed over the tax shelter investigation.

Some lawyers not involved in the case said from the beginning that prosecutors could not risk reducing the number of big accounting firms further, from four to three. In turn, the perception that the government was hamstrung put pressure on prosecutors to prove the contrary and to impose stringent requirements on the accounting firm.

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Forum: Accounting

"They've already destroyed one accounting firm, and I didn't think they were going to set about destroying another," said Jerry Bernstein, a former federal prosecutor. "The threat was always there. If KPMG had not been sufficiently conciliatory and cooperative, then there was a realistic chance that they would've been indicted."

The firm's acknowledgment of wrongdoing will complicate defense arguments by individual former KPMG partners who worked on the shelters and who may still face criminal charges. A corporate mea culpa may also be used against the firm if KPMG violates the terms of the agreement and prosecutors decide to bring criminal charges against the firm at a future date. People briefed on the settlement's terms said that the deferred prosecution agreement would run until Dec. 31, 2006, by which time the firm will also have to pay the $456 million penalty.

KPMG early on agreed to limit how much financial assistance with legal fees it would provide to partners who had a role in sales of the shelters, identified by acronyms like Blips and Opis, and who were forced out during the investigation.

KPMG also issued a remarkable statement in June in which the firm said that it took "full responsibility for the unlawful conduct by former KPMG partners during that period, and we deeply regret that it occurred."

That statement, which would appear to support the claims of taxpayers who bought the shelters - some of whom have sued the accounting firm - angered lawyers for former partners. They question how KPMG could describe the conduct by partners as "unlawful," before any court has actually ruled on whether the shelters at issue were improper.

The issue of the propriety of the shelters may first be addressed by a federal judge in California overseeing a lawsuit against the government by companies involved in the shelter transactions; a potentially decisive hearing in that case is scheduled for Nov. 3.

[ jake's opinion]

36. Jacob(Á¦ÀÌÄß) : ¼º°æ¿¡ ³ª¿À´Â jacob ÀÇ ÀÎ»ýÀº °è·«À¸·Î Á¡Ã¶µÇ¾î ÀÖ½À´Ï´Ù. ÀÌ¸§ ÀÚÃ¼ÀÇ ÀÇ¹Ì´Â ±×ÀÇ Ãâ»ýÀ» ÀÇ¹ÌÇÏ´Â "¹ß²ÞÄ¡¸¦ Àâ°í ³ª¿Â »ç¶÷(he who taks by the heel)"ÀÔ´Ï´Ù. ±×¿¡ °üÇØ¼´Â ¼³¸íÀÌ ³Ê¹« ±æ±â¶§¹®¿¡ ¼º°æÀ» º¸½Ã±â ¹Ù¶ø´Ï´Ù. ±×´Â ÈÄ¿¡ ÇÏ³ª´Ô¿¡ ÀÇÇØ¼ »õ ÀÌ¸§À» °®°Ô µÇ´Âµ¥ ±× ÀÌ¸§ÀÌ "Israel(È÷ºê·ç¾î·Î "ÇÏ³ª´Ô¿Í °Ü·ç´Â ÀÚ"ÀÇ ÀÇ¹Ì)"ÀÔ´Ï´Ù. Jacob ÀÇ ¿µ¾îÈµÈ ÀÌ¸§ÀÌ James(Á¦ÀÓ½º)ÀÌ¸ç ÇÁ¶û½º¾î·Î´Â Jacques(ÀÚÅ©)ÀÌ°í ¶§·Î Jack(Àè)À» ¾ÖÄªÀ¸·Î ÇÕ´Ï´Ù. James ÀÇ ¾ÖÄªÀº Jimmy(Áö¹Ì)ÀÌ°í Jacob À¸·ÎºÎÅÍ ¿Â ¾ÖÄªÀº Jake(Á¦ÀÌÅ©)·Î ¾²±âµµ ÇÕ´Ï´Ù.

my english nick name is jake..

why I choose jake for my name is that it sounds like my korean name (jinkyu)

jake has a similar prononciation to my korean name

so foreigner are able to easily call and memorize my korean and nick name.

as you know ,, jake is from "jagob" ..

I don't know about more datail history of jagob since I am not christchan.

return to the point..

I have been also working for accounting company for 4 years.

whenever this type accidecnt occur ,

I realize that ,how much is accounting company exposured on law and regulatory

risk...

maybe , when KPMG stated selling the tex shelters , thay must be serch which

they break the law or not ?

thay had the conclusion after so many examination and meeting and serch and ever thay asked about. goverment .

and then, they decided and.. done it..

that's all..

after 2-3 years later..

the law and regulation are modified , and some expert press new understaning or application (»õ·Î¿î ÇØ¼®ÀÇ Àû¿ë) on old law..

they blame for the acounting behavior and want to burden to accounting company

---

i am about to go to bed

I will continue writing down on tommorow.

I will be back

Monday, May 30, 2005

Mon, 30 May 2005 03:46:17 GMT

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