Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman William H. Donaldson last week commended the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) for its implementation of real-time price transparency in the municipal market. Chairman Donaldson said, "Today is an historic moment for all municipal bond investors.

In a surprise decision, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York ruled on Wednesday that a provision in the settlement agreement in the class-action case against WorldCom was illegal.

Many U.S. corporations with overseas operations are busy announcing plans to participate in the repatriation amnesty program that is part of the American Jobs Creation Act (AJCA) signed into law last fall. The New York Times reports that pharmaceutical companies in particular are expected to make up a large percentage of the money flowing back into the states under the terms of this legislation. Pfizer alone, producer of popular drugs Viagra and Lipitor, is expected to repatriate as much as $38 billion in foreign profits.

Marsh & McLennan Cos. has agreed to pay $850 million to settle civil fraud charges brought by New York state's attorney general and the state insurance department, the Wall Street Journal reported.The agreement also involves an apology to the clients of the New York City-based financial services company, which allegedly rigged bids for insurance contracts and directed business to insurance companies that paid lucrative “contingent commissions" to the Marsh Inc. insurance brokerage.

Think you are paying too much in taxes? A recent report found that the federal government could raise an additional $311 billion over the next decade if it eliminated the hundreds of ways people and companies use to avoid paying their taxes, the New York Times reported.The report, prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan Congressional agency that estimates the cost of proposed tax laws, found that the system for taxing income earned overseas by U.S. companies is so fraught with problems, the country could save $55 billion by getting rid of the entire system.

More than half of American workers question the basic morality of their organizations' top leaders and say thattheir managers do not treat them fairly, according to results of a just-released, representative, nationwide survey of 7,718 American workers aged 18 and over.Reacting to ongoing corporate scandals, accelerating outsourcing and continued downsizing, only 36 percent of workers said they believed top managers acted with honesty and integrity.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) announced this week a special Web resource on proposals to privatize State and public agency pensions. "The Pension Debate Information Center" is intended to educate CalPERS members on existing programs and possible changes. The proposals call for an end to the traditional defined benefit pensions for employees hired as of July 1, 2007. New employees would be placed in defined contribution plans that cap employer contributions and let employees invest in 401(k)-type pension funds.

Those who deny the legitimacy of the U.S. tax code have yet to win a case in court, but the tax denial movement appears to be growing anyway.Numerous factors are at work, the New York Times reported. For one, even though the Internal Revenue Service has repeatedly said it is cracking down on tax deniers, it conducts a third fewer audits than it did 15 yeas ago. Internet technology quickly spreads the claims of tax deniers, who are held up as heroes by antigovernment organizations.

Some large federal contractors have been miscoded as small businesses, resulting in skewed procurement statistics according to a report issued recently by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The report found that in Fiscal Year 2002 $2 billion in federal contracts were miscoded as going to small rather than large businesses.“This report clearly shows that there are problems with the federal procurement system,” said Thomas M. Sullivan, Chief Counsel for Advocacy.