Treasury Department

Kenneth Edward Carfine, a Treasury Department official, died of cancer Friday at the Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 60 and lived in Woodbine. Born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville, he was a 1967 Mount St. Joseph's High School graduate. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting at the University of Baltimore. In 2007, he was named the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary. He was administered the oath of office by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in the historic Cash Room in Washington.

Peter P. Belz Jr., a retired U.S. Treasury Department appeals officer, died March 14 of pancreatic cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. He was 71. The son of a die maker and a homemaker, Peter Paul Belz Jr. was born in Baltimore and raised on Keswick Road in Hampden. After graduating in 1959 from Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, he earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting in 1963 from what is now Loyola University Maryland. Mr. Belz began his career in 1963 as an Internal Revenue Service agent in the audit office and later was promoted to a field agent.

Delmar Bancorp has no regrets about taking a $9 million investment from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, even though some banks have rushed for the exit. "We did it as an abundance of caution," said Ed Thomas, president of the parent of Bank of Delmarva, which serves the still-struggling Eastern Shore. "I'm glad we did it because we didn't know how deep the financial downturn was going to be. " TARP provided capital at an attractive price, he said. Created four years ago as the country's financial system teetered on the verge of collapse, TARP provided more than 700 banks with a combined $205 billion of capital by buying dividend-paying preferred shares.

Delmar Bancorp has no regrets about taking a $9 million investment from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, even though some banks have rushed for the exit. "We did it as an abundance of caution," said Ed Thomas, president of the parent of Bank of Delmarva, which serves the still-struggling Eastern Shore. "I'm glad we did it because we didn't know how deep the financial downturn was going to be. " TARP provided capital at an attractive price, he said. Created four years ago as the country's financial system teetered on the verge of collapse, TARP provided more than 700 banks with a combined $205 billion of capital by buying dividend-paying preferred shares.

WASHINGTON -- The "Conscience Fund" began in 1811, when James Madison's administration received $5 from someone who said he had defrauded the government.Guilt money has been dribbling into the U.S. Treasury ever since -- more than $6.5 million in all.Most donors, including the first, have been anonymous. But they often include letters that admit to some offense -- however small -- against the government."Please accept this money for two postal stamps I re-used," wrote one person.Another individual felt obliged to pay a penalty: "About eight years ago I took from a railroad station an item worth about $25 and this has been on my conscience since, so I'm enclosing $50 to clear my conscience."

WASHINGTON -- Jan. 2, 1999, was a worrisome date for 32 million Americans: the day the government was to have eliminated paper checks for federal benefit recipients.Not to worry. The check is in the mail.The Federal Debt Collection Improvement Act, passed two years ago, set tomorrow as the day when all benefit payments were to be made through direct deposit.Stung by complaints, the Treasury Department changed direction."It's a date without real significance," said Don Hammond, the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. has won a $1.4 billion contract from the Treasury Department to provide computers, workstations and software to the Internal Revenue Service, AT&T said yesterday.The computer contract, one of the largest awarded by the federal government, calls for AT&T to provide 3,200 computers and 50,000 workstations based on the UNIX operating system.Though the contract is aimed at the IRS, other Treasury offices, such as the Customs Service, may also buy equipment under the contract, AT&T said.

WASHINGTON -- Jean Hanson, the Treasury Department's general counsel, who was caught up in the Whitewater scandal, resigned yesterday, becoming the second senior Treasury official in two days to resign as a result of the controversy.Separately, Clinton administration sources said the long-stalled nomination of lawyer Ricki Tigert to be chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. also seems to be in jeopardy as a result of the congressional furor over Whitewater.Ms. Tigert was first nominated to be one of the nation's top banking regulators by President Clinton in November 1993, and the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voted to confirm her in February.

WASHINGTON - As the focus in Iraq shifts from waging war to paying wages, the Bush administration plans to run Iraq on dollars until it fosters a replacement for today's nearly worthless Saddam dinars. American military officials are paying Iraqi civil servants in dollars, and they expect to continue doing so for at least the next several months. But a team of experts from the Treasury Department is commuting to Baghdad from Kuwait City, trying to determine the fastest and smoothest way for Iraqis to have a new currency and a central bank to control it. Yesterday, a senior administration official said discussions were under way with Peter McPherson, who was a deputy treasury secretary under President Ronald Reagan, to serve in Iraq as a coordinator on financial issues during reconstruction.

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush's rivals for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, already reeling from the disclosure that he has raised more than $36 million, face another money setback that can be attributed indirectly to his father, former President George Bush.The senior Bush's Treasury Department laid down a ruling in 1991 that will put an additional squeeze on all the other GOP hopefuls except self-financing multimillionaire Steve Forbes. It decided, whether by political calculation or otherwise, to adopt a payout schedule of the federal subsidy to candidates under the 1974 campaign finance law that will deny them much of the money for which they've qualified at precisely the time they will most need it.The law stipulates that the subsidy be paid starting Jan. 1 of the presidential election year on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis for funds raised in amounts of $250 or less during the previous year.

Until recently, retirement planning focused mostly on helping workers accumulate savings. Now, the Treasury Department is tackling another aspect: making sure retirees don't run out of money. The department last week proposed two regulations to make it easier for workers to get annuities through their workplace plans. With an annuity, workers can make a lump-sum payment to an insurance company and in exchange get an income stream for life. Outliving savings is a serious risk, and a fear of many retirees.

Most of us are familiar with the food pyramid, the government's guideline for healthy eating. Now imagine a "money pyramid" for healthy finances. The Treasury Department is working on such a teaching tool right now, and is seeking public input this week on what money maxims should be included. The agency wants your opinion on what adults need to know about five key areas of finance — earning, spending, saving, borrowing and protecting against risk. The goal is to put those concepts in an easy-to-remember format that can be used by financial education programs across the country — and to help us all make more informed decisions.

Kenneth Edward Carfine, a Treasury Department official, died of cancer Friday at the Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 60 and lived in Woodbine. Born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville, he was a 1967 Mount St. Joseph's High School graduate. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting at the University of Baltimore. In 2007, he was named the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary. He was administered the oath of office by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in the historic Cash Room in Washington.

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner issued new guidelines yesterday aimed at eliminating the influence of lobbyists on the $700 billion financial bailout program by restricting their contact with officials who are reviewing applications for money and deciding how to disburse it. Treasury officials will also seek to limit political influence over the funds, saying they will use similar restrictions that forbid such influence in tax matters...

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of Treasury, is warning the public to be wary of continuing financial scams that attempt to solicit funds from unsuspecting victims. Some scams involve individuals misrepresenting themselves as FinCEN officials and some involve the fraudulent use of FinCEN's seal in a letter or e-mail claiming to be official correspondence. The scams often involve the enticement of a phony inheritance or sum of money and claims that FinCEN is holding or blocking the transfer of funds.

WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department said yesterday that China's currency is "undervalued," but it found no evidence the Asian giant is manipulating the yuan to gain an unfair trade advantage. Senators reacted to the finding in the department's semiannual currency review by introducing a bill providing new ways for the United States to pressure nations suspected of currency manipulation. "For too long, our currency policy has left American workers and businesses unprotected from foreign governments seeking an unfair financial advantage," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat,, said at a news conference.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush criticized newspapers yesterday for disclosing a secret U.S. government program monitoring international banking transactions, calling the disclosures a "disgraceful" act that could assist terrorists. Bush, speaking during a White House meeting with organizations that support the war in Iraq, echoed comments Friday by Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative commentators, who condemned the reports last week in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.

SINGAPORE --The United States pressed the top finance officials of the world's leading industrial nations yesterday to crack down on what Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said was the exploitation of their banking systems by at least 30 Iranian front companies involved in illicit activities. Paulson said he told the finance and economic ministers that the front companies had been identified by American intelligence agencies as conducting international financial transactions using banks in Europe and elsewhere, many of them "blue chip banks."

WASHINGTON -- President Bush protests a bit too much about The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal's exposure of his administration's secret money-tracking program. The president called it "disgraceful" that the newspapers reported that Treasury Department officials acquired access to the world's largest international financial database, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, commonly known as SWIFT, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.