A credit counseling agency has agreed to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission for deceptively marketing themselves as a not-for-profit enterprise to distressed financial consumers. The agency failed to provide the personalized credit counseling and debt management plans that the agency touted.

Customers who responded to the advertisements were told "that the program included counseling on how to manage finances, and that a low monthly administrative fee was tax-deductible because Lighthouse was a nonprofit organization. Consumers agreed to pay large fees to enroll in debt management plans based on these representations, the complaint alleges."

The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time:

1. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/05/ftc_lighthouse.html (full article)

Pam

High-performance computer manufacturer Silicon Graphics, Inc., today filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York, Case No. 06-10977. Among the various co-debtor companies is supercomputer icon Cray Research, which SGI acquired several years ago. SGI has requested additional time to prepare its schedules and statement of financial affairs, so there are not a lot of details available yet.

Formerly the go-to company for Hollywood special effects companies and other firms that needed high-horsepower number crunching, SGI has been hurt by more powerful off-the-shelf desktop computers and more sophisticated networking technology.

More about the company's history can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics

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