Articles

It is good to be excited, but is it warranted.

Has rate chasing lost its allure?

As much as I like to accumulate reward points, I usually pay cash when I go to the store. Now, I want the store to be able to pass along some of the discount that they are getting from not needed to pay the credit card companies for the pleasure of accepting their payment.

Interest in pre-refunded municipal bonds is at the highest level since the early 1990s. For investors, pre-refunded munis offer the opportunity to earn a high return backed by Treasury Bonds.

HSBC International is offering a free Kindle or iPod if you start a Premier Relationship with the bank and fund it with $100,000.

Whereas I had previously been a dollar bull, the recent warnings of the Chinese are hard to ignore.

The French, in their search for a fixed rate of return that beats the 0.75% offered in savings accounts, have added an entirely new meaning to Best Cash Cow.

President Obamas's budget proposes raising the marginal tax rates on the wealthy from 36% to 39.6%. It also proposes increasing by 5% the dividend tax rate.

Charitable Gift Annuities provide a way for an individual to make a donation and still receive a stream of payments from the money. But when a charity goes bust, so do the payments.

Michael Bienes was a small-time investment advisor who stumbled on Bernard Madoff. In this soon-to-be-aired Frontline program, he, and others describe how the Madoff operation worked, how people were duped, and how many made easy money off the largest Ponzi scheme ever.

Dave Kytes, the managing director at Novantas, a consulting company that serves the banking industry, believes that banks that require more capital will raise their deposit rates.

I just got this quiz. It is very funny.

Bank seemed like obvious shorts a couple of weeks ago. Lot of bright folks went in and we've just seen the sharpest ball-breaking short-killing rally ever.

Our government has debased the economy to remove moral hazard for a handful of banking insiders. This type of activity occurs frequently in Third World countries and is met with real rage. Where is it here?

Obama's strategy is to spend, spend, spend and to give his Democratic controlled House and Senate all the pork barrel that they want. When he has a chance, he'll stand in front of the media and make a big deal about cutting government expenditures, but it is all for show.