Articles on Financial News

Low Interest Rates Do Not Make Homes Affordable

If a good price seems to good to be true...it probably is. Learn how low interest rates drive home prices higher.

Tax Breaks for Booming Businesses

f your business is booming, take advantage of tax rules to make sure that Uncle Sam doesn't earn more than you do from your efforts.

What's in Store for the Economy?

The truth is that the economy, just like a most other things in life, simply can’t be measured in straight line gains and losses. The economy is so much more than a line g

What to Do About Health Care Insurance Now

Under the health care reform, policies will have to provide certain types of coverage and meet other standards that will substantially raise costs unless they are grandfathered.

When Interest Rates Head Up

It doesn't take any skill at prognostication to make this forecast: Interest rates are heading up. For one thing, they can't go any lower.

Who's Your Data? The Myths and Misnomers of Unemployment Figures

How are jobless numbers tabulated? Are they even accurate in the truest sense? Why do newspeople get it completely wrong? Why do the jobless figures make us so jittery and

Book Review: Confronting Collapse

We hardly talk about collapse here. Wise Bread is all about living large, while collapse mitigation is usually about living small. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things

Should You Invest in Goldman Sachs (GS)?

Goldman Sachs is in hot water right now, so investing in the company may seem like a risky proposition. And it certainly is, but it may also be a fantastic opportunity.

Principal Forgiveness: The New BofA Mortgage Deal

Starting next month (May 2010) or as soon as its ready, Bank of America may reduce principal balances on certain mortgages of deeply underwater loans. What's up with that?

Who Should Face the Music When the Banks Fail?

Should everyday folks bear the brunt when banks fail, or should the bankers themselves be held responsible?

New $100 Bill Unveiled

Even though ordinary people hardly ever receive or spend one, with the number of $100 bills in circulation in the billions it's worth putting the effort into making them extreme

The HIRE Act: Incentives for Hiring Now

If your business has been growing but you've been reluctant to take on a new employee because of economic uncertainty, maybe recently enacted tax incentives will convince you to

The Credit Crunch Myth: You Can't Fix What Ain't Broke

In an effort to fix the credit crunch, the American Recovery Reinvestment Act authorized $730 million in funding for the SBA. Only one problem: There may not be a small business

Can a Little Inflation Be Good?

Let me jump to the end and say right at the start that I don't think so. However, there's a serious argument being made right now among economists and economic policy makers that h

Recession Journal VI: It's OVER!!!!!!!!!!!! Any Questions?

The recession is technically over, officially over, numerically over. How do you feel now and what are you gonna do about it?

Recession Journal V: Mind, The GAP

Some well known mainstays of Corporate America have decided not to wait for an official recovery but to sell the idea of it to you. Can we collectively as corporate citizens and co

Understand Capital Costs

Especially for things people often buy on credit, like a car or a house, there's a tendency to divide the ownership into two periods--while the loan is being paid off, where the it

Book review: Life Inc.

Corporations were invented a few hundred years ago--created to increase the wealth and power of favored businessmen (and the governments that favored them). They have become such

The new normal economy

The economy is way short of full employment, so naturally, consumer spending is down. Sooner or later employment, I think, will return to normal levels. Consumer spending will re

Another path to recovery: higher incomes

Preventing a collapse of the financial system is part of preventing a depression. However, the shorthand term for this--getting the banks able and willing to lend--is misleading.