Nothing succeeds like failure, as the saying goes. And nowhere is this dismal truth more evident than in our financial regulatory system, one year after the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers.
 

One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Americans are still feeling the effects of the credit crisis that roiled the financial system and crashed the stock market. Many are searching for jobs, recalibrating their investments or quietly licking their wounds. In many cases, their story comes down to a number. And, in many cases, [...]

Mollie Bell has a plan the next time a real estate infomercial flashes on her TV: She’s “flipping to the cartoon channel.”
After being burned by a negative-amortization loan that left her owing more on her Compton home than it was worth, Bell, 62, has soured on the home-refinancing craze. Never a big spender anyway, she [...]

Too many people bought too much house for too many years.  Yes, the financial system almost collapsed because mortgage bankers and brokers told lies about loan terms and loosened standards in dangerous ways, and investment bankers packaged those loans into bonds that were far more toxic than ratings agencies predicted.
 

1990 Mazda Miata
While the rare-car world focuses on rare Bugattis and 1960s muscle cars, lots of car enthusiasts might  unknowingly have potential top-dollar classics gathering value in their garages, overlooked by today’s collectors. They are the Japanese import models of yesteryear. (Pics)
 

Consumer trends around the world
It’s not going to be all work and no play for today’s consumers, even as the economy drags people down financially and emotionally, Mintel sees a continued focus on enjoyment and life fulfillment. While people around the world still feel pessimistic, Mintel sees them discovering ways to transform their lifestyles and [...]

China has become world’s largest car market

The growth and development of the China automotive market changes the automotive business model for the global auto industry. While it is obvious that China already has become the world’s factory for “everyday low price” merchandise, the ramifications of the rapid development of the Chinese automotive base on the [...]

Flexible work force
The American work force is headed in ways unimagined just a decade ago.  Careers are out and skill sets are in. Workers should think in terms of being contractors instead of employees, academics and futurists say.
 

When economists fail
It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. [...]

Peer-to-peer lending booming
When 73-year-old Bill Smith and his wife, Ginger hit simultaneous jackpots on a recent cruise-ship vacation, they knew exactly what to do with the $3,300: put it on the street. Smith had wanted to try peer-to-peer lending since reading “At Last, a Bank of Your Own” in Barron’s in January of 2008.

Borrowing money today requires impressing an increasingly hard-to-please crowd. With creditors of all kinds more cautious than ever, you need an A+ application to land the best terms — and that means an A+ credit score, the number lenders use to judge your risk of default.
 

Scarlett Johansson is among the celebrities forced to take dramatic pay cuts
The curtain has come down on guaranteed $20 million pay cheques for A-List Hollywood stars as a series of films starring big name actors failed to deliver at the box office this summer.  Denzel Washington, Jim Carrey, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke are [...]

As many as 10,000 U.S. stores are expected to close by the end of this year, according to a retail report by Grant Thornton LLP.
 

More Americans are having their power shut off as the weak economy makes it harder to pay bills.”We see record numbers of households becoming disconnected or in danger of disconnection,” says Mark Bixby, energy director of Rockford, Ill. Five years ago, his office distributed federal funds annually to about 300 households that had their power [...]

More than 30,000 U.S. businesses filed for bankruptcy protection in the first half of 2009, a 64 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.
 

Best Actor for the Buck
In today’s recessionary Hollywood, studio executives are no longer looking to cast actors who will demand upward of $15 million just to appear in a movie and then a hefty portion of the film’s revenue. Instead, the ideal package is a big concept with low-paid stars.
Transformers is the ultimate example. The [...]

If current plans are implemented as anticipated, the postcrisis world is likely to be one characterized by enhanced multilateralism, greater policy coordination, and a more effectively regulated financial system. In the wake of the April summit of the Group of Twenty (G-20), the IMF is set to play a key role in this new global [...]

No. 1 Harvard University
Want your kid to become one of the richest people in the world? Send them to Harvard.
The Cambridge, Mass., school tops our first-ever billionaire college study with an alumni base that features 54 10-figure titans, more than 5% of the world’s billionaires. Of those 54 plutocrats, 11 received an undergraduate degree, 41 [...]

Traces of cocaine exist in up to 90 percent of banknotes in many large US cities
You probably have cocaine in your wallet, purse, or pocket. Sound unlikely or outrageous? Think again! In what researchers describe as the largest, most comprehensive analysis to date of cocaine contamination in banknotes, scientists are reporting that cocaine is present [...]

John Borthwick – early predictor of the disruptive power of real-time
John Borthwick speaks softly, but he can’t hide his excitement. Co-founder and chief executive of the New York Internet media incubator betaworks, Borthwick is an investor in the microblogging phenomenon Twitter, where people exchange short public messages called tweets. Betaworks is also building or investing [...]

Green tech
What’s the next big thing to drive the Silicon Valley innovation engine? Don’t count on green tech anytime soon, at least according to two prominent investors here during a panel discussion focused on “Silicon Valley in the New Millennium.”
 

Polarization of various forms is upon us:  great wealth and scarcity, fast and slow paced life options, info overload and info indigestion.  Based on currently emerging trends, these forms of polarization of society: weather, behavior, work and play, will create new ideas, opportunities for businesses, choices for people and clues to how society may evolve [...]

It’s every investor’s dream: buy into a theme before any one else has caught on; ride it all the way up until it gets bubbly; sell to the suckers who bought at the top.
 

Ddalgi now works for Edward D Jones.

A five-year-old parrot in South Korea has proved smarter than human investors in a stock investment contest. Ddalgi (Korean for strawberry), from Papua New Guinea, finished third in the six-week contest which ended on Wednesday, said Paxnet, an online stock market information provider. The bird competed with 10 stock [...]

The social elite have a distinctly different view of the world ahead
There’s always been lots of talk in this country about income inequality, but very little about lifestyle disparities, differences which are pulling American elites farther and farther away from mainstream America.