First, the good news: With overleveraged consumers trying to get their debts under control, credit card debt has dropped sharply, falling nearly 10 percent from a year ago, according to a recent government report.
From the point of view of individual consumers, this is an eminently smart thing to do: with the economy still rocky [...]
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you’re the CEO of Countrywide Financial. Which of the following famous events in American history would you most want the name of your company to be associated with?
A) The signing of the Declaration of Independence
B) The moon landing
C) The invention of Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick
D) The sinking [...]
Get ready for higher mutual fund fees.
Morningstar reports that expense ratios will likely climb in 2009. As investors yanked money out of the market in the last year, fund asset levels declined. At the end of February, for example, mutual funds held $5.9 trillion, down from $8 trillion at the start of 2008, according to [...]
How unpleasant is it to be a financial adviser today? So bad that this week’s issue of The New Yorker contains a cartoon making light of your death. Move over, lawyers–you’ve got company in the easy-butt-of jokes department.
Not to discount the humor of the cartoon (which did in fact make me smile), there’s actually a [...]
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So much for letting a little matter such as the largest erosion of investor equity in more than 70 years get in the way of some fund-industry back-slapping. Last week the 2009 Lipper Fund Awards were doled out, recognizing more than 200 “funds that have excelled in delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted performance, relative to peers.”
Maybe [...]
