The Federal Reserve recently hired someone to "assess the safety and soundness of domestic banking institutions." The new employee has plenty of experience with unstable banks. Former Bear Stearns chief risk officer (from 2006 to 2008) Michael Alix will be senior adviser to William Rutledge, executive vice president of the bank supervision group. 

Prior to serving as chief risk officer, Alix ran credit-risk management for Bear from 1996 to 2006. I am not making this up. The Fed hired the guy who let Bear go in the tank. WOW. It's just like George Carlin always said: The government is "stunningly full of bulls**t.

While researching why Mastercard got so much attention in the market lately I came across a very interesting outline on credit cards.  Used properly credit cards are a very helpful money tool. If used for actual financing of items they can take you to the poor house.  This list outlines the key features of each card….. from cards for low interest to cards for people with bad credit, student cards, cash back, retail, business, rewards and various other features.

Analysts who try to call tops and bottoms are a pet peeve of mine. No law of the universe prevents the Dow Jones Industrial Average from going to 5,000. It's around 9,000 now. It's been as low as 7,773 recently, after peaking at 14,279.96 last fall. Who knows where it'll be next week or next year? 

I’m cautious on the overall market. Don't let the market fool you. No trader in his right mind would carry a position overnight. There's just too much risk of complete gaps up or down the next morning.

Skeptical as I am that bottoms feel anywhere near this good, I’m reveling in the extraordinary bargains available today…. many in the greatest companies of the world.

Around this time exactly 7 years ago a panicked U.S. Congress approved the so-called "USA PATRIOT Act."
The Act's name itself is a public relations acronym. It stands for the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act," a.k.a. Public Law No. 107-56. The Act was passed with little debate by senators and congressmen, most of whom did not even read the bill.
They couldn't read it - no final printed copies of the bill were available when the vote was taken. However, copies of the U.S. Constitution were available and still are today.

The flipside of crisis is opportunity.

Well if you want to make the giant upcoming opportunity work for you than you better watch the (at first) subtle move the global economy will experience over the next 6 to 12 months in the process of turning deflation into monetary inflation, turning into price inflation. For those of you at odds with the terminology, let me first explain the principles.
Over the summer, when hedgefunds covering their losing positions pushed oil toward $150 a barrel and soon a gallon of milk reached $5 at the grocery store, and a gallon of fuel $4 plus at the pump, all you heard was inflation. Deflation wasn’t even part of anyone's vocabulary, except for some "insiders". Bernanke and Paulson turned that around in a hurry and as a result of a massive increase in money supply, various scenarios come into play.