Baltimore – (TFN): Hallelujah, the markets work! You have no idea how happy I was this morning when I opened the Wall Street Journal and found an article detailing Goldman Sachs shareholder anger at the recent bonus payouts.

Now, I don’t care who makes what. That’s between bosses and their worker bees. But I do get a little peeved when Uncle Sam tries to tell some worker he can’t get paid per his contract.

Before you go shouting about how Washington saved Wall Street and therefore we, as taxpayers, get a say over pay, let me ask you this. Does your mortgage company tell you what color to paint little Johnnie’s room? Does your car loan provider tell you how fast to drive? Does your health insurance provider tell control your diet?

Didn’t think so.

If some congressman came barging in this office right now, demanding I slash my pay, his goons

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Your credit score affects more than just whether you’ll be granted a loan, mortgage or credit card.  Insurance companies look at the score as a measure of responsibility.  You may pay higher premiums for auto insurance for example if your credit score is lower than someone who has good credit.  Employers review credit reports as a regular part of the employment process.

Use it or lose it If you have credit start using it.  It’s not enough to just establish credit.  That’s only the first hurdle. If you have a VISA start using it.  Lenders not only look to see if another financial institution took the risk of granting credit but look to see if you’ve borrowed money and then repaid it.

Store credit may be the easiest option to start establishing

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The housing market is considered the antagonist to this global financial mess. But inside all the hate is a well-balanced company that has had no problem beating the market.

Here is an interesting question for you. Over the last year, the worst in post-war history for investors, what would you rather own, Toll Brothers (NYSE:TOL) or a sample of the entire market like the S&P 500?

Off the top of their heads, most investors would likely want to own the market. After all, how in the world would a homebuilder be able to “beat the market” during a horrific crash in housing prices?

Here’s the surprising answer…

If you went with the S&P, you would have lost double what you would be down in Toll Brothers. Yes, the nation’s most prominent homebuilder, a company that helped us get into this financial fiasco, beat the pants off the market over the last year.

Toll’s

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BBy Porter Stansberry/BBRBR The current economic problems have their roots in one major thing: the vast expansion of debt in the United States over the last three decades.BRBR Americans have borrowed far more money than they can ever hope to repay. Much of this debt is tied to residential real estate, but there are also record amounts of credit-card, commercial real estate, and public (state and federal) debt.BRBR Starting in 2006, when mortgage debts began to sour, asset prices began to fall – even though employment and wages remained strong. The only time that's ever happened before was in the early stages of the Great Depression. This marked the beginning of the great "unwinding" as the excess debt began to unravel. The result has been a sustained decline in the underlying asset prices upon which layer after layer of debt had been securitized.BRBR Declining asset prices and the large amount of mortgage debt already ...

Crude oil has tumbled to prices not seen for five years. But Byron King says the energy industry can’t function with prices this low. Investment in the future is drying up, and so is the existing oil supply. And that’s why the long-term price trend of crude is still way up.

This from Rude Awakening:

As crude oil languishes near a 5-year low of $35 a barrel, forward-looking investors have good reason to suspect that a new bull market is about to begin. Sure, oil prices might continue slumping over the near term. But don’t kid yourselves; the long-term price trend is up…maybe way up.

Back when oil was selling at $147, I said that the world does not run very well at such lofty energy prices.  A lot of things just stop working at $147 for a barrel of oil, particularly things with a large energy component.  The airlines

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The most destructive legacy of the Bush era will be the damage done by dogma and patronage to the perceived competence and good faith of the US government, from the WMD in Iraq fiasco to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and now the appalling mess the Treasury has made of dealing with the implosion of the financial system. When the definitive history of this period is written, there is no doubt that the Lehman bankruptcy will be seen as the critical event that accelerated and propagated a systemic crisis, and a decision driven by ideological rather than pragmatic considerations. The ultimate cost of that decision will be measured in the trillions of dollars. Markets have been further unsettled by yesterday’s volte face on the TARP by Hank Paulsen, but as the whole scheme was deluded, good riddance I’d say. Despite the conspiracy theories, the Treasury grudgingly and belatedly realised …

Economy and the Bailout Plan: Down, but Not Out!

Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day down 777 points! Needless to say that’s going to get your attention when you flip on your local news and the anchors are attributing it to a House funding bill, vital in avoiding a financial meltdown, that failed.

Especially when you had no inclination there was a financial crisis to begin with.

Case in point: last night I met up with a college roommate who was back in the States from work he does in Italy, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine. We had dinner with his parents and some of his other friends. I didn’t get to talk about the economy with my old roommate, but his dad (knowing I follow the markets on a daily basis) asked me, “What the heck is going on?”

I kind of laughed at first because it seems

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When it comes to debt, people give themselves credit — lots and lots of credit. At the end of 2007, Americans owed $941.1 billion in credit-card debt.

  Successfully managing credit is crucial, but there are some arcane credit-card rules that may affect your balance, your interest rate, and even your credit score.

The more you use, the more you lose: Your credit score is based in part on how much credit-card debt you have in relation to your credit limit. Experts recommend using no more than 10% of your available credit. Over 50% could actually reduce your credit score. Bare minimum: About 60% of Americans carry a balance on their cards from month to month, including some who pay only the minimum required payment. With a $2,000 balance and a 14% interest rate, paying only the minimum payment each month would take over 14 years to pay off the debt and the ...

As my wife and I have started to research for our next car purchase, I was introduced to the Rule of 19 by the local car salesman… I asked “Rule of 19?” I am only aware of the Rule of 72.  The car salesman provided the a quick definition being a general rule of thumb of how much your monthly car payment would be for the total amount financed.  The car salesman quickly calculated that for every $1,000 that I financed, I would pay $19 per month. Aware of the car buying process and following the advice of many experts, I wanted to negotiate one thing at a time: #1. Total Car purchase price, #2. Financing (lease vs buy, interest rate), and #3. Trade-in value. Intrigued on what assumptions this rule of 19 depends on, I decided to re-create the math.  Basically, the Rule of 19 is ...