Buy tax-free bonds - now.  If you’re a mutual fund investor, buy them through Vanguard (the average fund company charges expenses six times higher than Vanguard’s).

If you are a closed-end investor, try a tax-free fund like Nuveen Insured Municipal Opportunity Fund (NYSE:NIO), trading at a 10% discount to its net asset value and yielding over 6% paid monthly.

Or, to avoid annual expenses and have the certainty of a final value on a particular date, buy individual tax-free bonds.

But whatever you do, buy them now. Let me count the reasons why you should…

Three Reasons Why Municipal Bonds Make A Good Investment Now

Ten-year municipal bonds, while down from the historic premium they reached a few months ago, are yielding as much as 10-year Treasuries. But while Treasuries are taxable, munis are not. Most municipal bonds are safe. Yes, a few areas - particularly in California and Alabama - are troubled. But the ...

Have you ever noticed that a day does not go by without the media pointing to a reason why the market traded higher or lower on a particular day? According to the media, there is always a reason for a move higher or lower. When the market moves lower, short  sellers are typically blamed for the downward pressure.  Is such a culpability present, or has the common man’s perspective of short-selling been seriously distorted?

Many talking heads in the media and in charge of regulating the markets are blaming the short sellers for the recent bear market. First of all, short selling is a very good and fair way to trade the market. In order to short a stock the individual or institution must borrow the stock from their broker and sell it. Later the trader must buy back the stock or cover the trade. If the stock is below

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Buying Real Estate: This Century’s Greatest Investment

by Dr. Mark Skousen, Advisory Panelist

Buying real estate? Are you nuts?

Investment U Chairman Alex Green thinks so, what with foreclosures skyrocketing and prices in some places falling more than half from their peak. He says the market is “dead” for now.

But dead doesn’t mean unprofitable.

And as Baron Rothschild often said, “Buy when blood is running in the streets.”

Despite all the bad news making the front pages, real estate-related stocks and funds have been making a comeback; some are up more than 25%, suggesting light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Equity Residential Properties, one of my favorite REITs, is up 20%. Toll Brothers - builder of high-end homes - has been volatile, but appears to be bottoming.

My basic argument for a turnaround is that the federal government has essentially put a floor under the current real estate market,

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Wall Street created the U.S. housing bubble and now it’s missing the real estate rebound.  And Andrew Waite understands why.

Waite is the publisher of the Personal Real Estate Investor, a glossy magazine that focuses on investors who buy houses or condos to manage for income or to fix up and sell for a profit. But he’s not some industry cheerleader whose statements are nothing but spin.

He’s a true expert on the U.S. housing sector who goes out of his way to “educate” journalists about the true state of the American housing market, and who criticizes most of the “indicators” in use as useless and irrelevant. Plus, as a onetime Wall Street venture-capitalist who subsequently joined Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road private equity crowd, Waite really understands how the Wall Street investment game is played - and, in the case of the

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On close inspection, there are only two possibilities for the Geithner “Rescue Plan”: It’s an honest effort doomed to fail… or a blatant scam that just might work.

Treasury Secretary Geithner, we hereby dub thee “Turbo Timmy.”

As a number of you have informed me, the “turbo” moniker – as in, “doesn’t know how to use Turbo Tax” – has been around for a while now. With my many sources and ears on the street, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it prior. (Or maybe it just went in one ear and out the other.)

Other honorable mentions in the SecTreas nickname contest include:

“Tycoon Tim” (for serving his rich masters) “Torpedo Tim” (for threatening to sink the economy) “Little Timmy Geithner” (after a hapless cartoon character with wish-granting fairy godparents) “Lollypop Guild” Geithner (after the obscure Wizard of ...

by Bob Boog

Now that the ink has dried on the Obama Housing Stability Plan, people want to know what’s in it for them. So here goes: basically the Treasury Department will offer inducements and put pressure on lenders to reduce monthly payments for borrowers at risk of losing their houses which should result in five benefits for homeowners. They include:

1. The main benefit is that it provides assistance to homeowners who wish to stay in their homes. The sour economy has made it tough for many homeowners to refinance because for most, their equity has dried up and they are unable to do so. This plan also helps those who may have lost income due to the current recession.

2. The Plan only helps Homeowners wanting to stay in their homes. Real estate investors must look elsewhere.

3. It Helps to Protect Neighborhoods: This plan helps to stabilize home …

pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5TJhhmNIdYgnD9dyEUWkJ9G_ZEc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5TJhhmNIdYgnD9dyEUWkJ9G_ZEc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pYesterday you read about consumer spending rising in January and a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/friday-sunshine-foreclosures-plummet.html"foreclosures plummeting./a That's good news for home owners looking to stay in their houses or needing to sell in this housing market.br /br /But there is more warmth for seasoned investors looking to span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"buy/span real estate in this market.br /br /Last week Fannie Mae announced that it would loosen several of its loan restrictions for real estate investors and second homebuyers. It enumerated a set of new guidelines designed to attract landlords and other low-risk speculators into the current market.br /br /“Fannie Mae is committed to providing financing opportunities for high-credit quality, bona fide investors,” said Fannie in a press release. “Experienced investors play a key role in the housing recovery and Fannie Mae’s continued support for investor borrowers is consistent with its mission to ...

If you read just one of my Money and Markets issues this year, make sure it’s this one. You will not hear what I’m about to say from our nation’s leaders. Nor will it pour forth from talking heads on Wall Street. They are still driven by their zeal for bigger campaign contributions or the lust for fatter year-end bonuses. My sole mission is to help you preserve your wealth and your income — to set you free from escalating worries about how deeply this great crisis could threaten your financial security. That done, you can actually use this massive global crisis to grow your wealth, even while millions of other investors could lose nearly everything. My New Warning Some will say that the new warning I’m about to ...

On January 5, 2009, a modicum of encouragement was exhibited in the Commerce Department's report that total construction spending dropped by 0.6% in November 2008, about half the 1.3% decline estimated, as record activity on nonresidential projects partially offset the continued steep decline experienced for housing (the 4.2% decline in housing construction was significantly moderated by the unusually strong 0.7% rise in nonresidential activity).The November 2008 0.6% decline in total construction followed a revised 0.4% decline for October 2008. As such, the back-to-back declines left construction at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.078 trillion, down 3.3% year-over-year. The November 2008 4.2% drop in home construction left residential activity at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $328.3 billion, down 23.4% year-over-year.Presently, prolonged weakness in housing has showed no signs of bottoming out, as the two-year housing slump is not expected to end anytime soon. Sales ...

International Living’s Ronan McMahon says real estate investors have another opportunity to tap into the booming Costa Rican property market at a basement price. The far South of the country contains some of the best scenery, but it has always been almost impossible to reach. A new international airport and better roads will soon change that. And government limits on new development will send existing property prices will soar.

This from Today’s Financial News:

Wish you had a time machine? I just might be able to help you out with that!

Back in the early 1980s, International Living recommended buying real estate in northern Costa Rica. Readers who took this advice reaped big rewards.

This part of Costa Rica became the No. 1 destination among foreign retirees and investors who wanted to buy land that would increase dramatically in value. These buyers made very wise decisions, as the prices for beachfront property along the

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