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FBI searched Murrieta businessmen's homes in investment probe Friday, March 7, 2008 By LESLIE BERKMAN The Press-Enterprise The FBI confirmed Friday that it searched the Murrieta homes of James Duncan and Hendrix Montecastro for documents and computer data as part of a criminal investigation. Contents of the search warrant indicate that the FBI is looking into the investment schemes that already have made the two Murrieta businessmen and their colleagues the targets of lawsuits by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and irate investors. The U.S. attorney's office, acting on behalf of the FBI, obtained the search warrant from U.S....

Behind the recent bad news lurks a much deeper concern: The world economy is now being driven by a vast, secretive web of investments that might be out of anyone's control.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey announced Friday it will prohibit state pension money from being invested in companies that do business in Iran. Most American companies are already barred from doing business in the country, but Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed a measure restricting the state from buying stock in international companies that do business with Iran. Florida and California have similar laws. The move is designed to protest the country's links to terrorism and its nuclear ambitions. 'I continue to support using economic means, not military means, to bring about policy changes in Iran,' Corzine said recently...

The phrase has long since entered the political lexicon, but it was former House Speaker and Massachusetts Representative Tip O'Neill who first christened Social Security the "third rail of American politics." The reasoning behind his snide dubbing is twofold: the high political mortality rate of those who suggest change to the program, and avoidance of the issue by even Washington's most forthcoming public officials. During the Oct. 9 GOP debate, presidential candidate Fred Thompson threw conventional wisdom to the wind and grabbed the rail. Hard. Thompson called Social Security's current trajectory "unsustainable" and proposed reducing the benefits of recipients to...

Washington (AHN) - Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson proposed Friday to reduce promised retirement benefits and to create a system of voluntary personal retirement accounts that can also help to finance the Social Security program. Under the proposal, retirement benefits for workers who are now 58 and older will not be affected. Employees who are now younger will get smaller monthly Social Security pensions because their benefits will be calculated based on the yearly increase in prices. Meanwhile, the personal retirement accounts will be funded with workers' contributions to be matched by funds from the Social Security trust fund. Workers...

You want to build wealth for life by beating the market. You want to stay ahead of the masses who stash their money in savings accounts (gasp!), bonds, and even index funds. Because there's nothing worse than knowing you'd be doing better by doing nothing. But you face the risk of losing to the market if you stash substantial portions of your hard-earned dollars in non-dividend-payers, underperformers, or -- worst of all -- non-dividend-paying underperformers; because when your investment dollars stagnate, even the lowly T-bill will take you to the woodshed. Greatest growth: Fueled by dividends Master investors such as...

New Swedish companies are bursting with ideas in IT and biotech. It's time for international investors to sit up and take notice, says leading entrepreneur Johan Staël von Holstein.

Foreign investors slashed their holdings of US securities by a record amount as the credit squeeze intensified, according to the latest Treasury figures. The Treasury International Capital report – known as the Tic – for August will be closely watched because it appears amid growing concerns about the weakness of the US dollar, which hit a record low recently against a basket of major currencies. “The bad news is that [the data] plainly show how vulnerable the dollar is to a continuation of the credit crunch-risk averse environment,” said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “There is...

ABOUT a week ago, I was swimming in my pool when I had serious difficulty breathing. “Uh-oh,” I said to myself, “now I am about to die.” My wife was upstairs reading, way out of earshot and, anyway, if I were about to have a lethal heart attack, I wouldn’t be able to scream. It turned out to be a nasty but short-lived bronchitis, and as I was lying in bed recovering, I thought, “I will die someday, and before I do, I would like to share with you the best possible thoughts I can, in gratitude for the many...

The roller-coaster career of maverick trader Victor Niederhoffer took a sharp downturn after losses mounted and a key investor withdrew money from his firm, demonstrating how the market's recent volatility has shaken even some veterans. Mr. Niederhoffer's hedge-fund firm, Manchester Trading LLC, ran into difficulties a decade after Mr. Niederhoffer lost most of his personal savings when his previous hedge fund collapsed. Last month, Mr. Niederhoffer's largest hedge fund, Matador Fund Ltd., was liquidated after suffering losses of more than 70%, according to people close to the matter. Adding to Mr. Niederhoffer's problems, according to a person close to the...

September 13, 2007 Renewable Energy: Not Just Another Investment Bubble by Mark Braly, Contributing Writer Davis, California [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] Renewable energies and demand-side technologies have become the third largest investment class for venture capitalists (VC) in the U.S. This was just one of the messages heard by the more than 700 investors and entrepreneurs who convened on the campus of the University of California Davis this week for a three-day conference that showcased the newest in clean energy technologies. The event, which ran Sept. 10-12, kicked off with a panel of Silicon Valley venture capitalists in a session entitled "The Green...

The number of millionaires in the world increased by 8.3 percent in 2006, with about 9.5 million individuals now estimated to have more than a million dollars in financial assets, a report said Wednesday. The survey by financial services group Capgemini and US investment bank Merrill Lynch said strong global economic growth and gains on the stock market explained the expansion of the exclusive club of "High Net Worth Individuals" (HNWIs). The financial assets owned by the group totalled 37.2 trillion dollars (27.7 trillion euros), an increase of 11.4 percent from 2005, with Singapore, India, Indonesia and Russia producing the...

WASHINGTON -- Seventy percent of Americans now say the economy is getting worse, a belief contradicted by a growing workforce, increased wages and household wealth, and a stock-market rally that has boosted worker-retirement investments.

One of the ideas behind Stockpickr.com is to allow investors to peek inside the portfolios of the big financial guns to see what stocks they like. Although they wouldn't be considered financial gurus, the Clintons recently liquidated their blind trusts, and we took note. The Bill and Hillary Clinton portfolio on Stockpickr lists the 25 largest stock holdings liquidated by the couple's blind trust, with each holding representing an investment of more than $100,000 each. The flurry of recent news items about former president Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's blind trust have focused on the reason why...

On Tuesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke turned optimistic about the U.S. economy. The man who holds the delicate U.S. economy in his hands said that, in spite of slowing growth, he expects the economy to bounce back in the coming months. But good news for business is apparently bad news for anyone who own shares of U.S. companies. The Fed Chief's rosy economic forecast left scared investors running for the exits, and the stock market plunged. It may indeed seem odd that investors sell their shares when corporations appear to face good business ahead. But in reality, investors aren’t worried...

I need some help. I have a Brother who is a 100% service connected disabled Vet. His wife of less than 4 years has put him in a home, run up his bills, taken his VA and SS monies, is trying to sell his house, and now she filed for divorce. Long, sad, story. No courts are involved yet. I had him go to legal aid and muck up the divorce papers to send her back to square one. That worked. She had durable power of attorney, and forced a fiduciary upon him. We have that going backwards now, also....

To protect the purchasing power of your money over the last five years, one of the best strategies was to send it abroad. Foreign stock markets overall have risen faster than U.S. shares since 2002. And a big bonus for American investors in foreign securities has been the currency effect: As the dollar's value has sunk against many of its global rivals, returns earned abroad have been juiced significantly.Egged on by the greenback's latest slump, a long-popular view on Wall Street is back in focus: the idea that the dollar is in a sustained downturn. According to this school of...

Lives Well-Lived On the other side of the spectrum, I dined last night with an old friend from the glorious street of my childhood, Harvey Road in Silver Spring, Md. Gene Daumit, who was accompanied by his beautiful wife, DeeDee, is a super-smart guy with a Ph.D. from MIT, a major job at a huge chemicals company, a spouse with a great job in real estate, a home and a vacation condo that are both paid for (or mostly paid for), a substantial pension, and impressive savings. As they told me about their life, especially their wildly successful daughters, I...

What does this very well known technical indicator mean for us as traders? At TradingMarkets we look at the 200-day MA as the cut-off in determining whether a stock or market is in a bull market or a bear market. We take long trades after we get a buy signal ONLY if the stock or market is above its 200-day MA. We take short positions after we get a sell signal ONLY if the stock or market is below its 200-day MA. So what is the big deal about this line that is drawn on our charts? There are several...

Allegheny Technologies Inc. on Friday said 2007 capital investments could be in the range of $450 million to $500 million. The Pittsburgh company (NYSE:ATI), which makes specialty metals and alloys, also said its board approved an investment of about $38 million for further expansion of the titanium sponge production capabilities at its Albany, Ore., plant.