Crash Survival Zone

As we spend the next few days thinking of ways to better ourselves in 2009, here are a few green resolutions to add to your list. Many of them will help you with your financial resolutions, as well, since going green can often save you money.

Save energy with simple steps like turning off lights and [...]

British retailer Tesco entered the U.S. market only last year but already it has managed to put Wal-Mart (WMT), the world’s No. 1 retailer, on the defensive. Tesco (TSCO.L) fired the first salvo, in a battle that retailing analysts expect will intensify, by launching Fresh & Easy, a chain of 10,000-square-foot convenience stores, in cities [...]

With nearly one in six homes worth less than the mortgage owed on it, according to Moody’s Economy.com, divorce lawyers and financial advisers around the country say the logistics of divorce have been turned around. “We used to fight about who gets to keep the house,” said Gary Nickelson, president of the American Academy of [...]

The financial crisis caught up with Kirk Kerkorian, Robert Tchenguiz and Adolf Merckle in the last days of 2008, denting their reputations for being among the world’s savviest, not merely richest, investors.
Ultra-wealthy people such as the three men — a 91-year old U.S. billionaire, a jet-setting London property tycoon and a media-shy German industrialist — [...]

Recessions are lousy - as Americans have learned about 10 times over the last 50 years. But they’re also necessary. Prosperity tends to produce a lot of economic sediment, like unneeded purchases and excessive debt, that coagulates like gunk in a pipe. A good recession flushes it out. It also washes away things we need, [...]

Just in case anybody’s keeping track, the government has now appropriated $9 billion in bailout funds to some of the richest folks in America. This would be Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity fund that owns majority stakes in GMAC and Chrysler and whose chairman is John Snow  - the last Treasury Secretary before the [...]

For most investors, the best thing about 2009 is that it isn’t 2008, as one analyst pointed out. CNBC experts share their predictions for the year to come as the world goes through the worst recession in generations.

Banks Will Start Lending
Hope Coming from Obama
The Markets Want to Go Higher
Low Rates for a Long Time
Getting Value [...]

Widely watched index shows home prices dropped by the steepest annual rate in October.

Home prices dropped by the sharpest annual rate on record in October and there are no signs the housing pain is over, according to a closely watched index released Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city housing index fell by a record 18 percent [...]

Consumer confidence falls unexpectedly in December, hitting all-time low as job market worsens.

Consumer confidence hit an all-time low in December, dropping unexpectedly in the face of rising layoffs, in yet another sign that consumer spending is unlikely to pull the U.S. out of a yearlong recession any time soon.

Consumers have been nervous about spending for [...]

In the 1960s, Stanford University psychology researcher Walter Mischel conducted a longitudinal study. Mischel placed marshmallows in front of hungry four-year-old children. He told them they could have one marshmallow now, or if they could wait several minutes, they could have two. Some children quickly grabbed the marshmallow and ate it. Others waited.

Mischel followed the [...]