Millions of Americans don’t waste any time turning in their IRS homework. If you’re among the latter and also owned shares in a mutual fund last year, you probably had to pay at least some capital gains tax. Hard to believe that could happen in such a down year, but it did. Read More

According to Standard & Poor's Ratings Service, rock-solid companies worthy of AAA ratings are a dying breed. The number of companies whose credit rating is approaching junk territory rose to an 18-year high in January. Read More

Canadian income trust and Income Portfolio holding Yellow Pages Income Fund (TSX: YLO-U, OTC: YLWPF) has been a horrific performer over the past several months. Read More

Even as the S&P 500 and Dow Industrials break to fresh 12-year lows, more than 40 percent of the stocks in the indexes are trading higher over the past three months. Much of the weakness has been concentrated in a handful of financial and industrial firms heavily impacted by the ongoing turmoil in global credit markets. Read More

Knowledge is good, as are good health and good infrastructure. It also must be paid for. The Obama administration is opening the checkbook, and we’re in on the sectors that will benefit. Read More

There’s a palpable feeling of disgust among taxpayers these days. It’s bad enough that the false prosperity engendered by years of reckless borrowing and lending has given way to the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression. But in some ways the government’s ever-expanding bailout of the banking system is even more galling: From an emotional standpoint, it’s the equivalent of rubbing salt into a gaping wound--repeatedly. Read More

The three major US stock indexes finished positive for the second consecutive day after JPMorgan Chase’s (NYSE: JPM) Chief Executive Jaime Dimon indicated that the financial services giant turned a profit in the first two months of 2009. Read More

US stocks staged a massive rally, led by the beleaguered financial sector, after Citigroup’s (NYSE: C) Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit boasted that the firm was profitable for the first two months of 2009, following a similar pronouncement from Bank of America’s (NYSE: BAC) Ken Lewis. Read More

The three major US stock indexes continued to slump, as mounting concerns about the economy weighed on shares in the telecom sector--an area where earnings have held up comparatively well. Read More

As I’ve pointed out in the last few issues of Pay Me Weekly, there’s not even a whiff of recovery in the economic data as I see it. In fact, one could argue persuasively that we haven’t even hit bottom yet; if current trends continue first quarter GDP statistics could be even worse than the fourth quarter’s 6.2 percent slide. Read More