Personal Income & Finance Consulting Group

First, the $700 billion rescue for the economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets.

Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.

But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it. Insurance companies now want a piece; maybe automakers, too, even though Congress has approved $25 billion in low-interest loans for them.

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PNC Financial Services Group Inc. said Friday it is acquiring National City Corp.

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The advice from financial experts has been painfully repetitive during weeks of decline in the markets: A bottom should be near.

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People with cancers and other severe medical conditions will get quicker action on disability claims under a new Social Security program.

The time needed to decide claims could trim from 100 days or more to as few as two, said Michael J. Astrue, who heads the Social Security Administration. The Compassionate Allowances initiative will apply to 25 rare diseases and 25 cancers, and may be expanded later, the agency said Monday.

‘This is something that I’ve believed in for a long, long time,’ Astrue said in an interview before the announcement. His father received disability benefits because of a rare form of brain cancer.

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Stocks dropped on Friday in a worldwide sell-off with investors cashing out of stocks as signs mounted that the global economic slowdown could be deeper than feared and the corporate profit outlook darkened.

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With fuel surcharges, baggage fees and rising ticket costs, traveling is more expensive than ever.

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1. My wife and I are both retired and we depend on our private pension and other small investments for our income. We are both very concerned and afraid that within the next 6 months there will be nothing left. - Jack

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PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES — IN THE SAME CITY ON THE SAME DAY. TODAY… ALL EYES ARE ON ALBUQUERQUE.

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Many small-business owners believe you should never go it alone — you should always have a support system, whether it consists of financial advisers, mentors, fellow entrepreneurs or consultants, to guide you.

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A local Jacksonville company may have a solution to the nation’s mortgage crisis which would help struggling families stay in their home

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Each day from July through September, more than 2,700 Americans lost their homes in foreclosure.

That number, up from 1,200 a day a year ago, is a sign that the mortgage industry and government programs have done little to help troubled homeowners.

The mortgage market’s troubles have proved to be far more serious and intractable than most in government or the private sector had predicted a year ago.

‘We are behind the curve. We are falling behind,’ Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. told a Senate hearing Thursday. ‘There has been some progress, but it’s not been enough, and we need to act. And we need to act quickly, and we need to act dramatically to have more wide-scale, systematic (loan) modifications….’

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A panel formed by Gov. Gibbons to reduce government waste is considering major reductions in state employee health and retirement benefits.

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For Jay McGwire, Churchill s cigar bar is a place to relax and strike up conversations while sipping a stout and smoking a cigar.

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An 82-year-old real estate agent with severe arthritis and two artificial hips thought she would be retired by now, while a professor 25 years her junior wonders if he will ever stop working.

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Wall Street joined world stock markets in a selloff Friday, with the Dow Jones industrials dropping 400 points and all the major indexes falling more than 3 percent.

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Sales of existing homes rose by the largest amount in more than five years in September, a real estate trade group said Friday.

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ALBANY - The value of the state Teacher Retirement Fund dropped by $7 billion between the end of July and the end of September, a fund spokesman said Friday.

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Experts call it the “forgotten issue,” or even the “ignored issue” — Social Security.

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U.S. home sales are unlikely to recover before the second half of 2009, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in its latest economic forecast.

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The value of Georgia’s two major pension programs has fallen more than $11 billion as stocks have plummeted over the past three and a half months.

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The financial crisis has grabbed the attention of voters less than two weeks before the presidential election, but the real trouble - a deep recession - will linger long after the race for the White House ends. Here are some considerations to keep in mind.

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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday he’ll try again to overcome a judge’s objections to a proposal to force employers to get rid of workers whose Social Security numbers don’t match their names.

The proposal has been stymied for months by a U.S. district judge in California who blocked the rule after several groups sued. Chertoff said his agency has addressed the judge’s concerns with some additions to the proposal, including providing an analysis of the economic costs of the rule.

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“Homeowners are the innocent bystanders in a drive-by shooting by Wall Street and Washington,” Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday.

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The head of the government’s $700 billion financial rescue program told Congress Thursday that the Bush administration has made “tremendous progress” in pushing to get it implemented.

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The number of homeowners ensnared in the foreclosure crisis grew by more than 70 percent in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2007, according to data released Thursday.

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Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, unveiled Thursday a temporary backstop on interbank lending to help Canadian banks secure access to financing in the face of a global credit malaise.

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A lot of Maryland voters may already know how they will be voting on slots.

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Around half a million people who have not paid enough National Insurance will be entitled to a full state pension if they top it up with one-off payments, it was reported.

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The mood was frosty at London’s Frieze Art Fair. Bidders were sparse at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Even Andy Warhol’s multicolored skulls failed to lift the art world’s gloom.

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , the mortgage-finance companies seized by the US government last month, said they are rethinking their policies on investing and bond-guarantee pricing to provide aid to the housing …

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The economy’s health improved for the first time in five months in September as supplier deliveries and new orders strengthened, a private research group said Monday.

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First, it was the banks. Now the Federal Reserve has come to the aid of money market funds as the government seeks to break the credit logjam that threatens the global economy. A week after the government announced it would spend $250 billion to buy stakes in U.S. banks, the Fed stepped up Tuesday to help money market funds that have been squeezed by worried investors demanding to cash out their holdings.

Meanwhile, the Treasury named two accounting firms to help manage the $700 billion bailout package.

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Long before she filed for bankruptcy, Ann Neukomm was “under water” — she owed more on her mortgage than her house was worth — a situation more and more Americans are finding themselves in.

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Oct. 21 - Billionaire investor George Soros and other panelists at Columbia University slam U.S. government for the financial crisis.

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Maribel Carrillo is one of the new, happy-ending stories for bank regulators who hope to stem the foreclosure pandemic by modifying delinquent mortgages in bulk.

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Monday kicks off Lead Prevention Awareness Week. In an attempt to battle lead problems, the Marion County Health Department has invested nearly $3 million to eliminate lead paint from buildings throughout the …

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The Federal Reserve announced Tuesday that it will start buying commercial paper _ a crucial short-term funding mechanism many companies rely on for day-to-day operations _ from money market mutual funds.

It’s the latest effort by the central bank to break through a credit clog that has hobbled lending and threatens to plunge the country into a deep and painful recession.

The Fed is tapping its Depression-era emergency powers and creating a new facility to buy a vast array of commercial paper from the funds. Money market mutual funds have been under pressure as skittish investors demand withdrawals. Many companies rely on commercial paper to pay workers and buy supplies.

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Lenders are boosting the credit scores they require to lend consumers money.

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Wachovia: loss easily outstrips the $14bn that Wells Fargo is set to pay for the North Carolina bank.

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The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether people picked up on immigration violations also can face charges of identity theft if they use Social Security and other identification numbers that belong to …

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With little relief in sight, people are getting more anxious about the slumping economy and how it affects them.

The share of people who believe the country is moving in the right direction has plunged in just a few weeks, from 28 percent in September to 15 percent in October, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll of likely voters that was released Monday.

At the same time there is a drop in those surveyed who say they are happy about the way things are going in their own lives. Now 59 percent say they are personally happy, compared with 70 percent last month.

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The city can afford to prune the trees only on major streets. There’s also no money for children’s tee ball, or soccer, baseball or flag football.

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Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI’s chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain’s campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

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Tory leader David Cameron is holding a summit with small business leaders to discuss ways of helping them through the economic turmoil.

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WESTERVILLE, Ohio - Evoking “Joe the Plumber” in his pivotal home state, Republican John McCain on Sunday cast himself as the guardian of middle-class workers and small-business owners who fuel the economy.

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A proposed change to the way Georgia doles out teacher pensions has retired educators angry that the state wants to change a 40-year-old policy on cost-of-living adjustments.

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President Bush on Saturday sought to reassure Americans about the cost and scope of the U.S. financial bailout plan and said that in the long run “our economy will bounce back.” Bush, in his weekly radio …

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A study says that the state’s public pension systems have lost an estimated $5 billion in the last 10 years by relying too heavily on U.S. stocks The study by the Missouri consulting firm Hammond Associates was …

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The FBI, after years spent focusing on national security, is struggling to find agents and resources to investigate wrongdoing tied to the country’s economic crisis, The New York Times reported in Sunday …

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For the past two weeks, Kathryn Morrison and her husband have been shaken awake at night by visions of crashing stock markets and evaporating retirement plans.

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Worries about job security may have you evaluating your finances. AP Personal Finance Editor Trevor Delaney offers guidance on shoring up finances before the unthinkable happens.

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Medicaid’s growing strain on federal and state budgets is unlikely to abate over the coming decade as the cost of providing health care to the poor is expected to increase 7.9 percent annually, government actuaries reported Friday.

Each year, trustees for the nation’s Medicare and Social Security programs update the public on the financial health of the two entitlement programs. Now, federal officials are trying to set a similar precedent for Medicaid _ which serves about 50 million people. Actuaries for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released their first report Friday on the program’s past trends and outlook.

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Sen. Barbara Boxer on Friday pressed for action from 21 banks and lenders that an advocacy group has accused of insufficient support for at-risk homeowners in California.

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Oct. 19 - A 13 Tonne digger moves hearts as well as earth in a unique dance duet.

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Promises and proposals from Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama : IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN McCain: Opposes scheduling a troop withdrawal from Iraq, saying latest strategy is succeeding.

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Saying the nation and New Jersey are in the “throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Gov.

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Tita Mendoza and her husband moved into their Miami Beach condo in June and have been paying the $1,800 rent on time every month.

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Social Security benefits for 50 million people are expected to go up next year by the largest amount in more than a quarter-century.

The new cost-of-living increase, to be announced Thursday by the Social Security Administration, is expected to be above 5.5 percent. That would make it the largest increase since a 7.4 percent jump in 1982. The increase for 2008 was 2.3 percent.

A 5.5 percent increase would mean about $60 a month more for the average retiree. Even with the gain, the fatter Social Security check still may seem puny to millions of retirees battered this year by huge increases in energy and food costs. They’ve also watched helplessly as their retirement savings have been assaulted by the biggest upheavals on Wall Street in seven decades.

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In the midst of historic volatility on Wall Street there is a continuing trend of blacks saving and investing less than whites, according to a survey released Wednesday.

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Close to one in every three newly registered Ohio voters will end up on court-ordered lists being sent to county election boards because they have some discrepancy in their records, an elections spokesman said Wednesday.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimated that an initial review found that about 200,000 newly registered voters reported information that did not match motor-vehicle or Social Security records, Brunner spokesman Kevin Kidder said. Some discrepancies could be as simple as a misspelling, while others could be more significant.

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