In a classic example of the Markowski Investments/Watchdog on Wall Street echo chamber many of the scams and investment fraud that we have been highlighting and discussing for years have been named by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) in a list of the most widespread ways investors are likely to be trapped in […]
“He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.” Edgar Fielder In another biblical sign of Armageddon, the highest rated television show on CNBC is James Cramer’s Mad Money. This is a program that is suppose to help individuals with their investments, a serious and noble endeavor; in reality, it is […]
Richard Scrushy the ex-CEO of HealthSouth, (aka the man who got away with a $2.7 billion dollar fraud) is being accused of reneging on a deal where he promised a Birmingham, Alabama reporter and a local minister $150,000 to help push jurors to find him innocent. This past June we reported how Scrushy manipulated the […]
In a stunning announcement which will consolidate power on Wall Street, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, CSFB, UBS Paine Weber, and Goldman Sachs have announced that they are combining their client management divisions (brokerage) under the leadership of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld is the ex-CEO of the now defunct SPECTRE organization (Special Executor for Counter […]
I recently was invited to a steak dinner at the local country club by an individual who stated in his invite he was a “Wealth Management Expert (WME)”, “Certified Senior Advisor (CSA)” and “Certified in Long-Term Care (CLTC).” According to the mass-mailed cheaply printed invite, where they misspelled my last name, “I was now afforded […]
Look out America! The IRS is about to get real tough. The Internal Revenue Service is intensifying its crackdown on tax dodgers, and plans to increase the number of tax audits it will conduct next year. The IRS will be focusing on investigating taxpayers with incomes of $100,000 and above. The agency will be examining […]
In this past months edition of Fortune Small Business columnist Brian O’Reilly made this excellent analogy… Imagine for a moment that your local police set out to trap a few wily burglars but wound up clumsily ensnaring you and others, the town’s shopkeepers, factory owners, and doctors. The town officials discover they can make so […]
During the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, we were vehemently criticized on our position on looking for dividends. Conventional wisdom at the time was that we were in the “new economy” where earnings and cash flow didn’t matter, and stocks never fell. Who in their right mind would ever want to look for dividend […]
Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs, are simply a basket of securities that trade just like stocks on the major exchanges. For individuals who want to invest in the market quickly and cheaply? ETFs are the most practical vehicle. They help the investor focus on what is most important, choice of asset classes. All the major […]
H&R Block is in hot water once again. The biggest tax preparer in the United States has been ordered to pay a $62.5 million to settle various class-action law suits that allege they charged mafia-like usurious interest rates on loans to customers awaiting tax returns. The settlement involves about 8 million customers in over 26 […]