Mortgage rates might be heading up from their record lows. If this happens, homeowners who are scrambling to refinance at a lower rate, may be out of luck. Whether to stay in their home and avoid foreclosure, continue to be able to afford health insurance, or pay for daycare after a pay cut from work, higher mortgage rates impact the everyday person considerably. Especially those that still have an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) which will readjust this year or next and cause even more foreclosures. But the biggest risk of all from increasing mortgage rates is the relationship between U.S. Treasury Bonds and the government stimulus/bail out philosophy to resurrect the economy. Stay tuned…

As General Motors (GM) inches toward bankruptcy, hear one GM bond holder’s take on the restructuring negotiations. A bond holder is an investor who loans money to a firm or government, and receives recurring interest payments. Bond holders are considered unsecured creditors of a company. In the event of a bankruptcy, bond holders are paid off before stockholders, but not before secured creditors who have claims on specific assets like real estate.

By far and away the most common explanation for the current crisis is the relaxed lending standards in the mortgage market, which caused a housing bubble, collapsing the financial system in upon its deregulated self. In this first part, of my multi-part series on the financial crisis, I will evaluate this claim. Did deregulation cause our economy to collapse? The answer is, well kinda.

In a preview of my upcoming two part series on the financial crisis, I bring you Peter Schiff.

The S&P 500 is up 30.5% since March 9, 2009. Stocks reflect the future health of the economy in general and more specifically, the discounted future cash flows a company will add to their coffers. More simply, companies with rising stock prices are supposed to make more money and eventually distribute that cash to investors in the form of dividends, along with re-investment in the company to increase the future value of the stock even more. So we must be out of the woods, right?! Quick, everyone invest in stocks! Not so fast…

Real GDP has contracted 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009. Personal income is down 0.3% in the month of March. The national unemployment rate has climbed to 8.9% through April, a 1.3% increase since the beginning of the calendar year. During this tumultuous time, in an epic struggle to scrape by and preserve wealth, one question rings in our ears: how is the current economic climate affecting pretty girls?

Milton Friedman offers perspective on the banking system and explains what a bank run is. In this video, he looks back to the Great Depression and examines the Federal Reserve’s role in such a crisis. There mare many parallels to the Great Depression and what is going on in the financial sector meltdown today. The Federal Reserve’s role in a bank run, and as a steward over the economy in general, is a great debate. What do you think?

Two people in the United States have died from swine flu. The regular flu kills several thousand people a year. In fact, many more people have died from the regular flu than the swine flu since the whole thing blew up in the first place. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 13,000 people have died from the regular, boring flu since January 2009.

In SNL Skit, Geithner Reveals Stress Tests Results

Our 24-year-old car owner, let’s call him J.C., used to get from point A to point B in a 1987 Toyota Camry. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But the Camry had some mechanical issues; issues that the aforementioned expert mechanic couldn’t even put his finger on. When it rained, which happens occasionally in the great Northwest, the Camry often puttered out on the road. Sometimes, even beautiful, sunny weather would disagree with it. Getting from first to second gear in the Camry sometimes meant the engine would die, and you’d be rolling amongst traffic, with zero ability to accelerate. If this wasn’t enough to swallow, car thieves had quite an affinity for the Camry. In its seven-year history as J.C.’s loyal confidante, the Camry was stolen four times. Stereos were pilfered, direct iPod hook-ups taken and I’m sure other fun was had in the Camry that J.C. will never fully appreciate (I like to imagine stickups and high speed chases, but to each their own). For the record, let it be known that the Camry was totaled before J.C. called it his own, thus it had a salvaged title. As any benevolent person could understand, J.C. was eager to get another car. Insert Snowflake.