DougM

The Dow's Lost Decade

Why not look at one of the energy stocks in the Dow before you declare the "old economy" toast?

Breaking News: Wells Fargo Buys Wachovia

And yet, this deal makes much more sense for Wells because they don't have much of a presence on the east coast. With this deal, Wells finally goes truly national. I hope it goes through. The Citi deal was contingent on shareholder approval anyway. So, why would a shareholder not simply vote that deal down and take this one?

Auction Rate Securities: Who's To Blame?

I echo MichaelNYC's comments - this was my experience as well. As to how the product differed from short CDs, I understood that I was buying muni bonds and that the interest income was tax-free. The interest was actually lower than what I might have gotten on CDs, but it was higher after-tax given my tax bracket. I accepted that there might be a somewhat higher credit risk in the bonds in exchange for the tax-free return. I did not realize that there might be interest-rate risk associated with being stuck in the bonds - I was never given a prospectus and the products were never described to me as "auction-rate securities", they were described as "7-day paper". The instruments showed up on my statements as bonds, in the muni section - I did see the long maturity dates, and this troubled me somewhat. I was only given more details when I began to ask questions last October. I did this only because the insurance wrappers on the bonds appeared to be falling apart as MBIA and Ambac were teetering on the edge of AAA downgrades. This was the first time I was sent a brochure explaining how an auction-rate security worked. Unable to find out what the penalty rate was on my bonds, I sold them, and dodged a bullet.