CHICAGO—A sideways stock market has investors searching for other places to make a decent return on their money. And junk bonds, for better or worse, are starting to look like gems to many. The appeal is easy to understand. Junk bonds, known more politely as high-yield bonds, are bonds with very low [ Read More → ]

Financial planner Rick Brooks increasingly finds himself tangling with what he and his colleagues call “yapping dogs.” Not the canine variety, but the 401(k) type—those pesky retirement accounts many people leave behind in their ex-employers’ 401(k) plans when they change jobs. Hear Carolyn Geer discuss some important issues and tips [ Read More → ]

Whomever President Barack Obama taps to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection could find it difficult to keep ahead of the credit-card industry. The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, known as the Card Act, was intended to reshape the contours of consumer finance. Among other [ Read More → ]

The Feltex trial has highlighted the risks of being a director at a time when New Zealand needs good people on company boards, the failed carpet company’s former chief executive Peter Thomas said yesterday. Feltex’s five directors have waited for four years to be cleared of Financial Reporting Act (FRA) charges. Thomas [ Read More → ]

A wide-reaching and drawn-out legal fight over alleged trading violations in the mutual fund industry could soon be over, with federal judges in Baltimore expected to decide this fall whether to approve settlements that could total hundreds of millions of dollars. Numerous class-action lawsuits were filed on behalf of millions of [ Read More → ]

The New Zealand dollar maintained its strength opening above US73c this morning, as the Australian keeps up its performance and markets firmed with generally positive global economic data. The NZ dollar was at US73.26c at 8am today from US72.82 at 5pm yesterday. The kiwi has been recovering from a weak last week, [ Read More → ]

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The latest form of identity theft doesn’t depend on stealing your Social Security number. Now thieves are targeting your kid’s number long before the little one even has a bank account. Hundreds of online businesses are using computers to find dormant Social Security numbers — usually those assigned to [ Read More → ]

Every politician worthy of the name knows that the easiest policy changes to put over are those that don’t kick in until well into the future. The idea, of course, is that by the time their dire ramifications become evident, they’ll be someone else’s problem. That must be why it has [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON - The health insurance industry has won a concession from the Obama administration on insurance coverage for children. The Health and Human Services Department said Wednesday that insurers can set limited sign-up periods for a new kind of guaranteed coverage that is available to children regardless of medical problems. Insurers were [ Read More → ]

In this on-again, off-again economic recovery, some unemployed mid- or late-career professionals are tapping their retirement nest eggs just to survive financially in the here and now. The question is, what happens once they actually reach retirement age? Even with no savings or company pensions, Canadians do have a basic safety [ Read More → ]