We think investors will profit most — and with the least risk — by buying shares of well-established, dividend-paying stocks with strong business prospects. Words: 387

The rebounding global economy has pushed up commodity prices in recent months but, with the exception of gold which has recently hit record highs, most commodities remain below their 2008 peaks. Still, resource demand should continue to improve with the global economy but there are ways to do - and avoid doing - when buying into such investments. Words: 503

Niall Ferguson's book,The Ascent of Money, is an excellent, just-in-time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis in which he shows how promises and paper have lifted humans from subsistence farmers in Babylon to Masters of the Universe on Wall Street. Words: 975

Most investors didn’t take warnings about the future of the economy and the financial marketplace - warnings that a ‘Category 6 Fiscal Storm’, a ‘Debt-Driven Meltdown’, a ‘Systemic Banking Crisis’, a ‘Financial Train Wreck’, a ‘God-Awful Fiscal Storm’, etc. was in store for the U.S. - seriously until it began. Perhaps this time around, before the other shoe drops, we should become more informed so we will be better positioned to survive and prosper regardless of what comes next. Words: 2128

While belt-tightening is indeed required cutting too fast would tip the West back into slump and kill tax revenues, solving nothing – a risk that austerity priests rarely acknowledge. Pacing is everything. Words: 620

The cards may be stacked against equities in 2010. After one of the most spectacular rallies in the history of the equity markets from its March, 2009 low stocks are now arguably overbought, overvalued and on borrowed time Words: 773

Once economic growth recovers, it is likely we will return to the market conditions of 2008. The price of $140 per barrel oil was not an aberration; it was a warning. An oil crisis is coming that could prove devastating to future economic growth. Given the long lead times of 5-to-10 years from oil discovery to production, we need to act now to avert this outcome. Words: 862

"Say Everything" describes a remarkable chapter in the history of communication that leads not only to YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia but also to the transformation of corporate and government communications. Words: 701

What did the investment bankers at Bear Stearns ever do to earn their millions of dollars in bonuses? Where were the regulators when traders at Bear and other Wall Street firms peddled trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed bonds and derivatives, only to realize, too late, that no one had a clue what they were worth? The author keeps the you-are-there factor high much like a Shakespeare play, complete with three acts and characters dialoguing their way on and off stage. Words: 689

The global economy has entered a new era, and a mercurial corporate form that the author calls the Protean Corporation will become the dominant species by the middle of the next decade. "These Protean Corporations," he writes, "will behave like perpetual entrepreneurial startups, continuously changing their form, direction, even their identity. They will be true corporate shape-shifters." Words: 661