The American Bankers Association said consumer-credit delinquencies rose to 3.23% of all accounts in the first quarter of 2009. Delinquencies on bank-card accounts rose to 4.75%. The percentage of consumers at least 30 days late making a payment is the highest since the group began keeping records in 1974:… Read More

We’re 11 days past the July 1 deadline, and California still doesn’t have a budget in place. Democratic lawmakers and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger remain at loggerheads about a $26 billion budget shortfall. Schwarzenegger says he won’t accept any more taxes. Without a budget, the state can’t spend money. Without… Read More

Legendary pop star Michael Jackson spent exuberantly and accumulated a lot of debt during his lifetime, but one shrewd business decision might save his estate. Jackson paid $47.5 million for the rights to some of the world’s most famous musicians’ work, including the Beatles… Read More

Junk bond funds are up more than +20% off their March lows, and many of them still sport yields in excess of 10%. Though a double-digit yield is always tempting, now may not be the time to purchase high-yield bonds. Junk or “speculative-grade”… Read More

IPO market is very thin because companies that aren’t top notch know they’ll get slammed,” says Amy Calistri, editor of StreetAuthority’s Stock of the Month, adding “In this environment, companies that aren’t the cream of the crop are wise to find capital elsewhere… Read More

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) launched a search engine, so Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) releasing an operating system (OS). It looks like war. Google’s Chrome OS shares the same name as its browser, though it will operate independently. It’s expected to be available in about a year. Read More

Foreign stocks that trade on U.S. exchanges are outperforming their domestic counterparts. The Bank of New York Mellon Composite ADR Index outperformed the S&P 500 by 7.2 percentage points, +9.9% to +2.7%, for the first six months of 2009. During this same time period,… Read More

Las Vegas housing prices are in the toilet. The latest numbers show prices there have fallen -37.3% in the past year and -51.1% since 2006. The state of Nevada leads the nation in foreclosures — 10,000 in March alone — and seven out of ten Las Vegas mortgages are underwater… Read More

Regulators seeking to stave off a return to $140 crude want to crack down on oil-market “speculation” by putting limits on some big trades. Any new rules along these lines wouldn’t affect individual investors. The Washington-based Commodity… Read More

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev opened the first day of their Moscow summit Monday by signing a preliminary agreement to reduce their countries’ nuclear arsenals. While many of the summit’s agenda items will be military in nature, a broader outcome of this week’s meeting may be… Read More