The changes in the economy are having an impact on the ability of businesses to survive. Banks had to increase the amount of assets required to keep on hand while changing the borrower's financial requirements. This makes it more difficult to get financing for the sale of a business or commercial real estate.

Too many people have the impression that repairing credit is as easy as sending a few letters to the credit bureaus, watching the errors on their credit reports disappear, and having their credit score jump up to where it should be. In practice, credit repair is rarely this easy so it is little wonder why so many people who attempt to repair their credit don't see the results they were hoping for.

Credit scores which were initially created as a tools lenders could use to quickly determine credit risk, as opposed to digging through each item of your credit reports in an effort to determine your credit worthiness, have been adopted by other industries as well. A good credit score opens up a world of opportunities and has benefits many people didn't even realize were there.

A hundred years ago it was called “dollar diplomacy.” After World War II, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, that policy evolved into “dollar hegemony.” But after all these many years of great success, our dollar dominance is coming to an end. It has been said, rightly, that he who holds the gold makes the rules. In earlier times it was readily accepted that fair and honest trade required an exchange for something of real value. First it was simply barter of goods. Then it was discovered that gold held a universal attraction, and was a convenient substitute for more cumbersome barter transactions. Not only did gold facilitate exchange of goods and services, it served as a store of value for those who wanted to save for a rainy day. Ron Paul

Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a speech before the the Annual Meeting of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council in Providence, Rhode Island. In the speech, he warned about the current state of the government finances. His conclusion, the situation is dire and “unsustainable”.

On Thursday August 12, the US equities market triggered a confirmed technical indicator known as the “Hindenburg Omen.” This omen, as you may have guessed, suggests that a stock market crash is on the way. However, it doesn’t mean just any crash — according to Albert Edwards, a London-based strategist at Societe Generale SA, the indicator means “a savage equity downturn is imminent.” The level of attention and significance given to this omen is truly unparalleled in the world of technical analysis, and for good reason.

While credit bureau disputes may be effective, you could make the argument that they don't work well. Credit bureau disputes can result in accurate negative information being removed from your credit reports while genuine errors continue to count against your credit score.

For thousands of years, gold has been a central monetary component of most civilizations. It is durable and has been able to retain its value even to this day. That, in and of itself, is extremely remarkable considering how many paper currencies that have went the way of the dodo. That is why the when Bill Murphy of GATA (Gold Anti-Trust Association) gave his testimony on April 9th before the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), it may have been one of the most important testimonies in history for uncovering the massive fraud in today’s gold market. - Michael Schmidt

While carrying the proper amount of insurance is very important step in ensuring your long term financial stability (an estimated 60 percent of all bankruptcies results from medical bills), there are steps you can take to lower your monthly insurance premiums so you will save money while not sacrificing coverage.

Goodwill letters are essentially you asking the collections agency nicely to stop reporting the collection account to the credit bureaus. And while this may seem like a hopeless attempt, goodwill letters have proven to be surprisingly effective as long as you don't have a large number of accounts that have been sent to collections.