Your $tock Mom

The New York State Attorney General and newly-appointed head of the new financial crimes unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general, Eric Schneiderman, is suing Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo for deceptive mortgage foreclosure practices and the fraudulent use of MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems).
The lawsuit charges that the MERS system eliminates the ability to track property transfers.
Schneiderman discusses with Rachel Maddow the processes, resources, and agencies – federal and state – now involved and empowered to investigate and criminally prosecute the people responsible for …

New rules take effect today that are meant to avoid sticker shock when booking flights online. Airlines are now required to compensate customers who are bumped, promptly notify passengers of delays or cancelations, and give customers 24 hours to cancel a reservation without penalty.
Tom Costello reports on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. – January 26, 2012
 
(video 2:10)

Before the problems with our economy can be resolved, it is essential to comprehend how our economic system is structured and how it functions.
It is the correlation of jobs to consumption, consumption to capitalism, and capitalism to our economy that needs clear definition and understanding.
Once we understand the symbiotic relationship of jobs and business to the middle-income consumer – who is responsible for the majority of consumption of goods and services that, in turn, fuels the success and maintains the sustainability of businesses that ultimately create jobs that provide prosperity …

Supply and demand drive price, right? Or is the price of oil, and consequently gasoline, being driven by politics?
Could it be that we are merely at the mercy of the social upheaval plaguing the oil-rich states; are we simply financing their bloated budgets created from their record-level spending on subsidies and the pumping of money into the salaries of their citizenry “to suppress any popular discontent”?
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria examines why oil prices remain high. The reasons, and the facts, might surprise you.
“What in the world – The politics of …

Private equity firms want to go out and buy up foreclosed properties, REOs (real-estate owned or bank-owned) properties. There are millions of foreclosed properties that need to be resolved, and investors want to buy them in bulk and rent them. The government is talking about selling them in bulk; although no plan is out yet, the talk is that it’s coming.
Investors want to come in and buy these homes nationwide, rent them, and manage them.
“We look at managing it through sort of a distributed apartment-building model; and we’ve built …