Featured Articles

Top 10 Financial Scams: Products and Practices

Sep 2nd, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles

by Melanie Waddell NASAA recently released its list of the top scams con artists use to trap unwary, or merely desperate, investors during these volatile economic times Advisors and investors beware: Even though Bernie Madoff is gone, economic uncertainty and volatile stock markets still breed con artists itching to trap the unwary or merely desperate. [...]



FINRA WARNS INVESTORS OF GOLD STOCK SCAMS

Aug 25th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles

Don’t let a touch of “gold fever” sucker your clients into what very might well be the latest gold-plated investor scam. To help protect investors from such potential “golden cons,” the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority today issued an investor alert, “Gold” Stocks–Some Investments Mine Your Pocketbook, ostensibly to warn investors about investment scams that promote [...]



Don’t Fall Prey to the 2011 Dirty Dozen Tax Scams

Apr 8th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles

April 7, 2011 WASHINGTON –– Hiding income in offshore accounts, identity theft, return preparer fraud, and filing false or misleading tax forms top the annual list of “dirty dozen” tax scams in 2011, the Internal Revenue Service announced today. “The Dirty Dozen represents the worst of the worst tax scams,” IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said. [...]



How to Choose a Financial Advisor

Mar 11th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles

Since this magazine is dedicated to Investor Education for Main Street America, it seems appropriate to refer our readers to a fine new publication created by the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors titled Pursuit of a Financial Advisor Field Guide. Where do I go? Where do I look? What do I ask? Finding qualified, [...]



10 Worst States for Entrepreneurship and Small Business

Mar 9th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s “Business Tax Index 2010” ranks the states from best to worst in terms of the costs of their tax systems on entrepreneurship and small business. The Index pulls together 16 different tax measures, and combines those into one tax score that allows the 50 states and District of Columbia [...]



Does Monetary Expansion Stoke Inflation?

Jan 7th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles

Brian Harris, Senior Editor, Dimensional Fund Advisors Since the financial crisis hit in late 2008, the US monetary base has more than doubled, from about $800 billion in mid-2008 to about $2 trillion in November 2010.1 When the Federal Reserve announced a second round of quantitative easing (QE2), it raised investor concerns that such actions [...]



Congress Resolves Many Tax Issues During Lame-Duck Session

Dec 23rd, 2010 | By | Category: Featured Articles

Staff – Journal of Accountancy Congress adjourned its year-end lame-duck session on Wednesday after passing legislative fixes for several pending tax issues, including the estate tax, the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, an alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch, and extensions of many expired provisions. However, it failed to repeal the expanded Form [...]



REAL Debt Reform

Dec 3rd, 2010 | By | Category: Featured Articles

by Bob Veres Dealing With US Debt If you want to watch something alarming, look at the U.S. Debt Clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/), which calculates, second-by-second, America’s rising debt (approaching $14 trillion), federal spending (nearly $3.5 trillion a year) and budget deficit (roughly $1.3 trillion).  Second-by-second the numbers increase, and you can also watch (more slowly) the [...]



A Season of Horrors!

Nov 9th, 2010 | By | Category: Featured Articles

By Jon Coupal This fall has been especially frightening. There have been the little monsters at our doors on Halloween, the monstrous politicians invading our homes through the television, and there has been that property tax bill in the mail box. Fortunately, as a direct result of Proposition 13, which limits increases in a property’s [...]



The Glitter of Gold…

Oct 26th, 2010 | By | Category: Featured Articles

When to Buy Gold See if you can relate to this situation: the struggling U.S. economy experiences severe unemployment, and a falling dollar spooks investors.  The stock market seems to be in a protracted tailspin, and the situation in Afghanistan is increasingly alarming.  So you look for an alternative investment, and find… gold, which is [...]