Don’t get bitten by this Awfully Mean Tax
The Alternative Minimum Tax — the tax that taxes you for having too many tax breaks — is affecting a growing number of families. Here’s how to minimize the bite.

Can your Mortgage be your Savings Account? Posted By : rateempire
It is becoming increasingly popular to use a mortgage in lieu of a low-interest savings account. Is this a good idea?

Managerial Incentives and Corporate Fraud: The Sources of Incentives Matter

Operating performance and stock return results imply that managers who commit fraud anticipate large stock price declines if they were to report truthfully, which would cause greater losses for managerial stockholdings than for options because of differences in convexity. Fraud firms have significantly greater incentives from unrestricted stockholdings than control firms do, and unrestricted stockholdings are their largest incentive source. Our results emphasize the importance of the shape and vesting status of incentive payoffs in providing incentives to commit fraud. Fraud firms also have characteristics that suggest a lower likelihood of fraud detection, which implies lower expected costs of fraud.

Shareholder Rights, Boards, and CEO Compensation

I analyze the role of executive compensation in corporate governance. As proxies for corporate governance, I use board size, board independence, CEO-chair duality, institutional ownership concentration, CEO tenure, and an index of shareholder rights. The results from a broad cross-section of large U.S. public firms are inconsistent with recent claims that entrenched managers design their own compensation contracts. The interactions of the corporate governance mechanisms with total pay-for-performance and excess compensation can be explained by governance substitution. If a firm has generally weaker governance, the compensation contract helps better align the interests of shareholders and the CEO.

5 giants at next-to-nothing prices
In this battered market, shares of some of the world’s biggest companies are selling at their lowest prices in years. Here are 5 stocks worth a look.

Is this the year to change your life?
2009 may be a great time to take a financial risk and make a big step forward — such as launching a business, buying a home, changing careers or starting a family.