Fortune Watch

That is nothing new. Some of the most popular websites are known for really bringing out the worst in people, but it seems to be getting worse. Let me give you an example.

A girl in the UK found a black widow, an extremely venomous spider that generally lives in North America, in a bowl of grapes that had been bought in a local store.

The story became big on Digg.com, a popular Web 2.0 site where readers can vote for (a digg) or against (bury) a story. The spider story quickly became a hit on the site, raking in more than 800 diggs in just about 24 hours.

Then the readers chimed in. Posting responses to stories is part of the reason for Digg’s popularity. Many readers commented on how creepy the story was or discussed spiders in general.

But some of the responses were just rude. Some people took to blasting the Daily Mail, which originally published the article, for not covering “real news”. The girl who found the spider was called a con-artist and accused of looking to make a quick buck.

Then there was the person who just seemed miffed that some people don’t like spiders and wrote, bad grammar and all, “I signed in to burry this article… spiders exist get over it.”

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Don’t fall behind : Finance charges, interest payments, getting discouraged about your finances… all problems that can occur if you let yourself fall behind. Whether it’s bills, credit cards, or student loan payments, falling behind can be a very difficult problem to come back from. The more you have to pay out in charges, the less you will have to invest in your future.

Set goals : If you don’t know where you are headed, how do you get there? In order to accumulate wealth you need a plan. Write out your goals, a way to achieve them, and you’ll be on your way to an early retirement.

Invest early : The greatest thing you can do to build wealth is start early. Even if you can’t invest much, start with what you can and let your money grow over time. As Albert Einstein said, “compound interest is the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.”

Invest in what you know : Whether you are looking to invest in real estate, stocks, or anything else, make sure you know how the investment works. The great Warren Buffett was often criticized for not investing in technology during the dot-com boom. His answer was simple. If you don’t know the business model, what the company does on a day to day basis, or how it generates revenue now, and in the future, then stay away from it. This principle can be applied to all types of investing.
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Oil at $150? Very likely and could be soon. How about $170, or even $200? That is possible before the end of this year. There are those who see the price of a barrel of oil hitting $300 and even $500 in the next few years. Impossible you say, well just remember that last year a barrel of crude was selling at $70 and even then the markets were complaining that it was already too high.

The oil conundrum is playing havoc with local, regional and international markets. The producers say it’s not their fault and consumers blame speculators and a battered dollar. Others point to the current crisis between the West and Iran, which in recent days moved from rhetorical ranting to sabre-rattling. There is confusion, fear, mistrust and greed in the oil business today, but what else is new?

Oil has been a central pillar of international politics and trade for decades, and the West has traditionally played dirty games when it came to preserving the life-line of its economy and civilization. Cheap oil enabled Western societies to flourish and expand, the United States being the most notorious example. Wars were waged, coups staged and regimes toppled in order to maintain control of production, exploration rights, distribution and price.

It is unlikely that the rules of the game have changed in recent years, but it is now a fact that the new economies of China, India, Russia and others are competing ever more with the West for a bigger share of available oil. Economic displacement is a matter of time, with studies predicting that China will unseat the US as the biggest world economy in 30 to 40 years if not before.

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The Best Return on your Cash. Sure, stocks are much cheaper now than they were at the first of the year. So are houses.

But if you’re carrying a lot of credit card or other debt, your best investment is to pay down that debt.

What is the best investment you can make?

Here’s a hint: It will earn you a guaranteed return that will beat just about any stock on Wall Street.

This investment doesn’t require more than two minutes of research and you have everything you need to begin right now.

I’m not talking about a stock, bond or mutual fund, but an investment in lowering your personal debt. Too much high-interest credit card debt is never a good idea and considering the economy remains unstable, now is a good time to reduce those balances.

Start with your highest interest debt (probably a credit card). If you have been a good customer and your interest rate is more than 12 percent, ask the issuer to lower it.

If the issuer won’t give you a break, consider switching the balance to an existing card with a lower interest rate (don’t get a new card just to get a new rate).

Make up your mind to pay off all the high interest debt as soon as possible. This may mean giving up some luxury or skipping expensive presents until the job is done.
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Yahoo founder and chief executive Jerry Yang accused Microsoft of trying to destabilize Yahoo with no genuine intent to buy the company, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Yang, on the defensive as billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn seeks to unseat the current Yahoo board and install his own people in order to propel Yahoo into Microsoft’s hands, told the Journal that Microsoft has not pursued talks with the company in earnest.

He noted in an interview with the newspaper that Microsoft has recently expressed interest in opening new negotiations to buy Yahoo’s search engine business if Icahn’s proxy fight succeeds.

“To trust Mr. Icahn and his board is really a bad choice,” Yang told the Journal.

“I think that the destabilizing by Microsoft has become more and more intentional. I am not happy about it.”

On Monday Yahoo’s stock price jumped nearly 12 percent after Microsoft said it is willing to reopen talks on a “major transaction” with Yahoo if its board undergoes a major shakeup.

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Buddha was born into wealth as a prince, but as a young adult he chose to turn his back on material wealth in order to focus on a spiritual life. Yet many of Buddha’s teachings give us the exact wisdom we need in order to create great material wealth. Only a Buddha can explain to the world the truth related to the world …. start with a relatively small bankroll and actually become a multimillionaire.

In the Dhammapada, (the essential teachings of Buddha) Buddha begins by telling us that everything in our life comes from our thoughts. He says that whatever we want in life has to begin in our thoughts, then we put it into our words and then into our actions. If we are consistent across thoughts, words and actions then we create our world to be as we desire it to be.

This teaching is the absolute essence of how wealth is created. First we must build riches in our mind.

In order to become wealthy you have to imagine yourself as wealthy. You have to believe that wealth is a natural state for you. You don’t achieve this, as many uninformed people suggest, by imagining an exact dollar amount by an exact date. I do not know a single wealthy person who has done that.

The way you create a state of wealth in your mind is to imagine the life that you would be living when you are wealthy. Imagine the freedom and opportunities that having a large amount of money could open up for you.

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U.S. stocks will continue to fall next week, in continuation of a sell-off that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average experience its worst week in over four years, due to nervousness that the easy-money binge of the last few years has come to an end. No fireworks in earnings so far.

It will be tough for Wall Street to shake off the bear market blues next week if the price of oil keeps rising and the earnings season kick-off from Alcoa and General Electric disappoints investors. Stocks will remain vulnerable to any new signs of distress from hedge funds hit by their exposure to bad U.S. home loans, as well as from credit markets, where Wall Street firms and corporations are finding it harder and harder to obtain financing.

Oil has become the biggest wild card for growth and corporate profits. It jumped to a record above $145 a barrel on Thursday, driven by tensions between Israel and Iran, before the long holiday weekend to mark US Independence Day.

The price of crude is up 50 percent so far this year.

On Friday, US markets are closed on July 4th for the Independence Day holiday.

Financial results from Alcoa and GE will kick off the second-quarter earnings season next week. Aluminum company Alcoa, the first Dow component to report results, will release its quarterly numbers on Tuesday. GE, another Dow industrial and a bellwether for the US economy, will report earnings on Friday. Aside from second-quarter results, investors are anxious to see the companies’ forecasts for world economic growth and their own corporate sales prospects.

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France’s banking regulator yesterday fined Societe Generale four million euros ($6.3m) over “grave deficiencies” in its internal controls that enabled a massive rogue trade scandal at the bank, that led to nearly $7.8 billion in trading losses announced earlier this year.

In a decision e-mailed to Reuters, the Banking Commission also reprimanded France’s second-biggest listed bank for poor supervision that led to the unauthorized trades by Jerome Kerviel, the former SocGen trader blamed for the losses earlier this year. This 31-year-old trader made his fraud by investing several billion in Futures.

The banking commission said it had also issued a formal warning to Societe Generale for failing to prevent the staggering losses of 4.9 billion euros, which it has blamed on 31-year-old trader Jerome Kerviel.

After interviewing representatives of the bank on June 20, the commission said it detected “grave deficiencies in the internal control system” that “made possible the development of the fraud and its serious financial consequences.”

“The weaknesses brought to light, in particular the deficiencies in hierarchical controls, carried on over a long period, throughout 2007, without being detected or rectified by the internal control systems,” it said.

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Banking is more sensitive business than the other. The online banking makes it more sensitive because all the information and financial transactions take place online.

Reports of rampant Internet fraud and identity theft have led many to conclude that the convenience of online banking and shopping isn’t worth the risk.

That would be the wrong conclusion. The majority of ID theft occurs outside cyberspace. Banks, credit-card issuers and online retailers are rolling out more effective security features.

And there’s plenty you can do on your own to build a Star Wars-worthy force field around your personal data.

1. Once you open an online banking account either personal or current business account than you must get the details by mail like your account number, customer identification number, online access username and password as well as ATM card PIN number etc. You can get all the details in sealed enveloped by post so you must keep all the details in the safer place. Please do not disclose to anybody

2. Online banking business is based on SSL security and Java Script. All transaction you make or all information you feed online will convert into an encryption so there are nil chances to get an access on the customer information.

3. Use credit, not debit. The pay-as-you-go ethos of debit cards is good financially, but for security purposes, credit cards have the edge. They act as a buffer: If your card is misused, you won’t be out actual money before you resolve the situation.

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In today’s world, making the most of our money is not just a catchy phrase; it is the difference between keeping homes or foreclosure; getting much needed prescriptions or buying groceries; bankruptcy or survival. Growing our money, saving time and being smart about our finances is the only way to make it in our economy.

We hear so much about the importance of saving on the nightly news, and yet very few are able to put any money away for the proverbial ‘rainy day’. The consequences for not having any savings can be dire; if there is no money stashed away to cover those unexpected emergencies, like a larger than expected utility bill or a car breakdown, the money for that has to come from somewhere. All too often Americans find themselves putting these purchases on a credit card with a maxed out limit or a too high interest rate, or taking out a payday advance with complicated fine print. Both of these are risky moves, avoidable with some proper planning and money management.

When it comes to savings, a little bit can grow a long way. If you are able to stash a small amount of a paycheck each month in a savings account that draws interest, you are already ahead of the game. Depending on how much you have in your account, you could be currently gaining upwards of 4% on top of that money. That means for every $100 you deposit in your savings account, add $4.00 on top. That doesn’t seem like much, but in a year of monthly deposits, you could earn almost $50.00 for just having your money sitting in the bank.

Banks even sometimes offer higher introductory savings rates or other perks such as higher rates to those who use online banking, to get new business. Contact your local banker or search the internet to find out what the best rates and terms are. While you are at it, does your checking account draw interest? Many banks now offer checking accounts that accumulate interest on the money you have sitting in the account. Again, rates vary, and banks do run promotional offers for these kinds of accounts, but who doesn’t like earning free money for doing nothing?
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