Financial Schools Reviews

Credit cards that were in default or late on payment fell recently.
Credit card debt was a problem for many consumers throughout the recession, though recent figures from Fitch Ratings show some people have managed to make a dent in what they owe.

According to the firm, the amount of accounts in default fell to 10.93 percent during the March payment period. Although this represented a 0.34 percentage point decline on February, it is still higher than the 10.69 percent average charge off rate seen in the last 12 months.

However, delinquencies on credit card accounts also fell, which could bode well for future charge off rates. Full Article…

Seems like there have been a new round of layoffs reported recently. Especially in the public sector; police, fire fighters, teachers, city and county employees. The states inability to balance the budget and pass a new budget is causing a lot of undue stress.

If you’re some one who has recently lost your job, look carefully at your COBRA options. We’ve worked with many people who found it was less expensive to purchase a private health insurance plan than to opt for the COBRA option or to cover dependents on their group insurance.

You can explore your options at our site, .The site will show you plans from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California starting with the least expensive plans.

Full Article…

Fairly early in the equity bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s, I began spilling my share of online ink on the subject of the Wall Street game of beat-the-number.This silly approach to what should be the fairly sober-minded, if not serious, activity of corporate accounting and financial analysis essentially evolved into a vicious cycle whereby Wall Street rewarded — and therefore encouraged — companies that consistently beat consensus earnings estimates, even by a penny. Check that — especially by a penny, even for an improbable number of consecutive quarters.

The beat-the-number nonsense fit perfectly into the Bubblevision mentality and was eagerly lapped up by Wall Street.

Full Article…

You wouldn’t think that any company, especially a company as savvy as Exxon Mobil (), could overlook China.

But that may be exactly what Exxon Mobil did in formulating its plan to pin the company’s growth on natural gas — and in particular on liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

Click graphic to see clickable chart

Exxon Mobil

According to Wood Mackenzie, an oil and gas consulting company based in the United Kingdom, China looks like it will need only half as much additional liquefied natural gas in the decade beginning in 2020 as big energy companies — among them Royal Dutch Shell (), BP (), Chevron () and, yes, Exxon Mobil — had projected.

Projects such as Exxon Mobil’s Qatargas Trains 4 and 5, RasGas and Al Khaleej Gas in Qatar, the South Hook LNG terminal in Wales and the Golden Pass LNG terminal in Texas, which made investment sense when it looked like China would import an additional 16 million tons of LNG annually in the coming decade, now face a scenario in which China would add only half as much to its annual imports. That would hit all the international oil and gas companies hard, but it would hit Exxon Mobil especially strongly because the company has based its investing strategy on natural gas in general and liquefied natural gas in particular.

What’s changed since, say, March, when Exxon Mobil announced it would increase capital spending 4% in 2010, to almost $28 billion, in a big bet on natural gas?

Full Article…

Relief funding to purchased foreclosed properties may be rescinded if states don’t spend it in time
Many areas of the U.S. that received federal funding to help alleviate rising foreclosures are at risk of losing it if they don’t spend the funds quickly enough, according to USA Today.

With more than $1 billion at stake, localities are struggling to bypass inadequate staffing, a down market and federal obstacles to purchase the foreclosed properties the funds are intended for before the “use it or lose it” deadline arrives, the newspaper said. Full Article…