Yesterday I wrote about perks for jerks. Today, the little guy gets his due.

While the economy may not be producing jobs sufficient to relieve persistent unemployment, corporations are feeling good enough to reinstate 401k matches to those currently employed.

With times tight and layoffs mounting many corporations suspended 401k matching as a way to preserve capital. No matter that doing so would hurt the very people that corporations depended on for long-term success.

The Best Vanguard Funds for your 401k

This was a time for desperate measures. Or was it a way to keep the good times rolling for those at the top?   Read More...

Buying a house is one of the biggest purchases most Americans will ever make. And right now, the housing market is the one of the biggest anchors holding back the U.S. economy. Though a recovery is under way in many sectors, the housing market remains a problem, and it looks likes it's going to get even worse.

7 Housing Stocks to Sell Now

Why do I say that? Here are seven reasons I'm convinced the housing market will continue to crater:

Reason #1 - Low Housing Starts

On October 20, data showed new housing starts were worse than expected, as builders remain cautious. While the total number of starts edged up a bit from 587,000 to 590,000, the increase was well under Wall Street's forecast of 610,000. Single-family starts appear to be leveling off—not increasing as some had hoped—and multi-family units saw a dramatic 15.2% drop on the month.   Read More...

Now that’s the kind of quarter investors own McDonald’s (MCD) for.

Earnings for the third quarter, reported before the market open on Oct. 22, climbed to $1.15 a share from $1.05 in the third quarter of 2008. That was above Wall Street expectations of $1.11 a share. (This puts McDonald’s among the 80% of so of Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks that have beat Wall Street estimates so far this quarter. For more on that, see this Oct. 20 post.)

Revenue fell 3.5% to $6.05 billion. That was below analyst projections of $6.1 billion. But on a constant currency basis, revenue was up 2% from the third quarter of 2008   Read More...

So the word is out that Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama hatchet man, is going to have the pay of the top 25 executives at 7 of the companies who have not paid back the TARP money, by as much as 90%. If that's a good idea for those companies why not look at the rest of the people who got us into this mess. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? There are more than just these 175 executives who deserve pay cuts.

Let's cut the pay of the top 25 executives at the SEC and FDIC, they were asleep at the wheel. Next cut the pay of the 25 top ranking members of both the House and Senate Banking Committees, they didn't create legislation to keep us out of this mess. How about the top 25 executives of the external accounting firms of those 7 companies, they certified financial statements that didn't reflect the true worth of the companies?

While we are on a roll let's cut the pay of the top 25 executives of Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch and A M Best they didn't have proper ratings on these companies. Oh, and let's not forget the top 25 analyst at all the brokerage firms who failed to warn us by downgrading these companies when they should have.
Read More...

If we've learned anything from last year, it is that our economy is much more fragile than anyone thought possible.

Our government’s policy has created strong incentives for the CEOs of financial institutions that are deemed “too big to fail” to chase opportunities with very large upsides no matter what the risk. If the risks work out, the CEO gets an unbelievably large bonus. If things don’t work out, the chief has to make do with a big severance package while taxpayers pick up the tab for the losses.

As things stand now, our system steers private capital into high risk, high reward bets and relies on taxpayers to provide public capital when the risks go bad. I think it is only a matter of time before one of the “too big to fail banks” makes a big bet that does not work out. When that happens, as we all saw last year, the stock market can drop almost 40%. If we don’t want to go through this again, we need to take advantage of this rally to prepare.   Read More...

After all we have been through, the plush perks for bank CEOs and executives continue to grow unabated. Do they have no soul?

Apparently not. The government has bailed these guys out to the tune of $700 billion or more, yet the golf club memberships and personal use of corporate jets remains the order of the day.

Bing: Executive Compensation

Memo to the jerks: You cannot continue to behave this way without consequences.

A revolution is brewing, and anger is swelling. This kind of news will not help matters.

Instead of patting yourselves on the back for a job well done, you guys need to take a class on empathy. There are millions of Americans struggling without jobs. Many of those still with jobs find their paychecks barely get them by.

Apple still a Buy?

Is it really ok for you to be teeing it up at the finest club in town, yucking it up with your friends at shareholder and taxpayer expense   Read More...

This post comes from The Motley Fool's Rich Smith.

It's every investor's worst nightmare -- buying a rocket stock just before it takes a nose dive.

MSN Money maintains a list of companies whose shares hit 52-week highs, and investors read this list and tremble -- some with greed, others in terror. These and other stocks with momentum usually enjoy favorable ratings at our MSN CAPS investing community; everyone loves a winner.

Listed below are five of the companies hitting 52-week highs in the past week. Which among them does the CAPS community consider most likely to continue to outperform? If your guess is Google, which has been setting 2009 highs since reporting last week that third-quarter profit was the largest in the company's 11-year history, well, thanks for playing along, but you're wrong.

Find on Bing: How to pick stocks

Turns out, the 140,000-plus investors comprising CAPS are far less bullish on the glitzy Internet pacesetter than they are toward an operator in the more prosaic world of oil and natural gas refining, transportation and storage.

Here are our companies:

While stocks continue to flirt with new rally highs, trouble brews beneath the surface.

A slew of short-term technical indicators are falling out of overbought territory including various stochastic and momentum measures. Breadth continues to narrow, with the percentage of NYSE stocks over their 10-day moving average dropping from 81% to 64% on Tuesday even as the NYSE Composite Index (NYA.X) closed just 1.1% away from the rally price high set on Monday.

Translation: Fewer and fewer stocks are holding up the major indices like a foundation made of sand that is slowing melting away. In fact, the situation looks somewhat similar to what happened between May and June before equities slumped into the July low.   Read More...

U.S. Bancorp announced fantastic third quarter results this morning with a report that was the equivalent of a crook explaining exactly how he broke into your house and then thumbing his nose. These banks may not have a lot of brains, but they have chutzpah to spare. Shares are up 6.5% today on the news.

One of the nations' five largest regional banks, USB reported at the top of its press release that third quarter profit surged 4.7% because mortgage revenue surged. But look a little deeper on their press release, rather than what the news wires reported, and you will see that USB reported total savings deposit growth of 33.5%.

No wonder they showed total net revenue growth of 25.8%, right? The media stampeded families into putting more money into their savings accounts, earning 1%, just when they should have been investing in the stock market, which is up 20% this year. The bank turns around and uses that 1% money to invest in Treasurys paying 4%, business loans paying 6%-8% and junk bonds paying 12%.

Nice work if you can get it. See an explanation of this scam in my last column, "Why saving is for suckers." Read More...

A second stimulus won't fly with some Americans, despite the fact that Warren Buffett, Joseph Stiglitz and other experts have called for one.

That's why, even though the White House will likely push something that walks and talks like a stimulus, no one will call it the "S" word.

Lawmakers are set to extend some stimulus measures and create some new ones as well, CNNMoney.com reports. Here's a quick rundown:

Unemployment. One move being considered is extending unemployment benefits after they run out.

An estimated 1.3 million unemployed workers will have exhausted their benefits by the end of the year,   Read More...