Loans

The U.S. Treasury is ramping up its issuance of inflation-protected securities (TIPS) this year, in order to address foreign investors' concerns about soaring fiscal deficits and the inflation risk they create. TIPS issuance for 2010 is expected to increase by approximately 40% over the amount sold in 2009. Should you be following China's and Japan's impetus and raising your exposure to TIPS?

With all the volatility in the markets today, there's no shortage of market seers trying to call a bottom. Man of the Year Ben Bernanke called a bottom not once, but twice. Heck, even Keanu Reeves laid out what a world-ending market bottom looks like.

The recent rally may have you feeling pretty good about yourself. After all, Dow members such as Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), United Technologies (NYSE: UTX), and 3M (NYSE: MMM) are all up big this year. If you're new to the market, you may be thinking that this stock-picking stuff is easy money.

That is the gold valuation iconoclastic Societe Generale analyst Dylan Grice proposes in a recent issue of his regular client note, Popular Delusions. Surely, if he is correct, it's time to take a seat next to central banks -- who look set to be net purchasers of gold in the second half of 2009 for the first time since 1988 -- and ride this train for a potential quintupling in price.

President Barack Obama at a college near Albany, N.Y., assailed large banks for protecting a student loan subsidy Congress has voted to discontinue.

Washington, September 9 -- Indicating that a recovery from the unrelenting economic recession may still be a distant dream, Federal Reserve’s data revealed that consumers in the United States borrowed a record $21.6 billion less from financial institutions in the month of July.

Things continue to worsen in the relationship between Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto (NYSE: RTP) and the big Chinese steelmakers. The relationship has descended to a cessation of negotiations concerning prices for iron ore -- a key element in the manufacture of steel. The round of negotiations began months ago and now appears to have been brought to a screeching halt.

In late March, I called out USEC (NYSE: USU) for running some "fluff" PR proclaiming that customers like Exelon (NYSE: EXC) were just itching to take planned uranium fuel production off the enricher's hands. Standing in the way of this rosy future, however, was an uncertain $2 billion loan application with the Department of Energy.

Last week, an audit by the TARP program's government watchdog suggested that a wide majority (83%) of banks that have received TARP investments had, in fact, put some of the funds to work by lending them out. That may well be true, but recently released second-quarter results show that the amount of total loans at the largest banks -- all TARP recipients -- fell during the period:

If you're looking for dividend-paying stocks, you need to know the Dividend Achievers.