Too often, Chinese customers buy wealth management products without a real understanding of what they're getting into, according to Xiaoling Wu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China.

Paralleling the boom in private equity deals in recent years has been a growing sense of alarm about these multibillion dollar transactions.

The collapse of the subprime market has hit hedge funds hard. According to Anthony Sanders, professor of finance and real estate at the W. P. Carey School of Business, many hedge funds forgot due diligence when the real estate market was hottest, and are now stuck with bad paper.

If a million dollars sounds like a lot of money to you … if you think "household manager" is a synonym for Mom … if your idea of a cool set of wheels is a Mercedes-Benz convertible … then you probably don't live in Richistan.

The public perception is that foreclosures mainly affect hardworking families who are hit with a payment reset or a trigger event such as a job loss.

Foreclosure rates have increased dramatically in the last year. Yet bankruptcy filings are much lower than they were before the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) went into effect.

As the stock market continues to shake following the crash of the subprime market, all eyes are on the Federal Reserve. Now more than ever it's important to understand how the Fed works. For example, what is the federal funds rate and how does it differ from the discount rate?

IRS officials estimate some $290 billion dollars that should have come into federal coffers in 2001 never made it into Uncle Sam's pockets. But, take heart. The IRS has a seven-component strategy for bringing in the bucks.

The meltdown of the subprime mortgage industry, often associated with the lower end of the U.S. housing market, continues to spread upward, bringing uncertainty into the jumbo mortgage loan market (loans above $417,000).

According to IRS estimates, there is a $345 billion gross "tax gap" for 2001. The tax gap is the difference between taxes the IRS thinks should have been paid and taxes that actually were paid.