Making scams scram: there are many surprising ways we can be deceived--when we are buying a car, lying in a hospital bed, sending a check in the mail, or even standing in a checkout line.
Scam Proof Your Life by Sid Kirchheimer 336 pages, Sterling Publishing, $19.95 "Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived," said the 18th century German author Johann Seume. Seume would feel fight at home in today's world where, thanks to the Internet, money-making...

How are asset holdings different between non-homeowners and homeowners among near-retirees?
Introduction For many years, purchasing a home has been considered a good way to increase families' assets and use the accumulated wealth towards retirement. Along with a recent escalation in the cost of homes and mortgage interest rates, the current trend of more people renting rather than...

VENEZUELA WITHDRAWS MAJORITY OF FOREIGN CURRENCY RESERVE FUNDS FROM U.S. TREASURY.
The Venezuelan government took significant steps to fiscally delink its foreign-currency reserves from the US this month. During the first week of October, the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) announced that it pulled US$20 billion of its foreign-currency reserves out of US Treasury bonds, moving the funds to Europe....

Downsizing our schools corporate style?
Corporate downsizing and America's public schools. Is this a marriage that's long overdue? I'm not so sure. I attended a lecture recently on what's happening inside many American industries. A corporate executive provided insight on what downsizing has meant for one of our nation's largest companies. This...

More ways to pay less.
Obviously, you want to pay Uncle Sam as little as possible, but you are not quite sure how to (legally) hang on to more of your money. "There are plenty of ways to take some of the teeth out of your annual tax bite," maintains Taxes 2006 For Dummies,...

New tax law brings new ways to donate to AU, other non-profits.
Earlier this year, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 became law. This is good news for many Americans United donors--and for the non-profit organizations they support. Starting immediately, donors older than 70 and one-half years of age can donate, tax free, up to $100,000 per year from...

Consumer-directed care to alter payment habits.
SAN DIEGO -- The growth of consumer-directed health plans means physicians and their staff will need to talk more with patients about their prices and the value of their services. "Admitting-office conversations will change dramatically," said Gary Scott Davis, a health lawyer based in Miami, during the...

For better or worse: financial decision-making behavior of married couples.
Abstract This study constructs a theoretical model of household bargaining to explain the financial decision-making behavior of married couples. We empirically test our model using data from the 2000 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The HRS is unique among national data sets in that it identifies the...

You own you: when identity thieves open an account in your name, it should be the bank's problem, not yours.
In 1995, a freelance editor in Washington, D.C., named Anne Meadows began a five-year nightmare when she got a call from an alert employee of BellSouth, who warned her that she had become a victim of identity theft. A year earlier, she learned, thieves had stolen her name, address,...

Proceedings of the Tennessee Academy of Science 2004.
TENNESSEE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING 23 April 2004 President and Meeting Coordinator Michael Redding called the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Tennessee Academy of Science (TAS) to order at 7:05 PM CST in the Massey Business Building on the campus of...