Special Program Root Tag

Henry Kaufman, one of the first economists to earn the now overused sobriquet “Dr. Doom” because of his generally bearish views on interest rates during the 1970s and '80s, is now warning that the conglomeratization of financial institutions, the continued securitization of non-marketable assets and the extreme leveraging which led to the most recent crash leave the global financial system vulnerable to new and potentially more devastating crises.

With only 51% of Americans believing they will have enough money to enjoy a comfortable retirement, an all-time low, the Country Financial Security Index fell one point in June to 63.7.

Deutsche Bank has rebranded five exchange-traded target-date funds, previously known as the TDX Independence Funds, as the db-X Target Date Funds.

Is a mutual fund company responsible for the statements made in a prospectus for one of its funds?

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. on Monday said it struck a deal to buy Royal Bank of Canada's U.S. retail banking operations for $3.45 billion.

DST Vision, the web-based account management tool for financial intermediaries, is now available on web-enabled smart phones, including iPhone, Android and BackBerry.

A number of areas of growing strength in the retail and commercial real estate market point to continued improvement in the U.S. economy, according to a report from real estate research and consulting firm Maximus Advisors.

Allianz Life Insurance on Monday released a new research paper, “Rethinking What’s Ahead in Retirement,” that finds Americans are now more concerned about guarantees and retirement income in retirement than they are on returns and control.

RidgeWorth Investments has added two additional sales executives to the six it recently hired for its newly created retail channel sales team led by Bob Kuberski, with Michael Reynolds and Mitchell Izumi joining the firm.

Investors whose financial advisers have presented them with detailed, written retirement income plans rate them highly, yet only 18% of pre-retirees who work with an adviser have a retirement income plan, a survey of 500 retirees, pre-retirees and advisers by Fidelity Investments found.

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that Janus Capital Group is not liable for false statements in a prospectus for the Janus Investment Fund made at the time of the 2003 market-timing scandal.

With stock trading, there seems to be an app, of course, for just about anything.

Jim Lyday has joined Lincoln Financial Distributors as head of institutional retirement solutions distribution, reporting to President and Chief Executive Officer Will Fuller. In this role, Lyday is responsible for distribution of Lincoln's defined contribution business among mid-to-large employers.

When financial services leaders are no longer confident, where does that leave the rest of us?

Financial advisers and investors may want to heed some cautionary words from several economists at the Wharton School who think that the country's current economic recovery will remain a sluggish affair and, whenever it does stabilize, it will likely mark the beginning of a "new normal" that's less robust and prosperous than prior cyclical peaks.

Putnam Investments has created an application for the iPhone that permits shoppers to find comparable prices to goods at other stores, see the price differential-and immediately direct that savings to their 401(k).

In its first 14 months on the market, 25 million copies of Apple's iPad touch-screen tablet computer were sold. In the three months ending June 30, the company will likely have sold eight million of the devices, according to Piper Jaffray and other industry analysts.

Preventing tax evasion is certainly a noble-and potentially profitable cause-for the U.S. government.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index increased 0.8% in May to 114.7 (2004 = 100), following a 0.4% decline in April and a 0.7% increase in March. The largest contributions came from the interest rate spread, consumer expectations and housing permits.

BlackRock’s iShares exchange-traded fund division has launched the iShares Floating Rate Note Fund (ticker: FLOT), its first floating rate fund.