Finance

Italy is facing its greatest crisis in the postwar era. The country’s banking system is bankrupt, and no one in Europe is willing to fix it. As a result the euro could start to drift toward dollar parity as the situation in Europe goes from bad to worse.

“Crexit:” a credit crunch brought about by plunging bond prices, soaring losses, an implosion in China’s high-risk debt markets, and a reversal of all the “yield chase” trades investors have flocked to in the last couple of years. That's what S&P's debt analysis team fears is about to unfold with the acceleration in corporate debt and That tells me there’s more going on beneath the surface – and that caution is still warranted when it comes to your investing strategy.

There has been a proliferation of so-called citizenship-by-investment or economic citizenship programs that allow individuals from all over the world to legitimately acquire passports and more and more countries have joined the game. Below are the terms and conditions, by country, for acquiring such a passport.

The banking crisis of 2008 never fully healed. It just got shuffled under the carpet while the public was fed a phony narrative that everything was fantastic which turned out to be a gigantic farce; many of the world’s banking systems are just as risky as they were back in 2008.

It’s been almost 10 years in the making, but the fate of one of Europe’s most important financial institutions appears to be sealed. After a hard-hitting sequence of scandals, poor decisions, and unfortunate events, Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank shares are now down -48% on the year to $12.60, which is a record-setting low. Even more stunning is the long-term view of the German institution’s downward spiral. With a modest $15.8 billion in market capitalization, shares of the 147-year-old company now trade for a paltry 8% of its peak price in May 2007. Today's infographic illustrates the timeline of the fall of one of Europe’s most iconic financial institutions.

Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor is one of a handful of books you hear mentioned over and over again when you ask investors to name the best investing books of all-time. Graham was far ahead of his time in talking about investor behavior and human psychology in terms of the role they play in shaping how markets and investors generally work. Let me explain.

James Naismith of Almonte, Ontario invented basketball in 1891...to keep athletes active during the cold winter months while teaching physical education at the International Young Men’s Christian Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. To celebrate that occasion, the Royal Canadian Mint is now selling a colourized coin with a convex reverse side to depict the likeness of a basketball.

As the narrative goes, either we buy into the unlimited and more or less guaranteed creation of wealth for all who follow the agreed-upon wisdom, or we reject it, and prepare for the inevitable collapse of the financial system and the value of money. The problem, however, is that both the present and the recent past are completely different from either approach BUT there is a third potential future to consider which I believe to be the most compelling. Let me explain.

Welcome to Wise Bread's rankings of the top financial news blogs.

We've now entered a pivotal phase in which, with each passing day, more and more of the country's 50 million Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age. Over the last 35 years, we’ve seen what the largest and wealthiest generation can to do the markets when most of them are simultaneously buying – but we have no history for what happens to prices when so many people try to cash out so much for so long.