World of Finances

Did you ever stop to wonder what the most expensive building in the world was?  If you have seen a base jumping James Bond, you don’t need to wonder about one of them.  The Hong Kong Bank financial center is one of the most well photographed buildings in the world.  It was one of the tallest buildings in the world, and the first outside the USA to top 1,000 feet.

Banks and Financial centers are not the only buildings getting in on the act: hotels, sporting arenas, and now even private residences are coming up with billion dollar price tags.

It is not surprising that the US should house several of these billion dollar projects.  Sure the US is a finical giant, globally speaking, and companies don’t like to spare expense.  What might be surprising is that three out of four of these most expensive buildings world-wide which have US soil under their foundations are located in the same city: none other than Sin City Las Vegas, Nevada.

In fact, the Wynn hotel, which opened in 2005, tops the list of the world’s most expensive building.

Full Article…

Sometimes I’m introduced as “the woman who literally wrote the book about credit scoring.” (It’s called “Your Credit Score,” and you can find it on Amazon and wherever else fine books are sold.) My FICO scores are typically in the high 700s to low 800s. My credit record is so clean it sparkles.

And yet I’ve known the sting of being turned down for a credit card.

Beverly Blair Herzog has written a nice two-part piece for Credit.com (it starts HERE) about what you should do if you get that dreaded rejection notice. She focuses on the most likely reason you’ll get denied, which is that your credit scores aren’t up to the issuer’s standards. For example, if you have decent but not great scores, you may not be able to win some of cards that have the richest rewards programs.

Full Article…

On the back of a three week Bear run which has seen double-digit falls in the world’s major stock exchanges driven by fears that the world is about to be plunged into a second recessionary downturn and bewilderment over the sovereign debt crisis gold has risen from just over $1600 to (briefly) more than $1900 an ounce. Gold has always been regarded as the ultimate safe haven when economic storms are raging. The rise in its value can be attributed to the general nervousness, but also, perversely, because of a fear that the US Dollar is depreciating. Gold is priced in Dollars, so as the value of the currency falls, the value of gold rises, providing a nifty hedge against currency depreciation.

Investors have returned to the markets to buy up stocks which have come down to bargain basement prices (compared to where they stood at the end of July) and the markets have risen. Full Article…

TransUnion, a national credit reporting agency, recently released findings that show an overwhelming number of people are paying their credit card bills on time and limiting how much they are charging.

It may come as a surprise that credit card delinquencies (defined as 90 days past dueor moreon a payment) are at the lowest level observed in the last 17 years. Given the difficult economic times and high percent of unemployment in the U.S., you may expect quite the oppositethat more people than ever would be having problems making credit card payments on time.

TransUnion also found that the average credit card debt per borrower has remained relatively flat at approximately $4,700. They found that consumers paid an estimated $72 billion more in payments than what was purchased between the first quarters of 2009 and 2010.

Full Article…