“Greed is good.” Those are the now famous words spoken by Gordon Gekko, one of the lead characters in Oliver Stone’s movie, “Wall Street.” We have all experienced both the good side of this motivational tool and the bad.
Before we entered into the new century, the mortgage industry was embargoed from making loans to borrowers with a poor credit history and lack of supportable income because we were all operating under the guidelines established by the consortium of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA. They collectively made the loan underwriting guidelines that proved to be acceptable to the secondary market institutional investors, including the Wall Street community, pension funds, insurance companies, and other investors in Mortgage Backed Securities...read more.

Many investors own annuities to provide them with tax-deferred income and a potential stream of payments either immediate or future. An annuity is a contract with an insurance company, which then promises either a fixed return (“fixed annuities”) or a return that is tied to the performance of some stock market instruments (“variable annuities”)...read more.