While the Giants Reel, Many Small Banks Are Thriving

Last fall, soon after congress decided it would spend $700 billion to shore up the nation’s flailing financial system, about 100 shareholders of Reunion Bank of Florida gathered for a party. Over crab fondue and London broil, they toasted the start of their spanking new bank

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Laid Off in Singapore: Ex-Pats Have to Downsize

On the northern fringe of Singapore, overlooking the slate gray waters of the Johore Strait, the public-housing project where Anthony Fulwood lives is so far from the city’s affluent expatriate enclaves that cabdrivers are stunned when he announces his address. ” ‘For God’s sake, why do you live there?’ they regularly ask me,” says Fulwood. ” ‘You’re white!’ ” Fulwood isn’t the only Western expatriate to take up residence in the cheaper peripheries of this Southeast Asian city.

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Trouble Selling Your Home? Why Not Try a House Swap

A recent craigslist ad screamed, “I want to TRADE UP.” The author of the post offered a five-bedroom home in an Atlanta suburb for a house worth $100,000 more in either the metro Atlanta area, North Florida or Las Vegas. Another listing, by an 84-year-old widow, offered to trade her three-bedroom home in Scottsdale, Ariz., for one in the San Francisco Bay Area, which was closer to her family.

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How to Spot a Ponzi Con Artist? Follow the Yachts

With so many Ponzis and so little time to know if you’ve been hoodwinked, there are some red flags even the most trusting investors can bank on: yachts, mansions, jets and women. If your investment adviser is dabbling in any of the above, there’s a good chance you’ve been “Ponzi-ed” or are about to be. Creating the illusion of fantastic success, of course, is chapter one in the Scammer’s Handbook.

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Stick It to the Recession: Wynn’s Vegas Encore

The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in our room at the new Wynn Encore provides a distressingly clear picture of what’s going on in Las Vegas these days. To the south, there’s a casino project that has ground to a halt, half built, its steel skeleton an outline of a multibillion-dollar dream gone hungry. Across the street, there’s a Modernist chapel, a lonely vigil of virtue on the Strip — people seek salvation elsewhere in this town.

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