Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, best known for chronicling the rich in The Great Gatsby, supposedly said to Ernest Hemingway, “The rich are different than you and me.”To which Hemingway rep

For the loneliest number, one sure has a lot of company. A one point gain took the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to within one percent of its retracement level while one dollar will suffice a

There’s an old joke in Silicon Valley about Oracle (ORCL) founder and CEO Larry Ellison:Q: What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison?A: God doesn’t think he’s Larry

Recently, the government’s Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg, “suggested” that outgoing Bank of America (BAC) CEO Ken Lewis should take home $0 in salary for 2009, and receive a bonus of e

Surprise! It's Christmas! (again...) Christmas always seemed to surprise me when I was first living on my own. It would be about this time of year I realized that I needed to spend a large sum of mon

In the last several days I received many letters in which readers commented on my analysis of the seasonality on the silver market, so I decided to provide more detailed analysis of silver.One letter

Just when bank executives appear near the peak of this mountain of populist rage, another landslide sends them tumbling back down again. This week has produced several setbacks, and it’s still

For the tobacco industry, there’s a lot of money to be made by getting people hooked on cigarettes and keeping them as customers for life. But smoking cessation products are increasingly sendin

Many people are finding the holiday tradition of making charitable donations difficult again this year, particularly if they're unemployed or worried about the economy. Charities, many of which norma

Editor's Note: Matthew Beller is a former employee of the Federal Reserve Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He currently works for a private investment firm in Los Angeles, California