Word: betting
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...down from 6.59% at the lowest point last fall - a level gone in a blink. This time rates look as if they will stay put for a few months. Consider a home-equity loan to pay off the mortgage; it amounts to a refi with fewer fees. Best bet: a 15-year fixed-rate. If you have a $150,000 balance at 7.5% on a 30-year mortgage, you could switch to a 15-year at 5.5% for an extra $175 a month, saving $157,000 in interest costs. It may make sense to refi one 30-year with another...
...RETHINK SHORT-TERM SAVINGS. You pick up an extra point of yield switching from a money-market fund to a short-term bond fund. Best bet: a low-expense fund with securities that mature in two years, like Vanguard Short-Term Treasury and Pimco Low Duration. They carry only minimally more risk than a money-market fund...
Throw in unusually high levels of short selling (a bet that stocks will fall) and frenzied institutional selling that drove the Dow to its closing low of 7702 on July 23, and you have a classic snapshot of how bear markets are supposed to end. Some market gurus now say the average stock is undervalued by 20% or more. Even if the major indexes haven't hit rock bottom, individually "many companies likely have hit their low," says Donald Straszheim of the economics firm Straszheim Global Advisors...
...strength of his religion. Though 90% of Timorese describe themselves as Catholic?in most cases, staunchly so?the farther east you go, the more likely you are to find locals who take a two-way bet on the afterlife. In the mountainous Lautem regency on the island's eastern edge?an area famed for its intricately-carved traditional houses built on stilts?the pulse of ancestor and spirit worship beats strong beneath the cloak of Catholicism. In cemeteries, graves are marked with crucifixes and decorated with buffalo and goat skulls. A couple will wed in church, but only after...
...market economy, and opened their vegetable market for three days in defiance of the Israeli curfew. This necessity-driven act of civil disobedience underscores the view of a growing number of Palestinian intellectuals that terror tactics harm their cause and that non-violent resistance to occupation is their best bet - and Palestinians defying a curfew in order to buy and sell tomatoes and eggplant are not going to easily tolerate gunmen in their midst provoking the Israelis. Much of the international effort to mediate the crisis is currently focused on efforts to ease the economic burden on ordinary Palestinians...