“1. If you hate crowds and lines, shop at dinnertime (5 to 9 p.m.) or even later. Only 4 percent of shoppers hit the aisles between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. Least-crowded day of the week? Wednesday.

2. Go ahead and reach way back for the fresh milk. Everybody does.

3. Coupons with a bar code are easy to scan. The other ones take an eternity. But if you’re willing to wait …

4. That star fruit has been here a lot longer than the broccoli. Familiar produce turns over more quickly than exotic things.

5. “The more products you see, the more you are likely to buy,” says Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat. “That’s why the aisles are so long and the milk is usually in the far corner.”

6. Like employees with a good attitude? Shop at chains that are employee-owned, suggest customer-satisfaction surveys. When employees have a stake in the profits, it shows in their attitude.

7. The “grazers” order food at the deli, eat it as they’re shopping, and get rid of the wrappers before they check out. We also call that stealing.
8. I’m not just selling groceries, I’m selling real estate. Look high and low-literally-for good values from smaller manufacturers who can’t afford to stock their products in the eye-level sweet spot.

9. We’re marketing to your kids too. That’s why we put the rainbow-colored cereals and other kiddie catnip at their eye level.

10. Be wary of “specials.” When people see signs with numbers-”8 for $10!” “Limit: 5 per customer”—they buy 30 to 100 percent more than they otherwise might have.

11. The baby formula is locked up because thieves resell it on the black market. Ditto for the cough and cold medications, smoking-cessation products, razor blades, and batteries.

12. Driving your Ferrari to the Piggly Wiggly and want to avoid shopping-cart dents? Park far, far away.

13. You’ll end up tossing 12 percent of what you buy.”

Read 16 more things your grocer hides from you

“So you lost your job. Now what? As an employee, you had a daily routine, health insurance coverage, and a regular paycheck. You liked the security—while it lasted. And if you sometimes daydreamed about the freedom of working for yourself, leaving a full-time job never seemed worth the risk.

But now, laid off into a recession and the worst job market in decades—2.6 million Americans lost jobs in 2008, with 524,000 eliminated in December alone—you may be thinking self-employment sounds like the best path out of unemployment. Rather than try to land one of the few open jobs out there, maybe you could work as a freelancer or consultant, at least until the job market recovers. You’re in good company: There were nearly 9 million self-employed workers in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But if you’re among the thousands of unemployed now trying to go it alone, where do you start?

First, step back. Decide what your goals are and how freelancing will help you achieve them, says Pamela Slim, author of the Escape From Cubicle Nation blog and a forthcoming book of the same name. “It’s obviously very easy at the point of being laid off to really come from a position of fear and desperation,” she says. Thinking about long-term goals from the start will keep you grounded and help you determine how to proceed. Once you’re clear on your goals, Slim says, you should ask: “What are the specific skills, knowledge, money, resources, information, and contacts [you] need to bring that picture to life?”

Health Care

There are plenty of nuts-and-bolts concerns that can overwhelm first-time freelancers, especially those who suddenly lost steady jobs. Chief among them is health care. The health insurance system does not accommodate… “ continue reading

From treehugger:

“Phthalates, the plasticizer used to make vinyl soft, have been known to be a gender-bender that has been shown to affect the masculinity of rats. Even the Bush Administration, not renowned for its defence of the public against the chemical companies, has banned it from childrens’ toys.

Now new research has found new evidence of “phthalate syndrome”- smaller penises, and undescended or incompletely descended testicles- in humans. Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester’s school of medicine, who led the research, says phthalates are “”probably reproductive toxins and should be eliminated from products gradually because we don’t need them.”

Chemical Industry dismisses threat

Of course the American Chemistry Council, representing the companies that make the chemical (Exxon Mobil, BASF, Ferro Corp., and Eastman Chemical) warns us to be “cautioned against over-interpreting any individual study.”

Screw that; among guys, penis size is serious stuff. Martin Mittelstaedt of the Globe and Mail writes:

“Scientists have been investigating the possible effects on boys of phthalates because rodent studies have shown the chemical has the peculiar ability to shorten the space between the anus and the genitalia in male mice exposed during fetal development. This space, known as anogenital distance or AGD, is normally about twice as long in young male mice than in females. For mice, AGD is considered a measure of masculinity and a way to determine the sex of the pups. Scientists are so confident of the effect that they’ve given the impact of the chemical on male rodents a name – phthalate syndrome.

Surveys of children have also found that …..”

Continue reading

Read the full article at alternet

“… bees are still dying from symptoms that have been identified as Colony Collapse Disorder. Not many, yet. But this is when it starts. So let’s look at what’s going on.

Viruses
Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was implicated early on, but so far it hasn’t moved past the ‘found in some samples’ role. Continuing greenhouse research, where individual honey bees are infected with the virus definitely shows that the pathogen kills bees. But so do a host of other viruses that were found in the initial samples. The jury is still out on IAPV, at least until newer studies are published.

Other researchers are studying viruses, some known, some not, but so far nothing concrete has turned up … or at least nothing that anybody is talking about. That’s the trouble with science … too often the information gets sat on until the results are published … not reviewed and given the green light but actually put on paper (or turned into electrons to grace your computer screen) and released. Some publishing outlets are quicker, some slower but all have the same criteria. So if there’s something out there we’ll just have to wait.

Pesticides
Some of the early work — simply collecting samples of bees, wax, larvae, and pollen — are finally coming to the top of the pile and the results, some of which have been explored here, have been eye-opening, and mostly downright scary. Beekeeper-applied chemicals to control varroa certainly are hugely evident in the samples collected … not unlike the termite chemicals, lawn chemicals, garden chemicals, pet chemicals, and all the rest that we walk in, swim in, eat, touch and absorb everyday in our homes, work and play. Pesticides, to no one’s surprise, are abundant in our lives and equally abundant in the lives of our honey bees.

One of the unknowns, or maybe-unknowns, are the effects that those well-publicized new pesticides are having. They have made international headlines and definitely can’t be overlooked. And advocacy group, Beyond Pesticides, commented recently on these, and said that two of the primary active ingredients of concern are clothianidin and imidacloprid, both in the neonicotinoid family of chemicals. They are systemic pesticides, meaning the chemical is incorporated into plant tissue and can therefore be present in pollen and nectar, which is of particular importance to bees. They also have long persistence in the soil and can be absorbed by multiple generations of crops, increasing the likelihood of exposure for bees. Meanwhile, the manufacturers claim the chemicals safe and have data to prove it. But others in France and Germany claim just the opposite and are doing everything in their power to rid the world of these new poisons, and in the U.S. the EPA stands in the middle … and may soon be standing in court defending their role in approving these chemicals for use.

Nutrition
But there’s more going on than just pesticides, though those are definitely destructive. Other discoveries came from those samples taken earlier. One surprise was the nutrition deficiencies that were discovered … some of the bees that were sampled definitely were not in the best health because they had not had enough good food to eat. That, too, is a management concept that beekeepers are already turning around. This summer smart beekeepers are making protein supplements available … some of the new diets are being explored, new diets have been concocted, and more diets are on the drawing board, so to speak, and for the most part all seem to have given our bees a boost. Almost anything is better than nothing, and good food can solve a lot of problems, whether it’s your diet, your child’s daily bread, or a honey bee’s ration. That there were so many bees in diet-deficiency seems at first odd, perhaps, but bees have slowly declined for several years, and monoculture agriculture has continued to increase during the same time.

But not only protein-deficiencies were evident … carbohydrates, too were found wanting. Not so much volume, but quality. Is high fructose corn syrup as bad, or good, for bees as it is, or isn’t for us? Some seem to think HFCS is evil incarnate, no matter who or what eats it. Others have shown that if the HFCS is made well, and then that quality preserved and protected it’s just fine. Meanwhile, some beekeepers are switching to plain old sugar … sucrose solution … and seem to see better results. But sugar costs more.

Other Diseases
The new disease … that Nosema cerane thing … isn’t anywhere near being solved either. What is it, how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, when do you treat for it … all questions needing answers and nobody is looking it seems. Well, not quite. Researchers in Europe are studying this I understand … but again, nothing has been published … so bees die of a disease that we can’t treat. Is this CCD? Hmmmmm. Don’t know.

Which brings up the tired old song of research funding. I talked about the $4.1 million grant delivered recently, and I looked at the scientists receiving the money. One industry spokesperson (me) recently said, mostly in jest, that once that money was spread out over all the scientists, over all the years, each would receive about a buck and a half … That’s not quite true, but the concept shouldn’t be ignored. So far, USDA has been monumentally slow in getting things moving. They have a couple of large scale, actually profoundly practical studies going … funded by existing money, not the new money that was supposed to come down from the farm bill … at least so far. But this begs the question … if the money is being used for these studies, what isn’t getting done? Well, we don’t know, do we?

Colony Collapse Disorder hasn’t gone away. Beekeepers are harvesting honey, if they have some to harvest. They are beginning plans for moving south or west for wintering or pollination, and wondering if they again will have to scratch to get bees to meet pollination contract promises. Or is this the year it would be better to stay home? Honey prices are strong, moving is even more expensive this year, and all that stress … maybe home is where the honey bee is should get more attention.

But one more thing has come to light. Organization.

With all the noise made about lack of funding, one question keeps coming up … why aren’t beekeepers doing some of this funding? Why is it only the government that should do this? Good question.

Research Funding
And here’s the answer. There are four major funding sources within the beekeeping industry that have already made significant contributions to finding the answers to Colony Collapse Disorder. More — way more, actually — than government sources, and more is on the way. And if you are looking to help solve this critical problem and want to know how … stay tuned. We’ll open a whole set of doors and introduce you to the best of the beekeeping world.”

[source]

Rice bran – a so-called “superfood” – might contain dangerous amounts of a natural poison.

A new study suggests that rice bran, the shavings left over after brown rice is polished to produce white rice grains, contains “inappropriate” levels of arsenic. Andrew Meharg at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and colleagues found that the levels of arsenic in rice bran products available on the internet and used in food-aid programmes funded by the US government would be illegal in China – the only country in the world to have standards for how much arsenic is permissible in food.

Meharg’s team are calling on the European Union and the US to follow China’s example and update food standards for arsenic.

Arsenic is a natural carcinogen, present in drinking water around the world including in Australia, the US and many developing countries.

In previous work, Meharg has shown that brown rice contains more arsenic than polished white rice (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es702212p).

Nutritional drink

In the new study, Meharg and colleagues purchased brown rice from China and Bangladesh and polished part of it in the same way that it would be to produce commercial white rice. They found that 1 kilogramme of brown rice contained on average 0.76 mg of arsenic in its toxic inorganic form. The rice also contained some non-toxic, organic arsenic. The polished white rice grains contained 0.56 mg inorganic arsenic per kg, whereas the rice bran contained 3.3 mg per kg on average.

On the surface, this appears to be good news: the bran shavings are usually discarded except in Japan, where they are used in traditional pickling recipes. But in recent years a number of rice-bran products have come onto US and European markets, mainly targeted at health-food consumers. They are labelled “superfoods”: the bran is high in antioxidants, vitamins, mineral nutrients and fibre. Producers say it is the largest wasted agricultural food resource on the planet, with 60 million metric tonnes of it discarded worldwide each year.

Some companies have produced a powdered version with a long shelf life at room temperature. Mixed with water, these “rice-bran solubles” make a nutritional drink and have been distributed as food aid to malnourished children in Malawi, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. There are plans to further expand the aid programmes in Latin America, India and the Caribbean.

Meharg and his colleagues purchased nine commercial rice-bran products online, including rice-bran solubles from NutraCea, a company that participates in food-aid programmes, and analysed their arsenic content. The products contained between 0.48 mg/kg and 1.16 mg/kg of inorganic arsenic. China recently updated its standards, and set the limit to 0.15 mg of inorganic arsenic per kg of food.

Risk analysis

“The arsenic concentrations reported are worrisome, but the risk assessment is complex,” says Philippe Grandjean, professor of environmental health at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

Indeed, “safe” standards for arsenic intake are controversial. The risk of skin, lung, bladder and kidney cancer increases proportionally with arsenic intake, which has lead toxicologists to the conclusion that there is no “safe” limit. But risks must be weighed against the benefits gained from drinking water and eating certain foods that contain the poison.

NutraCea has carried out a pilot project distributing their rice-bran solubles to 67,000 pre-school children in Guatemala. They monitored the nutritional state of 150 children. Whereas at the beginning of the trial, 37% were deemed malnourished, that dropped to 5% after taking 15 g of the rice bran 5 days a week for 6 months. The project was funded by the US Agency for International Development USAID and the Christian Children’s Fund.

Marie Vahter, an environmental toxicologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who has done extensive studies on the health effects of arsenic believes the nutritional benefits do not necessarily outweigh the risks, given the availability of other supplements. “Recent reports indicate increased fetal and infant mortality due to fairly low-level arsenic exposure via drinking water,” says Vahter. Arsenic also impairs brain development and impairs the body’s ability to repair DNA.

Unwanted substances

“Rice-bran solubles are not the only way of getting nutrients to malnourished children,” argues Meharg. “If aid agencies want to go down the bran solubles route why not wheat, oat or barely bran solubles. All these crops have ten times less total arsenic than rice and are just as nutrient rich.”

“One would expect dietary supplements to be virtually free of unwanted substances like arsenic, especially when aimed at children, who are particularly vulnerable to arsenic,” says Grandjean.

Drinking water limits on arsenic levels are more widespread than food limits, despite animal studies showing that the body does not distinguish between arsenic derived from food and from drink. Water limits tend to be based on the World Health Organization’s “provisional” guideline limit of 0.01 mg of arsenic per litre of drinking water – although the WHO itself admits that “based on health criteria” the guideline would be less than this. It says the value is restricted by measurement limitations, hence its provisional nature.

According to China’s standards, all of the rice-bran products tested by Meharg would be illegal. According to the UK’s 50-year-old standards, two of the nine products are safe – yet all can be purchased online in the UK. The US has no standards for arsenic levels in food, and has a limit of 0.01 mg/l in drinking water.

“We totally agree with the overall message that it is important to set standards for inorganic arsenic in our food,” comments Walter Goessler, an arsenic expert at the Karl-Franzens University in Austria.

“Rice-bran solubles are being produced by commercial companies who profit from this commodity,” says Meharg.

At the time of going to publication, NutraCea had not replied to New Scientist’s request for comment.

[source]

From rd:

“When you think “millionaire,” what image comes to mind? For many of us, it’s a flashy Wall Street banker type who flies a private jet, collects cars and lives the kind of decadent lifestyle that would make Donald Trump proud.

But many modern millionaires live in middle-class neighborhoods, work full-time and shop in discount stores like the rest of us. What motivates them isn’t material possessions but the choices that money can bring: “For the rich, it’s not about getting more stuff. It’s about having the freedom to make almost any decision you want,” says T. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. Wealth means you can send your child to any school or quit a job you don’t like.
According to the Spectrem Wealth Study, an annual survey of America’s wealthy, there are more people living the good life than ever before—the number of millionaires nearly doubled in the last decade. And the rich are getting richer. To make it onto the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, a mere billionaire no longer makes the cut. This year you needed a net worth of at least $1.3 billion.

If more people are getting richer than ever, why shouldn’t you be one of them? Here, five people who have at least a million dollars in liquid assets share the secrets that helped them get there.

Set your sights on where you’re going
Twenty years ago, Jeff Harris hardly seemed on the road to wealth. He was a college dropout who struggled to support his wife, DeAnn, and three kids, working as a grocery store clerk and at a junkyard where he melted scrap metal alongside convicts. “At times we were so broke that we washed our clothes in the bathtub because we couldn’t afford the Laundromat.” Now he’s a 49-year-old investment advisor and multimillionaire in York, South Carolina.

There was one big reason Jeff pulled ahead of the pack: He always knew he’d be rich. The reality is that 80 percent of Americans worth at least $5 million grew up in middle-class or lesser households, just like Jeff.

Wanting to be wealthy is a crucial first step. Says Eker, “The biggest obstacle to wealth is fear. People are afraid to think big, but if you think small, you’ll only achieve small things.”

It all started for Jeff when he met a stockbroker at a Christmas party. “Talking to him, it felt like discovering fire,” he says. “I started reading books about investing during my breaks at the grocery store, and I began putting $25 a month in a mutual fund.” Next he taught a class at a local community college on investing. His students became his first clients, which led to his investment practice. “There were lots of struggles,” says Jeff, “but what got me through it was believing with all my heart that I would succeed.”

Educate yourself
When Steve Maxwell graduated from college, he had an engineering degree and a high-tech job—but he couldn’t balance his checkbook. “I took one finance class in college but dropped it to go on a ski trip,” says the 45-year-old father of three, who lives in Windsor, Colorado. “I actually had to go to my bank and ask them to teach me how to read my statement.”

One of the biggest obstacles to making money is not understanding it: Thousands of us avoid investing because we just don’t get it. But to make money, you must be financially literate. “It bothered me that I didn’t understand this stuff,” says Steve, “so I read books and magazines about money management and investing, and I asked every financial whiz I knew to explain things to me.”

He and his wife started applying the lessons: They made a point to live below their means. They never bought on impulse, always negotiated better deals (on their cars, cable bills, furniture) and stayed in their home long after they could afford a more expensive one. They also put 20 percent of their annual salary into investments.

Within ten years, they were millionaires, and people were coming to Steve for advice. “Someone would say, ‘I need to refinance my house—what should I do?’ A lot of times, I wouldn’t know the answer, but I’d go find it and learn something in the process,” he says.

In 2003, Steve quit his job to become part owner of a company that holds personal finance seminars for employees of corporations like Wal-Mart. He also started going to real estate investment seminars, and it’s paid off: He now owns $30 million worth of investment properties, including apartment complexes, a shopping mall and a quarry.

“I was an engineer who never thought this life was possible, but all it truly takes is a little self-education,” says Steve. “You can do anything once you understand the basics.”

Passion pays off
In 1995, Jill Blashack Strahan and her husband were barely making ends meet. Like so many of us, Jill was eager to discover her purpose, so she splurged on a session with a life coach. “When I told her my goal was to make $30,000 a year, she said I was setting the bar too low. I needed to focus on my passion, not on the paycheck.”

Jill, who lives with her son in Alexandria, Minnesota, owned a gift basket company and earned just $15,000 a year. She noticed when she let potential buyers taste the food items, the baskets sold like crazy. Jill thought, Why not sell the food directly to customers in a fun setting?
With $6,000 in savings, a bank loan and a friend’s investment, Jill started packaging gourmet foods in a backyard shed and selling them at taste-testing parties. It wasn’t easy. “I remember sitting outside one day, thinking we were three months behind on our house payment, I had two employees I couldn’t pay, and I ought to get a real job. But then I thought, No, this is your dream. Recommit and get to work.”

She stuck with it, even after her husband died three years later. “I live by the law of abundance, meaning that even when there are challenges in life, I look for the win-win,” she says.

The positive attitude worked: Jill’s backyard company, Tastefully Simple, is now a direct-sales business, with $120 million in sales last year. And Jill was named one of the top 25 female business owners in North America by Fast Company magazine.

According to research by Thomas J. Stanley, author of The Millionaire Mind, over 80 percent of millionaires say they never would have been successful if their vocation wasn’t something they cared about.

Grow your money
Most of us know the never-ending cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. “The fastest way to get out of that pattern is to make extra money for the specific purpose of reinvesting in yourself,” says Loral Langemeier, author of The Millionaire Maker. In other words, earmark some money for the sole purpose of investing it in a place where it will grow dramatically—like a business or real estate.

There are endless ways to make extra money for investing—you just have to be willing to do the work. “Everyone has a marketable skill,” says Langemeier. “When I started out, I had a tutoring business, seeing clients in the morning before work and on my lunch break.”

A little moonlighting cash really can grow into a million. Twenty-five years ago, Rick Sikorski dreamed of owning a personal training business. “I rented a tiny studio where I charged $15 an hour,” he says. When money started trickling in, he squirreled it away instead of spending it, putting it all back into the business. Rick’s 400-square-foot studio is now Fitness Together, a franchise based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with more than 360 locations worldwide. And he’s worth over $40 million.

When extra money rolls in, it’s easy to think, Now I can buy that new TV. But if you want to get rich, you need to pay yourself first, by putting money where it will work hard for you—whether that’s in your retirement fund, a side business or investments like real estate.

No guts, no glory
Last summer, Dave Lindahl footed the bill for 18 relatives at a fancy mansion in the Adirondacks. One night, his dad looked out at the scenery and joked, “I can’t believe we used to call you the black sheep!”

At 29, Dave was broke, living in a small apartment near Boston and wondering what to do after ten years in a local rock band. “I looked around and thought, If I don’t do something, I’ll be stuck here forever.”

He started a landscape company, buying his equipment on credit. When business literally froze over that winter, a banker friend asked if he’d like to renovate a foreclosed home. “I’m a terrible carpenter, but I needed the money, so I went to some free seminars at Home Depot and figured it out as I went,” he says.

After a few more renovations, it occurred to him: Why not buy the homes and sell them for profit? He took a risk and bought his first property. Using the proceeds, he bought another, and another. Twelve years later, he owns apartment buildings, worth $143 million, in eight states.

The Biggest Secret? Stop spending.
Every millionaire we spoke to has one thing in common: Not a single one spends needlessly. Real estate investor Dave Lindahl drives a Ford Explorer and says his middle-class neighbors would be shocked to learn how much he’s worth. Fitness mogul Rick Sikorski can’t fathom why anyone would buy bottled water. Steve Maxwell, the finance teacher, looked at a $1.5 million home but decided to buy one for half the price because “a house with double the cost wouldn’t give me double the enjoyment.”

It’s not a fluke: According to the 2007 Annual Survey of Affluence & Wealth in America, some of the richest people “spend their money with a middle-class mind-set.” They clip coupons, wait for sales and buy luxury items at a discount.

No kidding! Talk show host Tyra Banks calls herself the Queen of Cheap and keeps perfume samples from magazine ads in her purse for quick touch-ups.

Sara Blakely, founder of the $100 million shapewear company Spanx, gets her hair trimmed at Supercuts.

And Warren Buffett, the third richest person in the world, according to Forbes, lives in the same Omaha, Nebraska, home he bought four decades ago for $31,500.”

^[source]

“Our disfunctional financial system hit a new low last week when Citigroup, the hopeless wreck of Wall Street, announced it had lost $2.5 billion in the past three months–a cheer went up, and so did the Dow. Only $2.5 billion; people were afraid the losses would be much higher. Happy days are here again.

There are no happy days for the millions of Americans who have been trying to put away some money for their retirement in tax-sheltered entities like IRAs, Roth Accounts and 401(k)s. For them, the market’s downward slope has been harrowing and frightening. When will the steady erosion of their savings end? And when it does, what will be left of their future financial security?…”

Read the rest of the article

“The government’s seizure of IndyMac Bank raises concerns for many consumers about whether their banks might be next.

While it is unlikely the nation will see thousands of banks fail as they did during the savings and loan industry collapse in the late 1980s and early ’90s, analysts predict there will be more battered financial institutions that are unable to survive in today’s marketplace.

“IndyMac’s failure is certainly a broader issue,” said Eva Weber, an analyst at Aite Group, a financial services research firm. “Those who are trenched in more risky business, who are feeling more heavy losses, may be at more risk.”

On Friday, the Office of Thrift Supervision transferred control of the California lender to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. because it did not think IndyMac could meet its depositors’ demands. By Monday, the bank reopened as IndyMac Federal Bank, FSB, and customers whose deposits were insured by the FDIC were able to access full banking services, including online banking, during normal business hours.

IndyMac, like many of the nation’s banks, was facing pressures of tighter credit, tumbling home prices and rising foreclosures. In recent weeks it had experienced a run on the bank, with depositors pulling out $100 million a day.

Here are some questions and answers about the government’s role when a bank fails and if other banks are at risk:

Q: Why did the government seize IndyMac’s assets?

A: Regulators closed IndyMac after customers began a run on the lender following the June 26 release of a letter by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., urging several bank regulatory agencies that they take steps to prevent IndyMac’s collapse. In the 11 days that followed the letter’s release, depositors took out more than $1.3 billion, regulators said.

In a statement Friday, Schumer said IndyMac’s failure was due to long-standing practices by the bank, not recent events. And on Sunday, he noted that IndyMac was more heavily involved in originating riskier mortgages than traditional community and regional banks, which weakened the bank’s finances.

The financial institution spent the last two weeks trying to reassure customers that it was not near default, including announcing that it had stopped accepting new loan submissions and planned to slash 3,800 jobs, or more than half of its work force.

Q: What happens when the government takes over a bank?

A: In such a scenario, called a conservatorship, a bank’s regulator takes control of the company and oversees their operations. The move is to maximize the value of the institution for a future sale and to maintain banking services in the communities formerly served by the bank.

Q: Is my bank at risk?

A: John Bovenzi, the former chief operating officer of the FDIC put in charge of IndyMac, reassured consumers late Sunday that bank failures have been rare in the past, and that if more banks do fail, the government has enough in reserve. According to regulatory policy, there is no advance notice given to the public before a bank’s assets are seized by federal regulators.

“I think the important point to make is that, historically, only a very small percentage of the banks on our problem banks list ever failed,” Bovenzi said on CNN. “While there are 90 banks on the list, there would be no expectation that 90 of those banks would fail.”

According to the FDIC, IndyMac is the fifth U.S. bank or thrift that has failed this year. In 2007, only three financial institutions failed, a small number when compared to the 2,808 institutions that failed between 1982 and 1992.

Q: How can I make sure my money is safe?

A: All deposits accounts worth $100,000 and less are automatically insured by the FDIC. Many retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401(k)s, are insured to $250,000 per person. But since it’s a person’s aggregate deposits, and their not individual accounts, that are insured, any amounts over $100,000 deposited at any one bank are not covered.

While keeping more than the limit at any bank means taking a chance, the risks can be bigger with smaller companies, provided they’re heavily exposed to mortgage and other debt during the current downturn.

“Consumers may want to pick an institution that has a substantial brand,” Weber said. “But you don’t necessarily want to run to a big bank because you think a smaller bank is going to fail.”

Q: How much money does the FDIC have?

A: The FDIC has nearly $53 billion in insurance funds. Beyond that figure, Bovenzi said the FDIC would have go to other banks to raise more money, adding that in such a case, consumers could expect to see some of among passed on to them in the form of higher fees.

The current estimated loss to the FDIC resulting from IndyMac’s failure is between $4 billion and $8 billion.

Q: How big does FDIC like to keep its deposit insurance fund?

A: The FDIC board of directors has set a Designated Reserve Ratio of 1.25 percent. That means their “target” balance for the fund is 1.25 percent of estimated insured deposits. As of March 31, the fund was $52.843 billion and insured deposits were $4.431 trillion, which resulted in a reserve ratio of 1.19 percent, 0.06 percentage point below the Board’s target. If the fund falls below 1.15 percent of estimated insured deposits, the FDIC is required by law to adopt a restoration plan that will bring the reserve ratio back to 1.15 percent within five years.

Q: Do banks have to pay into the deposit insurance fund?

A: Yes. The total amount depends upon the assessment rate assigned to the institution and the size of their assessment base — which is roughly equal to an institution’s total domestic deposits. Assessment rates are assigned to institutions based upon the risk they pose to the fund, and currently range from 0.05 percent to 0.43 percent, with the vast majority if institutions — almost 94 percent — paying between 0.05 percent and 0.07 percent.

Q: Does the government’s decision to aide Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help the nation’s banks?

A: Tony Plath, an associate professor of finance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, says yes. “As mortgage money becomes harder to get and real estate prices go down even more, the solvency of many banks is called into question,” Plath said. “The Fed is moving to protect the solvency of the banking industry by maintaining integrity.”

Even so, the exact outcome is left to be seen, Weber said.

“One must have a bit of faith in the FDIC that they are going to be able to take care of whomever fails,” she said.”

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