FTC offers credit primer online
While many people think of credit as something they get in the form of a plastic card, the truth is that credit is about financial trustworthiness. Good credit makes it easier to get loans at the most competitive rates, and credit has increasingly become a factor checked by employers when interviewing a job applicant.
The Federal Trade Commission has put together a brochure called “Getting Credit: What You Need to Know About Your Credit,” which is an outstanding primer for people who are new or inexperienced with credit. The brochure and its accompanying website include information on credit scams, identity theft, fraud and much more. It also contains guidelines on how a consumer should proceed after losing a wallet or purse.
You can get the brochure — or look at the materials in it — by setting your Web browser to .
Tape racing
An illegal practice in which a broker, money manager or other financial intermediary takes advantage of a large customer order by transacting business in their own personal account before making the trade for the customer. If the customer’s order is so big that it could move the price of the stock, racing the tape would allow the dishonest broker to grab an extra profit.
Also called “front-running,” tape racers typically buy options on the securities just before the client’s big trade. In commodities, traders often deal in their own account and their customer’s account at the same time, a practice called dual trading; critics have long maintained that dual trading creates opportunities for a dishonest trader to profit from tape racing or front-running.
