Even if you don't know what a mass tort administrator or a class action administrator does, odds are that you have interacted with one at one time.

Sometimes you get to fulfill your dreams. Sometimes you never knew they were your dreams until the opportunity knocks on your door. Or a headhunter calls out of the blue.

There was one factor that made the dry cleaners a smart business decision. In its back room there was a bookmaking operation and an ongoing card game.

If Americans set up their lives so that we depend less on Wall Street and Washington, both entities will notice. We will be hitting them in the place where it hurts the most: their wallet.

Three years after US taxpayers bailed Bank of America out by giving them part of the $700 billion bailout, they repaid Congress by slapping their customers in the face with a $5 a month fee for using a debit card. Bank of America may have sparked its "Netflix movement."

"Financial reform" is a boon for people in the payday loan business. When people fall out of the world of traditional banking, they are still going to need bank-like services. Payday lenders will be in position to fill the gap.

You would think that after having overcome trillion-to-one odds, the idea of running through the money would seem silly to most lottery winners. But 90 percent of people do just that within five years of winning the jackpot.

The Wall Street Journal posted a story about Portfolio Recovery Associates, one of the nation's largest debt collectors, using the signature of a woman named Martha Kunkle, who died in 1995.

If you trace the history of almost any national company, you'll find that somewhere along the way a story in a publication put that company in the spotlight.

McLean and Nocera don't give us an idea as to where to look for angels. But the book is comprehensive, and I feel certain that all the devils are here.

Most of us want to be physically fit, but very few of us are. The same holds true with financial security. As my father (and many others) used to say, "A lot of people want to go to heaven but no one wants to die to get there."