Beazer Homes CEO Ian McCarthy will give back about $6.5 million in bonuses and profits to the company. That's quite a lot of money! Well, for you and me, the "little" people. A wealthy man's 1 million may be worth $100 of a poor man. The freedom is priceless!

• Beazer accepted responsibility for fraudulent mortgage-making and accounting practices
• McCarthy wasn't personally charged in connection with the accounting violations.

Because America is so big and diverse, immigrants have an incredible array of choices. The proportion of Americans who are foreign-born, at 13%, is higher than the rich-country average of 8.4%. In absolute terms, the gulf is much wider. America’s foreign-born population of 38m is nearly four times larger than those of Russia or Germany, the nearest contenders. It dwarfs the number of migrants in Japan (below 2m) or China (under 1m). The recession has dramatically slowed the influx of immigrants and prompted quite a few to move back to Mexico. But the economy will eventually recover and the influx will resume.

That freedom is secure. America has 50 states with 50 sets of laws. Virginia will never ban hunting, but even if it did, there are 49 other states that won’t. In America, people with unusual hobbies are generally left alone. And power is so devolved that you can more or less choose which rules you want to live under.

Comcast is a cable company, it also provides high-speed internet service. It also has popular OnDemand where people can watch movies at home. However, it is not that high profile. Now it will be the owner of NBC! NBC's current owner is GE which is a household name and one of the biggest companies out there. Now, it is going to sell some of NBC to Comcast. Good for Comcast!

"Once upon a time" on October 21, 2009, the CEO of GE Immelt said: "We've done all the planning to see if an IPO would be fine. You've got to think a couple years ahead in the space and ask: 'Might there be partnerships to run the company in a better way?' In this case, we've got all the options."

Yeah! Selling it to Comcast may be the top option. The buying and selling of units among the big companies sound like the marriages between children of rich people. As long as they stay in the circle, everyone benefits.

In the future, one out of seven stations will belong to Comcast. That is a lot of power and a lot of influence especially the margin of error is one-ninth --- as the deciding vote in many 5-4 decision from the United States Supreme Court.

Randall Zisler -- chief executive officer of Zisler Capital Partners LLC:
A crisis of unprecedented proportions is approaching" in the U.S. commercial real-estate market

Investor Wilbur Ross says:
"Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate - the return that investors are demanding to buy a property - are going up."

Who knows it for sure? Many people predicated the Tech bubble and the stock crash long before it happened. However, it is similar to predicating an earthquake. Should all people evacuate prior to such warning? Even if they should, not all would.

Once upon a time, there was a Chinese called Sun Zi who worte "Art of War". Among the teaching:

"In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact".

Open source database MySQL is used by many companies and it threats Oracle. Sun Micro bought it for $1 billion but failed to make more money out of it. The allmighty Larry Ellison wants it.

Will he get it? Maybe as long as the "war" does not last too long..

An 97-year-old lady lives in a "home" - a 36-year-old vehicle with two of her sons, both sons are over 60.

The lady "begs" a little and she has dignity:

"It makes me feel like I'm a bum"
"I don't mind living at the mercy of the public because some of the public is good -- they're nice to me. But there are some that are nasty. Some of them laugh at me and my sign. They say they don't think I'm 97 years old."

Average American workers expect to change jobs regularly. The new Rasmussen Poll shows that 37% of working Americans plan to stay with the same company for more than five years. 38% are not sure how long they are going to stay. Half of those who already worked for the employers for more than five years plan to stay five years or more.

The poll does not indicate any significant changes even under the economic down turn. If people are satisfied with their working environment and are paid enough, they are less likely to move. People still need some motive to change, something more exciting, some place more fun, some place that is friendly to working moms, some place that pays enough, etc.

There is some good news about housing market from Australia. The Australian government estimated that its population will grow from around 22 million currently to more than 35 million in a few decades. This is good news as well as a nation is growing with energy.

If the economy is good, it becomes inevitable that Australia raises its interest by a quarter point. People in America will know that its economy is getting better when they are embracing a rate hike of theirs.

Costco is accepting food stamps. While average people may assume that all retailers that sell food should accept food stamps, but it is never late for Costco to be more passionate about people who receive some assistance from other taxpayers.

Let's listen to what Costco has to say from Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti:

"Certainly this economy was a wake-up call.It is not just very low-end economic strata that are using these (who) typically don't have purchasing power."

"We recognize these are tough times and more people are food-stamp-eligible"

Taiwan and Mainland China are separate by a strait, different currencies, and different system. The Taiwan banks have longed to do business in mainland's currencies and their dreams are realizing. Chief Secretary of Taiwan's Council for Economic Planning and Development:"The financial industry is very hopeful."

It makes sense for both sides of the strait. Many people from Taiwan are doing business, going to school, or simply living in Beijing or Shanghai. Many mainland people may hope for better economic integration hoping for eventual full integration. At least it is a step towards a positive direction for world peace.

Emergency does come from time to time during one's life. People should gradually build up six months of your monthly expenses in case you do not have any income. If you are single, do not have any kids and do not live in areas like San Francisco or New York, you may need to save $30000 for your emergency fund.

George Soros speaks:
"Those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers. These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the government, so I don't think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses. There's a resentment which I think is justified."

The problem is that the taxpayers really did not vote to provide these gifts to the geniuses from Wall street. If the taxpayers had the chance, they would rather use the money to provide for those kids whose parents lost jobs. We taxpayers do not understand the fancy terms used in the reports from the Wall Street. What can we do? At least, we feel better when George Soros showed some "sympathy."

In addition, he made the following positive comments:

"As long as the renminbi is tied to the dollar, I don't see how the decline in the dollar can go too far,"

California seems to be in a such a dire situation, to name a few: unemployment rate is more 12%, making history in 70 years, 1500 people started to wait in line from 1AM in order to get free care while California already has Medical and Many emergency rooms that have to treat patients California is losing people which may lead to losing one seat in Congress to other states

As we are looking these happening in front of our eyes, what lessons can we learn if we can AFFORD to learn?

Thinking about saving money

Mmake a list of daily unnecessary expenses

Thinking about investing the money saved, starting from depositing these money in a savings or money-market account which accrues interest

Thinking about the 401k you can put away especially if you have not put away enough to get all the matches you get.

California has a state tax rate up to 9.3% (most will not have to worry about the 10.3% tax rate applying to those making more than a million), California has a sales tax around 10% as well. Think about ways of reducing these

Making use of flexible spending accounts if you have child care expenses and incur eligible medical expenses

It is very difficult to change the habit and starting saving. We still want to maintain a good qualify of life, eating raw vegetables found in the park is definitely not the direction to go. Just start with the easy ones which makes sense and do not really impact the qualify of life.

In America, many homes are in foreclosure. These homes are relatively cheaper and undoubtedly attracted the attention of those potential home buyers. Where is a good place to check out what properties are out there? Your favoirte bank will have the listings for you to review. Once a buyer identifies a possible target, he needs to do a thorough inspection as the houses are likelynot up to date as to maintenance.

The United States home price is going up for the third month in July. Among all the big metropolitan areas, San Francisco housing price increased above the national average. This may indicate that the worst is getting behind us even though the unemployment rate is still not optimistic where Califorina also has a higher unemployment rate than the national unemployment. California has the one and only Silicon Valley, people are working extremely hard to bring the next generation innovations which will eventually ease the unemployment problem.

The mortgage interest rates are still low and going lower, but they will go up eventually when the economy rebounds. So homeeowners in 3, 5, 7-year adjustable-rate loans need to move quickly to refinance into 30-year-fixed mortgages if their reset date is close or if they intend to live beyond the rates reset date, so they never have to worry about when the rates are going to reset and go up.

Not too long ago, Nintendo said that they would not lower the prices of Wii. Now finally the competition and recession has made them to do something different. The consumers will love their decision. $50 dollar is still lots of money to many.

Banks actually charged more fees after the United States tax payers bailed them out. They are trimming the overdraft fees now when the unemployment rate is high, the economy is in recession and the consumers are not happy about these fees.

The United States homeownership rate dropped to 66.6 percent in 2008. Among all the different groups, the Asian Americans suffer the most. Why, many of them live in California. Now California has the highest unemployment in 70 years many homes are in foreclosure. The bright spot is that Hispanic Homeownerhsip is rising!

Is Money Market Safe? The government is protecting the consumers to a certain extent now.

The Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes and apartments rose 1.5 per cent in August. In addition, rates are still low comparing to history. For those first-time home buyers, they will receive a federal tax credit!