Paying for College: What to Do When Your 529 Is Tanking

Buoyed by a run of good news in the stock market, I recently decided to check the balance in my son’s 529 college savings account for the first time in many months. To my dismay, the account was still down some 40% from a year ago, far below the amount my husband and I had originally invested. Given the extent of the losses, I couldn’t help but wonder: would it make sense to just ditch this thing?

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Obama’s Other War: Fighting Mexico’s Drug Lords

The convenient and long-standing tradition south of the border is for Mexico to blame its problems on the U.S. It can often be justified when the matter is the drug-trafficking violence now terrorizing much of Mexico, which is powered in large part by the insatiable gringo demand for drugs, the relentless flow of high-powered weapons from the U.S.

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Citigroup Plans Big Bonuses Despite Rules Against Them

AIG isn’t the only bailed-out financial firm paying big bucks to managers who helped steer their company to near collapse. Citigroup has pledged millions of dollars in bonuses to senior executives for the next few years, despite lawmakers efforts to eliminate such payments. It’s not clear whether the bonuses, which Citigroup says are for 2008 but won’t start paying out until 2010, will be allowed.

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Germany considers Opel rescue plan

The German government is studying a proposal from Opel and its parent company, General Motors, to save the struggling carmaker with a huge cash injection and a cost-cutting plan. The proposal calls for GM to sell off a stake in its Opel unit, the core of its European operations, in order to win $4.18 billion (€3.3 billion) in government support from Germany and others in the region, said Andreas Kroemer, a spokesman for GM Europe.

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Poll: Obama rating slips, but still high

A national poll indicates that two out of three Americans approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president of the United States. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, released Friday, also suggests that six in 10 support the economic stimulus package that Obama signed into law Tuesday.

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