Like most investors, Harvard University’s billion-dollar endowment fund took a beating during the global financial crisis. Many investors cashed out, opting for the safety of the sidelines. But Harvard called a new play. During the first quarter, Harvard engineered a dramatic shift in its endowment-fund investment strategy – boosting its stakes in some of the most prominent emerging market exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Agricultural Bank of China Raises $7.3 Billion; Banks Applying to Repay TARP; Fiat CEO Confident About Opel Bid; World Bank Prez Sees Year-End Recovery; Derivatives Shrink to $592 Trillion; GE Reaches Debt Funding Goals for 2009; UAW & GM Still at Odds on Labor Agreement; Home Depot Beats Street

While the entire U.S. housing market was on the verge of collapse and corporate America was being systemically undermined, regulators purposely looked the other way.  Why would they do this?

FENGDU, People’s Republic of China – Mainland China companies will soon be able to invest in Taiwan for the first time in 60 years, thanks to investment accords reached between the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).

For millennia, gold has been a barometer of financial health and the ultimate store of value. It’s long been considered the ultimate safe haven investment when all else fails, or when economic conditions seem too good to be true.

India’s information technology industry is one of the largest operations in the world – employing millions of engineers, technicians and customer service specialists who serve the world’s second-largest population.

China’s economy expanded by 6.1% in the first quarter, its slowest pace in at least a decade. But many economists believe this will be the low point for the world’s third-largest economy, as signs of recovery are already starting to emerge.

UBS Posts $1.7 Billion Loss; Infosys Forecast First Sales Drop; FDI in China Slips Again; Annual CPI Falls For First Time Since 1955; Homebuilder Sentiment Rises; BofA Raises Credit Card Transfer Fees to 4%; Cisco Deal Clears FTC; Brazil’s Bonds Rise On Interest Rate Cuts

With Russia’s economy in shambles, President Dmitry Medvedev has been distancing himself from his predecessor and friend of 20 years, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In doing so, Medvedev has fueled speculation that the former-KGB agent’s days in Moscow may be numbered.

Bernie Madoff’s guilty plea to a decades-long $50 billion-plus Ponzi scheme pretty much guarantees the 70-year-old will have his likeness immortalized on the Mt. Rushmore of scammers.