Investing your money and keeping it safe and sound is crucial, especially during a recession. Money Morning’s Mike Cagesso shows you a few DRIP companies to keep your eye on.

Honing in on small cap companies, Jim Nelson of the Penny Sleuth introduces to us five of his favorite penny stocks for retirement.  Jim recommends that we invest like a “one percenter.”

Oil prices are down over 60 percent from their peaks just last summer. With the economy crumbling across the globe, most investors think buying an oil company is the same as suicide.

But not Adam Lass, writing for the Taipan Publishing Group. He readily points out that ExxonMobil made $45.2 billion in pure profits last year alone.

For a company producing enormous amounts of cash in a “Cash is king” economy, he recommends you stay long ExxonMobil.

Is Washington replacing New York – and more specifically, Wall Street – as the city that drives America?

OPEC wants transparency and the White House is on the verge of giving it to them. The result is the virtual destruction of speculation in the oil markets. But the upside is that oil companies will have a clearer gauge of supply and demand. And what’s good news for the oil market is good news for major oil companies. Here’s what you need to know:

There is a full economic calendar this week, but all eyes will be on the two-day FOMC meeting and the rate decision on Wednesday.

It will be interesting to see how the FOMC approaches this meeting. The current Fed Funds target rate is 0-0.25%, which in and of itself is rather strange. It is a moving target, not a fixed rate. Who determines which rate is used? My guess is this meeting will be used to clarify what the rate is. The Fed will either officially reduce it to 0% in a continued effort to resuscitate the economy, or lock it in at 0.25%. This would at least leave the Fed with one perceived bullet in the gun.

The rest of the…

President Barack Obama’s $825 billion stimulus plan heads to the floor of the House of Representatives this week, with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, saying many in his party will vote against the package unless significant changes are made.

With the U.S. credit markets in lockdown mode, a whipsaw stock market that keeps anyone from getting too comfortable, a banking sector in chaos and a recession that clearly won’t be ending any time soon, U.S. dealmakers are looking at a market for mergers and acquisitions that’s in a virtual deep freeze.

It’s become apparent that Israel’s land war and Russia’s childish power plays aren’t driving gas prices up. In fact, the price of crude sank 6% to $38.00 a barrel this morning.

Last year’s 54% drop in oil prices may have set the table for a rally similar to the one experienced in 1999, when prices doubled after a similar decline. The so-called “forward curve of futures contracts” traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange suggests prices will rise 28% this year, according to Bloomberg News.