ARS

Schwab (SCHW) has a squeaky clean image. Charles Schwab has run the firm he founded for decades, except for a brief period when the company was owned by another financial operation. But Schwab has always been the public face of his company, which has a current ad campaign called "Ask Chuck." This...

Charles Schwab & Co. (SCHW) decided to take a stand and fight New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over how it marketed auction-rate securities. Many others have already settled, as TD Ameritrade did today. Citigroup (C), UBS (UBS) and Goldman Sachs (GS) settled last year. Auction rate...

Fourteen months ago, I learned about the $330 billion market for a new financial instrument called Auction Rate Securities (ARS) -- bonds sold as cash-like instruments whose yields reset in periodic auctions. But in February 2008, the banks that created ARS stopped propping up the market and...