More than 100 banks have failed this year, and even the government acknowledges that many more will probably fold before 2009 draws to a close. In most cases, ordinary citizens who have accounts are protected by FDIC insurance. Yes, there's certainly a hassle involved, especially if you have bills set up on auto-payment with the failed bank, but the FDIC guarantees that they'll make good on your money up to $250,000.

Unfortunately, this guarantee doesn't extend to the interest rates on long-term savings vehicles like certificates of deposit. As this article reports, a growing number of people are losing the high interest rates on their CDs when a bank with which they have money invested folds.

Milan and Florence weighed in at over $1.6 million for a home, on average; Rome just under $1.3 million. And that's dollars, not lira (which, of course, don't even exist anymore).

Also out of reach for many Americans these days are the pink sands of Hamilton, Bermuda, Bucaresti, Romania and Shanghai, all averaging above $1.3 million, not to mention Vancouver and Dublin at $1.1 million -- and Dubai trailing not far behind.

The most expensive market is not in Italy, however. It's in Singapore, where homes average nearly $1.9 million. Coldwell Banker points out that is "10% lower than La Jolla" but fails to mention it is also 10 times the average home value in everyday places like Phoenix, Mobile, Ala, Lexington, KY, and Syracuse, NY.

Time was when the sage advice was to "go west young man" in search of fame, fortune and nifty real estate deals. But in 2009, heading east may be a better idea. At least if you are starting out in the U.S. And, when I say east, I mean like all the way to Poland! Now hold on to your Polish zlotys while I explain this one:

Seems Poland, Krakow in particular, is a darn good place to not only indulge in a sausage or two, but also to buy up chunks of real estate at prices that are down anywhere from 9% to 17%.

Goldman Sachs spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages during the real estate boom, packaging them into high-yield bonds. Now that the bottom has fallen out of the property market, the Wall Street behemoth finds itself in a different role: taking homes away from Americans defaulting on their loans.

That's according to a lengthy investigation by McClatchy Newspapers . The report says there are hundreds of cases in which subsidiaries of Goldman have sought to contain bondholder losses by foreclosing on properties and evicting delinquent borrowers.

Peer-to-peer lending marketplace Lending Club just announced several new features for investors who use the service which can help them earn an average return of 9.67%.

The new features, which went live this morning, make it easier than ever to find the types of loans you want to invest in and create a diversified portfolio based on how much risk you want to take.

The new investor experience provides you with more information and the ability to filter on several factors to find loans that appeal to you. For instance, if you want to avoid a specific type of loan such as home improvement projects, you can exclude them from your loan search. Another welcome filter will show only loans that have been approved for funding.

On a recent episode of Shark Tank, inventor Cactus Jack was faced with two offers that would yield him $180,000 for his product, a device that makes it easier for heavy people to do push-ups.

Barbara Corcoran, taken with this big guy with a big personality, offered to give him the cash -- provided he lose 30 pounds. Otherwise, she said, who could take a weight-loss guru seriously? If he didn't lose the weight, he'd lose the deal. (Watch back episodes of the ABC show at this link.)

"There's no way in hell he's losing 30 pounds," kvetched fellow Shark Kevin O'Leary after Cactus Jack had left the room. "The 30 pounds is gonna keep it off the table forever."

Flash forward. Months later, Cactus Jack has flown to New York City from Iowa to meet with Corcoran and hash out the future of his business. Critical to the next stage is the big test: Has he lost the weight contingent to the deal?

Corcoran invited WalletPop to her penthouse office for the big moment. At stake: A comically large novelty check made out for $180,000, and potential infomercial involvement by TV impresario Kevin Harrington.

Was this medical check-up a photo op for the media? Of course it was, but it was fun. And did this larger-than-life guy prove Kevin "Mr. Burns" O'Leary wrong? Watch and see.

It was a moment worth $6,000 a pound.

Home repair contractor Kaile Warren had a rags-to-riches story that was enviable. The former homeless home improver credits "divine intervention" with giving him the idea for a home improvement company and brand name that would ultimately place him on a national stage that included appearances on Oprah, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the CBS Early Show, to name a few.

But according to an investigative report by USA Today, Warren has all but crashed and burned taking more than a dozen investors with him who poured an estimated $4.5 million into his Rent-A-Husband chain of home improvement franchises.

Today, Warren is reportedly more than $3 million in debt with assets of just $145,000, faces investor complaints, one lawsuit, and investigation by the Maine Division of Securities.

Here's a video by USA Today on the story:

Gayla Bentley made quite an impression Tuesday on ABC's Shark Tank. She's a big lady with a big vision: to create the first globally successful luxury fashion line for women of size 12 or larger. In fact, now that she's got the investment she needs, you may be hearing from her again.

WalletPop's Jason Cochran talked to Bentley about her success in obtaining the capital she needs to bring her garments to a wider market, and we got the video interview on tape as part of our popular AfterShark series.

As the ninth episode of ABC's Shark Tank unspooled, we met Dan Mackey. When he saw that California was dumping sugary sodas from the schools, he realized there was an opening for something organic and low-glycemic, with no high fructose corn syrup: his Chill Soda.

"A lot of people have great ideas. It's just a matter of doing something about it," he told us. And he's right about that. He only wanted $50,000, but for just 10% equity. Using agave nectar, it has about half the calories of the regular sodas on the market. Right away, the pitch started to go flat, when Kevin O'Leary asked what was the one thing that marked the ability to sell in the market, and Mackey was apparently too nervous to answer. "Distribution!" O'Leary said. "Sorry, I thought that was a given," Mackey said, and then said he already had a distributor working away, although he had only sold 250 cans. "You're getting in on the ground floor of this." You could hear a cricket in the Tank until Daymond John pressed a little more, and Mackey clarified: That was 250 thousand cans, worth $175,000 in sales. "I'm a marketing guy. I'm not in the beverage industry," he said, and the Sharks knew it was time to go for blood. "You should never have ever told me that you do not know that business. I'm out," said Daymond John.

WalletPop's Jason Cochran caught up with Dan Mackey for our popular AfterShark series:

At the annual meeting of the numismatic world this week attendees have had the opportunity to examine some examples of counterfeit coins from China that are reportedly flooding into the U.S. market. Five key organizations in the field have cooperatively issued a warning to collectors about these fakes.

These coins reportedly appear frequently on online auction sites and at flea markets, pitched primarily to buyers who are not familiar with coin collecting and fraud detection.

One magazine estimates that more than 1 million have been sold in the U.S. already. While the Hobby Protection Act allows manufacturers to create copies of coins, it requires that the word COPY or REPLICA be clearly marked on them. The coins in question carry no such mark.

Just like the Great Depression shaped the financial mindset of our grandparents and great grand-parents, so the Great Recession right now is doing a similar thing to teens and twentysomethings.

They don't trust banks, don't plan to invest in the stock market, they don't even want to get insurance. Microsoft funded a study done by KRC Research that surveyed 500 "Milennials" ages 18 to 29 about their take on personal finance.

Their trust in the U.S. government and the financial markets are shot but unlike their parents, who usually have some experience with investing in stocks, mutual funds and retirement plans, this younger generation doesn't want to touch those with a 10-foot pole.

Having a good business idea isn't enough to make money. You also need the means to execute it. Last night, inventor Lisa Lloyd showed up on ABC's Shark Tank a nervous wreck: sleepless, mortgaged to the brink of disaster, and unable to meet the demands of her business without some quick capital. Banks were of no use. She needed the investment, and the know-how, that comes from the Sharks.

She got it. Or at least, she got the promise of it, and today, she looks a lot happier to know that she won't have to shoulder the burden of the day-to-day operations of her business for much longer. Barbara Corcoran and Daymond John promised to make her "filthy rich" by taking over the back-office demands of her manufacturing, and soon she can go back to what she does best: inventing.

For our AfterShark series, WalletPop's Jason Cochran snagged Lloyd for her first post-show interview on the morning after her big Hail Mary pass. She tells us where her invention stands now, and she hints that although some people may have brilliant ideas, not all of them are cut out to make dreams come true without help.



Read our recap of the entire episode by clicking here, and to watch all of our AfterShark video interviews, including chat with all five Sharks, head over to our AfterShark home page at www.walletpop.com/after-shark-tank.

Today, we wrap up our four-part audience with the Sharks of ABC's Shark Tank, which airs tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern.

When WalletPop's Jason Cochran dares to ask the Sharks if they secretly collude to trick entrepreneurs into devaluing their own businesses, Barbara has some pointed words about it. Also, is it really worth a multi-millionaire's time to use Twitter? And guess who just had Bono out to the house?

We've talked to all five Sharks. You can catch up on our video interviews with them, and with entrepreneurs from the show, at our AfterShark Page: www.walletpop.com/after-shark-tank.




Here's part one of our interview series:



Part two of our series, in which the Sharks explain why you need them to make money fast:


Part three, in which Barbara Corcoran talks about the art of self-promotion (and her colleagues' "trophy wives"):

Can't get enough of ABC's new series Shark Tank? Then dive deeper.

WalletPop's Editor-at-Large, Jason Cochran, dared to risk life and limb to hang with the Sharks. Instead of seeking an audience with the self-made multimillionaires to beg them for money, as budding businessmen do every Tuesday night on the TV show, he went into the room to grill them just for our popular AfterShark series (click here for lots of video interviews with the people on it). They jawed for so long, and he got so much good stuff out of them, that we had to break the conversation into four parts -- to keep you on the hook, so to speak.

In the first segment of his audience with the Sharks, Robert Herjavec, Barbara Corcoran and Kevin Harrington dish on what happens behind the scenes of the show. You won't believe what being on prime-time TV has done for Barbara's love life.



We've talked to all five Sharks. You can catch up on our video interviews with everyone at our AfterShark Page: www.walletpop.com/after-shark-tank.

Along with cell phone plans, credit cards and gas prices, BillShrink.com is now helping consumers find deals on something many people don't shop around for -- savings accounts and certificates of deposits, or CDs.

Starting Tuesday, Sept. 29, BillShrink will find in seconds what it could take hours to do with a "painful calculation" by creating a spreadsheet to find banks offering the best rates, said Schwark Satyavolu, the company's president and co-founder.

"It is not something you can't do," Satyavolu said in a telephone interview. "It's just something ... most people don't have the time to do."