Filed under: Personal Finance , Lifestyle Geneen Roth was a successful author before she received what she now dubs “the call.” The call brought news that the financial adviser to whom she had entrusted her and her husband’s life savings was a fraud. They had been ripped off by Bernie Madoff — victims of his now-notorious Ponzi scheme. The initial horror of learning that her financial adviser was a fraud brought on a range of reactions — panic, terror, self-blame, rage.

Filed under: Economy , JP Morgan Chase , Investing Basics , Market News JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ), the country’s biggest bank, is reporting a $2 billion trading loss that occurred in the space of just six weeks. The loss reportedly involved the investments in “credit default swaps” — yes, those same complicated investments that played such a large role in the financial crisis.

Filed under: Investing A new study by J.D. Power and Associates released Thursday shows some surprising trends in customer satisfaction with full-service brokers.

Filed under: Technology , Media , Apple , Amazon.com Amazon.com ( AMZN ) turned heads last year with its economically priced tablet, but necks are apparently stiffening up these days. Tech tracker IDC is reporting that Amazon sold just 750,000 of its $199 Kindle Fire tablets during the first three months of the year, well off the 4.8 million units that it sold during last year’s fourth quarter. There are plenty of perfectly good explanations that account for part of the slide

Filed under: Currency , Features , Commodities A penny, on its face, is worth one cent. $0.01 U.S. dollars.