Laddering is a strategy for managing overlapping CD maturities so as to not incur needless and potentially expensive early withdrawal penalties. Investors would employ such a strategy as this for a good reason. Consider that many savers will find that they covet the more substantial certificate of deposit rates offered on the longer term from three to five year (and [...]

Land law represents the type of law discipline that pertains to the various inherent rights of individuals to utilize (or restrict others from) owned land. There are many jurisdictions of the world that employ the words real property or real estate to describe such privately, corporately, or government owned land. Land utilization agreements such as renting prove to be a [...]

Leases are contracts made between an owner, or lessor, and a user, or lesee, covering the utilization of an asset. Leases can pertain to business or real estate. There are a variety of different types of leases that vary with the property in question being leased. Tangible property and assets are leased under rental agreements. Intangible property leases are much [...]

A Lease-to-Own Purchase is a combination of a lease on a house with a purchase option on the home. This option is valid for a specific amount of time, typically for 3 years or less. The price for the purchase is agreed on in advance and is a part of the contract. These types of arrangements became far more common [...]

A Leasehold Estate relates to an official and legal interest that permits a company or individuals to assume temporary ownership of the land of another individual or company. They are able to use this land for business purposes, agricultural applications, or even as a dwelling. Property could include timber land, mineral land, oil land, farm land, or business and/or residence [...]

A Ledger is also often called a general ledger. It refers to a firm’s set of (numbered) accounts that it maintains for its corporate accounting records. With such a record, the firm has a full history of all its financial transactions it has entered into throughout the entire existence of the firm. In this master set of company books, the [...]

Legal tender proves to be official forms of payment that the nation’s government recognizes for paying either private or public debts or for meeting any number of financial obligations. In nearly all nations, national currency is the one and only legal tender. Creditors have no choice but to receive this currency for repaying of debts owed to them. It is [...]

The Lehman Brothers collapse occurred officially on September 15 of 2008 when the firm filed for bankruptcy. At the time it had $619 billion in debts and $639 billion in assets. This made it the biggest filing for bankruptcy in all of history. Its assets were massively higher than the ones that had preceded it in infamous collapses such as [...]

Lenders are individuals or more commonly institutions that loan out money. The person who receives this money is a borrower. A number of different kinds of lending organizations exist. These include commercial, mutual organizations, educational, hard money, and lenders of last resort. Commercial lenders are the most common of the traditional lenders. Commercial types are usually banks. Another kind of [...]

Lender of Last Resort refers to an official central financial institution which provides emergency loans to commercial and savings banks as well as other financial institutions which are suffering from extreme financial hardship or are believed to be nearing collapse. Generally such a lender turns out to be a national central bank. Within the U.S., it is the Federal Reserve [...]

Where business and finance are concerned, leverage pertains to the concept of using investment capital, revenue, or equity to multiply any gains or losses realized. Leverage can be affected in various ways. Among the most popular means of achieving it are through purchasing fixed assets, borrowing money, or utilizing derivatives. There are several important examples to the use of leverage. [...]

Levied taxes are taxes that are forcefully collected from an individual, business, or other entity. Among the many taxes most frequently collected these days are income taxes. These taxes could be said to be levied, since the law requires that an individual’s income tax is levied for the government by the company where they work. Three main types of tax [...]

Where a business is concerned, liabilities prove to be amounts of money that are owed by the company at any given point. These liabilities are displayed on the firm’s balance sheet. They are commonly listed as items payable, or simply as payables. There are two types of liabilities. These are longer term liabilities and shorter term liabilities. Long term liabilities [...]

Liability insurance is a commercial insurance product that protects businesses and other enterprises from accidents and injuries that occur on their premises. Accidents in a business can cause various types of injuries that create financial, physical, or psychological problems for customers. Business owners are ultimately at risk of law suits and claims from any individuals who deal with the business [...]

A lien is a claim on one individual’s property by another person or entity. The party that holds the lien is able to recover the property if a debtor will not follow through with making payments. There are also other circumstances in which liens would allow the lien holder to take the property. Mortgages on houses or buildings prove to [...]

A limited liability company is often referred to by its acronym LLC. These business setups combine the best in both worlds of proprietorships and corporations. They offer the sole proprietorship or partnerships’ advantages of pass through taxation. At the same time, an LLC provides the same limited liability for the owners which a corporation receives. With a limited liability company, [...]

The meaning of liquidation depends on the use of the word. In financial terms, there are three different definitions of it. In economics or finance it refers to a failed company. A company that is insolvent is unable to pay its bills when they are owed. Liquidation is the process of winding up the company. The operations of the company [...]

Liquidation Value represents the full value of a corporation’s complete range of physical assets if and when it declares bankruptcy or actually goes out of business. This value is compiled when every asset on the company books and balance sheet becomes tallied up. This value then includes real estate, equipment, factories, fixtures, and inventory. Those assets that are intangible would [...]

Liquidity refers to the point that a security or asset is able to be sold or bought in a given marketplace without interfering with the price of the asset. Good liquidity is demonstrated through a great amount of trading activity. Liquid assets prove to be the kinds that are simply and quickly able to be purchased and sold. Liquidity can [...]

Liquidity Preference refers to the additional premium which holders of wealth or investors will require in order to trade off cash and cash equivalents in exchange for those assets that are not so liquid. Among these might be government bonds, stocks, or real estate. It is the basis of a theory in economics known as the liquidity preference theory. The [...]

A Liquidity Trap refers to an unusual situation where the going interest rates prove to be low and the savings rates turn out to be high. This lends to ineffective monetary policy. When such a trap occurs, consumers will eschew bonds and instead opt for savings. The reason is that the consensus opinion believes that the prevailing interest rates will [...]

Living Wage refers to an income which would permit the people who earn them to be able to provide for sufficient food, shelter, and other important needs for their livelihood. In order for this wage to be sufficient to sustain an individual and/or family, it has to be high enough that the spending on housing does not exceed 30 percent [...]

Lloyds Banking Group represents the biggest financial services consortium in the United Kingdom. As a financial services provider that concentrates on business and retail clients, they count millions of customers throughout the country. They have a presence in practically every community of the U.K. Part of the impressive size and strength of Lloyds Banking Group centers on its major household [...]

The Loan Discount Rate refers to an interest rate which commercial banks and various other financial institutions pay on loans they take from the discount window of their regional branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. It can also pertain to the discounted cash flow or DCF analysis interest rate. This rate would set the current value of all future cash [...]

A loan modification proves to be a set of changes on the original terms and conditions of a mortgage loan agreement. These must be agreed to by both the borrower and the lender. The housing crisis of 2007 caused many American homeowners to be on the verge of foreclosure. The numbers of imminent and in process foreclosures increased dramatically. Loan [...]

The term loan servicing refers to the procedure of either a mortgage bank or servicing firm gathering up the regular principal and interest payments from the mortgage and loan borrowers. The amount of such service depends on the kind of loan in question and the particular terms that have been arranged between investors looking for such services and the servicing [...]

Loan Syndication refers to the procedure of getting a few different lenders involved in delivering a few different components of a loan. This activity typically happens in those situations where borrowers need to borrow a huge amount of capital. In these cases, the money required might be more than any one lender will feel comfortable providing or could be higher [...]

Loan to Cost Ratio, or LTC, proves to be a measurement utilized by finance companies in extending loans for commercial real estate projects. It is employed ultimately to make comparisons of the offered financing for a given building project versus the expenses of completing said project. With the LTC ratio, lenders of commercial real estate loans are able to decide [...]

The Loan to Value Ratio is commonly known by its acronym LTV. This loan to value ratio states the total value of the first mortgage against the full real estate property’s appraised value. The formula for figuring this ratio is simply the amount of the loan divided by the property value. It is expressed as a percent. So if a [...]

Local Money is money that is created, printed, issued, and traded by an individual community. Communities that are struggling to keep their economies going are in need of a way of boosting the local economic picture. In creating money that can only be utilized by individuals and businesses in their own local area, they attempt to address this problem. In [...]

LIBOR is a main global benchmark interest rate. It stands for London InterBank Offered Rate. This rate represents how much banks actually charge each other for loans based on one year, six months, three months, one month, and overnight timeframes. Banks all over the world use this benchmark rate. Reuters news service publishes this critical rate every day at 11 [...]

Long-Term Capital Management refers to an enormous hedge fund that had been created and led by several famed Wall Street investor traders and economists who were Nobel Prize winners. Because of its huge size and connectedness to many other systemically important financial institutions and markets, its demise nearly brought down the worldwide financial system back in 1998. It was the [...]

Loss Mitigation Program refers to a special vehicle which arose during the latter years of the global financial crisis and preceding subprime mortgage crisis. This happened because of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis which the American economy suffered from at that time. It started because of an enormous bursting of the housing prices bubble that caused a substantial rise in [...]

Loss to lease is a phrase that is used in real estate property leasing, particularly pertaining to apartment complexes or senior assisted living facilities. Loss to lease is also an accounting line in the books of rental properties and apartment complexes. In both cases, it refers to income on leases that is potentially lost through making incentive offers to prospective [...]

Ludwig von Mises turned out to be among the very last thinkers of the original epoch of the Austrian School of Economics. He obtained his law and economics doctorate late in the period of the Austrian School in 1906 at the University of Vienna. His writings and teaching had a tremendous impact on the young people of his day and [...]