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The 30-year fixed rate mortgage declined to 6.78% on July 25, down from 7.22% on May 2, according to Freddie Mac data.
The first Fed rate cut is becoming more certain, and rates are expected to decline throughout the year.
Here’s what it may mean for homeowners and buyers.

Valentinrussanov | E+ | Getty Images

The Federal Reserve is poised to make the first interest rate cut in years this fall, which can influence mortgage rates to go down.
Even small cuts in rates could make a meaningful difference in what a homebuyer will pay. To that point, people in the market to buy a home have been eagerly waiting for the central bank to cut rates.

The Fed is meeting this week, but experts say it seems more likely the first rate cut will come in September. That would be the first rate cut since 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While there is a less than 6% chance of a rate cut in the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee meeting, according to the CME’s FedWatch measure of futures market pricing, there is a much greater likelihood of quarter-point reductions in September, November and December.
That along with further cuts in 2025 would bring the the Fed’s benchmark fed funds rate to below 4% by the end of next year, according to some experts.
While mortgage rates are fixed and mostly tied to Treasury yields and the economy, they are partly influenced by the Fed’s policy. Home loan rates have already started to come down, in part induced by the Fed putting the brakes on rate increases.
Here’s what homeowners and buyers need to know.

Rate cuts are already priced into the market

The first rate cut is almost entirely priced into financial markets already, especially bond markets, said Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm. In other words, mortgage rates aren’t going to change much once the Fed actually begins to cut back, she said.
“A lot of these rate cuts are already priced in,” she said.
The 30-year fixed rate mortgage declined to 6.78% on July 25, down from 7.22% on May 2, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed.

Refinance now or later?

“Refinancings are starting to tick up, it’s not a huge wave yet, but they are starting to pick up a little bit as rates start coming down,” Zhao said.
Refinance activity on existing home loans was up 15% from the previous week, reaching the highest level since August 2022, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. It was 37% higher than a year ago, MBA found.
Whether homeowners should refinance depends in part on their existing rate, said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic.
“There are people that originated when mortgages peaked at 8% in the fall of last year,” Hepp said. For those buyers, “there is some opportunity there.”
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To be “in the money,” or when it makes sense to refinance, homeowners need to see a notable drop in mortgage rates in order to benefit, experts say. The prevailing rate should be at least 50 basis points below your current rate. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
While that can be a good strategy, it’s not a “hard and fast rule,” said Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree.
Timing the refinance of your home will depend on factors like your monthly mortgage payment and if you can pay closing costs, he said: “There’s a lot of variability.” (When you refinance a mortgage, you are likely to incur closing costs, as well as an appraisal and title insurance; and the total price tag will depend on your area.)
“The saving has to outweigh your upfront costs,” Zhao explained.
Even if your existing mortgage has a high rate, you might want to consider waiting until the central bank is further along in its cuts, with the expectation that rates are to steadily decline throughout the year and into 2025, Zhao said.
If you are thinking about it, reach out to lenders and see if refinancing now or in the near future makes the most sense for you, Channel said.

Buy now or later?

While lower rates can come as a relief for cost-constrained homebuyers, the real effects of lower borrowing costs are still up in the air, according to Zhao.

For instance: If borrowing costs for home loans come down, there’s a chance more buyers will jump in the market. And if demand outpaces supply, prices might go up even more, she said. It can “offset the relief you get from mortgage rates.”
But what exactly will happen in the housing market “is up in the air” depending on how much mortgage rates decline in the latter half of the year and the level of supply, Channel said.
“Timing the market is basically impossible,” Channel said. “If you’re always waiting for perfect market conditions, you’re going to be waiting forever. Buy now only if it’s a good idea for you.”

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Vanguard, which built its reputation as a low-cost and investor-friendly brokerage firm, has seen criticism about its customer service in recent years.
The CEO pointed to scenario planning and digital onboarding as areas where artificial intelligence could be helpful.
The newcomer CEO has given no indication that he has plans for a major cultural shake-up at Vanguard, which was founded by index fund pioneer Jack Bogle.

Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

The new CEO at Vanguard said Monday that the asset management giant could lean on artificial intelligence as it looks to improve its customer service experience.
Vanguard, which built its reputation as a low-cost and investor-friendly brokerage firm, has seen criticism about its customer service in recent years. Difficulty in reaching a Vanguard representative on the phone is one common complaint seen in online forums.

CEO Salim Ramji told CNBC’s Bob Pisani on Monday that fixing the customer experience is “very high on my list of priorities” and that artificial intelligence looks like a promising avenue for help.
“A lot of the improvements that we’ve seen recently in some of the client experience has been due to applications of machine learning or instances of AI,” said Ramji, who officially took over the top role on July 8.

The CEO pointed to scenario planning and digital onboarding as areas where AI could be helpful.
“We have a whole series of live experiments and live pilots underway,” he said.
Ramji comes to Vanguard from rival BlackRock, making him the first outsider CEO for the roughly $9 trillion asset manager. The Malvern, Pennsylvania-based firm has been a key force in driving down the cost of investing since its founding in the 1970s. Vanguard is privately owned by its customers and generally launches new products and services at a slower rate than some of its public market peers.

The newcomer CEO has given no indication that he has plans for a major cultural shakeup at Vanguard, which was founded by index fund pioneer Jack Bogle. For example, Ramji has said he does not have plans to introduce a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which has been a huge success at BlackRock.
“I want to continue the sense of purpose and mission of the company,” Ramji said.

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With the price of bitcoin hovering around $70,000 again, experts have tax advice for new and seasoned crypto investors.
While future crypto policy and regulation is unclear, there are some key rules investors need to understand.
For example, investors need to assign basis, or original purchase prices, for each crypto wallet before 2025, experts say.

Former President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures while giving a keynote speech on the third day of the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee on July 27, 2024.
Jon Cherry | Getty Images News | Getty Images

With the price of bitcoin hovering around $70,000 again, experts have tax advice for new and seasoned crypto investors.
The price of bitcoin rose to $69,982.00 on Monday before dipping below $67,000, according to Coin Metrics. 

Although bitcoin is down from a record high above $73,000 in mid-March, the price is still up more than 50% year-to-date as investors weigh comments from Former President Donald Trump and this week’s Federal Reserve meetings.
The price of bitcoin fell to a two-month low in early July after the Fed’s June minutes indicated they weren’t yet ready to cut interest rates.

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“For too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said Saturday during a keynote at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.
“If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future,” Trump said.
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Meanwhile, investors are watching for signs of a possible Democratic crypto policy shift from Vice President Kamala Harris, who entered the presidential race last week after President Joe Biden dropped out. While Harris hasn’t outlined policy yet, some investors hope she’ll pivot from the crypto scrutiny led by Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
While future crypto policy and regulation are unclear, here are some key things to know about taxes, experts say.

How to calculate crypto taxes

When you trade one coin for another or sell it at a profit, it may be subject to capital gains or regular income taxes, depending on how long you owned the asset.
After holding crypto for more than one year, you’ll qualify for long-term capital gains of 0%, 15% or 20%, depending on taxable income. Higher earners may also owe an extra 3.8% levy, known as net investment income tax.

By comparison, short-term capital gains or regular income taxes apply to assets owned for one year or less.  
Your gain is the difference between your original purchase price, or “basis,” and the asset’s value when you sell or exchange it — and without establishing basis, the IRS assumes it’s zero, according to Adam Markowitz, an enrolled agent at Luminary Tax Advisors in Windermere, Florida.
With zero basis, you could wrongly report more capital gains to the Internal Revenue Service.
“The burden of proof is on the taxpayer to know what they paid,” which can be challenging for investors with multiple exchanges and hundreds of transactions, especially when they don’t know what counts as a sale, he explained.

New crypto reporting rules

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS in June released final guidance for digital asset brokers, which phases in mandatory yearly reporting.
Required yearly reporting will phase in starting in 2026, with digital currency brokers required to cover gross proceeds from sales in 2025 via Form 1099-DA. In 2027, brokers must include cost basis for certain digital asset sales for 2026. 
With limited past reporting on basis, crypto investors can still establish a “reasonable allocation” before Jan. 1, 2025, according to an IRS revenue procedure released in June.
“Even in the current year, in 2024, as you’re selling tokens, it may make sense to speak to a tax professional about how you can specifically identify or allocate cost basis to those sales,” said Andrew Gordon, tax attorney, certified public accountant and president of Gordon Law Group.  More

Post-pandemic, rush hour isn’t what it used to be.
As commuters settle into flexible working arrangements, a truncated workday has become the “new normal,” according to a recent report.
Some employees are wrestling with return-to-office mandates, studies show, and more admit to “coffee badging.”

Commuters sit in traffic on southbound Interstate 5 during the afternoon commute heading into downtown San Diego on March 12, 2024 in San Diego, California. 
Kevin Carter | Getty Images

Young professionals may be falling back in love with the nine-to-five aesthetic — known as “corpcore” — but few are logging the hours at the office to back it up.
Despite the renewed interest in work-appropriate attire (think a corporate take on quiet luxury: tailored suits or blazers and pencil skirts), the standard 40-hour workweek is dead, new research shows — at least when it comes to commuting.

As more commuters settle into flexible working arrangements, the traditional American 9-to-5 has shifted to 10-to-4, according to the 2023 Global Traffic Scorecard released in June by INRIX Inc., a traffic-data analysis firm. Its analysis shows fewer early morning trips and a higher volume of midday trips compared to pre-pandemic traffic patterns.  

The workday is getting shorter

Now, there is a “midday rush hour,” the INRIX report found, with almost as many trips to and from the office being made at noon as there are at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
“There is less of a morning commute, less of an evening commute and much more afternoon activity,” said Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst and author of the report. “This is more of the new normal.”

Commuters have also all but given up on public transportation. Ridership sank during the pandemic, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data shows, and never fully recovered.
The result is a surge in traffic congestion throughout the peak midday and evening hours, according to Pishue.

“Pre-Covid, the morning rush hour would be a peak and then the evening peak would be much larger,” he said, describing two apexes with a valley in between. “Now, there is no valley.”

‘Coffee badging’ is the worst of all worlds

“Employees have become accustomed to the flexibility of working from home and may only come to the office when absolutely necessary,” said David Satterwhite, CEO of Chronus, a software firm focused on improving employee engagement.
“That means they may jump out early to catch a train home, come in late, or pop in for one meeting and then leave,” Satterwhite added.
Also known as “coffee badging,” the habit of only going to work for a few hours a day has become widely accepted, or at least tolerated, other recent reports show.
More than half — 58% — of hybrid employees admitted to checking in at the office and then promptly checking out, according to a separate 2023 survey by Owl Labs, a company that makes videoconferencing devices.
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“We used to call it the jacket-on-the-back-of-the-chair syndrome,” said Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School.
Whether a company has a strict return-to-office mandate or some variation of a hybrid schedule, “organizations need to be clear about what the deal is,” she said, “and an individual employee can decide whether they want the deal or not.”
However, because most people say they don’t want to come into the office because of the commute, coffee badging is the least successful type of compromise, Gratton added. “That is the worst of all worlds, they are still doing the commute but not putting in the hours at the office.”

Productivity is suffering

In part, workers are wrestling with employee burnout and their level of commitment has taken a hit.
After mostly trending up for years, workplace engagement has flatlined. Now, only one-third of full- and part-time employees said they are engaged in their work and workplace, while roughly 50% are not engaged, which can also be seen in the rise of “quiet quitting.” The rest, another 16%, are actively disengaged, according to a 2023 Gallup poll released earlier this year.
Not engaged or actively disengaged employees account for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity nationwide, Gallup found.

These days, employees are more likely to consider work/life balance, flexible hours and mental health support over career progression, other reports also show. And fewer want to spend any more time at the office than they already do.
If the ability to work from home was taken away, 66% of workers would immediately start looking for a job that offered more flexibility, Owl Labs found — and a bulk of those employees, roughly 39%, would promptly quit.
“What we need to get to is a clearer description of how is it you are at your most productive, and that requires a senior team who are seeing this as an opportunity to redesign work and not simply responding to what happened during the pandemic,” Gratton said.

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The number of federal student loan borrowers with six-figure debts is on the rise.
“There are quite a number of people who owe the federal government over $2 million in federal student loans,” said Wayne Johnson, who served as the chief operating officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid from 2017 until 2019.

Damircudic | E+ | Getty Images

The number of federal student loan borrowers with six-figure debts is on the rise.
In the second quarter of 2024, 2.4 million borrowers carried a federal student loan balance between $100,000 and $200,000, up from 1.8 million people who owed that much during the same period in 2017, according to new data by the U.S. Department of Education.

Meanwhile, 1 million people had a federal student loan balance of more than $200,000, up from 600,000 individuals.
Wayne Johnson, who served as the chief operating officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid from 2017 until 2019, tells CNBC he saw some eye-popping balances during his time at the Education Department.
“There are quite a number of people who owe the federal government over $2 million in federal student loans,” Johnson said.
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In 2018, The Wall Street Journal profiled a doctor whose balance at the time topped $1 million.

The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Why more borrowers have big balances

“There are several factors that have contributed to the increase in the number of borrowers carrying six figures in student loan debt,” said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that helps borrowers navigate the repayment of their debt.
The biggest one, though, is the fact that higher education has become significantly more expensive over the decades, Mayotte said.
The annual sticker price for certain schools, after factoring in tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses, is now nearing $100,000. (With financial aid, families typically pay less.)

However, it’s graduate students who take on the largest federal student loan debts, experts say.
While undergraduate students face limits on how much they can borrow in federal student loans, graduate students do not. They can borrow as much as a program costs.
As a result of that government policy, schools don’t need to worry much about affordability as they set their prices, said Johnson, a Republican who is now running for Congress in Georgia.
“Almost every college looks at their graduate programs as their cash cows,” Johnson said.

Dentists with $300,000 student debt balances

Overall, more than 10% of graduate and professional students owe $100,000 or more in federal and private student loan debt, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. (For comparison, less than 1% of students borrow above that amount for bachelor’s degree programs.)
Graduates of dental programs owed an average of around $307,0000 in 2019-2020, Kantrowitz found, while veterinarians were about $170,000 in the red.

The large debts can be huge stressors on graduates.
Nearly 80% of those who owe between $130,000 and $139,000 report feeling a “high” or “very high” amount of stress from their debt, compared with around 25% among those with a balance under $10,000, according to data analyzed by Kantrowitz. He looked at the 2012 follow-up to the 2008 Baccalaureate and Beyond longitudinal study by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Parents saddled with student debt

In addition to graduate students, parents can also borrow unlimited amounts in Parent Plus loans, Johnson said.
Annual Parent Plus disbursements tripled between 2000 and 2016, to more than $15 billion from about $5 billion, the Century Foundation found in a 2022 report.
“Seeking to help their children find upward mobility through higher education, low-income and low-wealth parents taking out these loans risk making themselves downwardly mobile, a consequence no family should suffer in the name of college opportunity,” the foundation wrote.

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Home insurance premiums rose 21% last year, according to data from Policygenius.
Experts say a rise in severe weather largely contributed to the increase, but it’s hard to tell how insurers are factoring climate risk into the cost of policies.
Some insurers have pulled out of certain areas completely, making state-sanctioned options a necessity.

A view of flooded streets after 24 hours of continuous heavy rain over Fort Myers, Florida, United States on June 13, 2024.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Consumers preparing to renew their homeowners insurance policy may experience some unexpected sticker shock.
Between May 2022 and May 2023, home insurance prices rose an average of 21% at renewal time, according to Policygenius.

A rise in catastrophic severe weather events contributed to this jump, experts say, and the rate of price increases is not expected to slow. As insurers face higher costs, they pass those along to consumers in the form of pricier premiums.
However, insurers don’t share data on individual homeowners’ premiums and risks, so it’s difficult to calculate just how climate risk is factored into the price of policies.

“The levels of risk and the kinds of hazards that a property can be exposed to are massively changing,” said Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
“And right now there’s a lot of confusion, not just among the homeowners, but also among the insurers about how they should be pricing this actuarially,” he said.

‘Minimal’ data available from insurers

Though home insurance premiums jumped significantly in price last year, it isn’t a new phenomenon. To that point, between 2012 and 2021 the average premium rose from $1,034 to $1,411, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Some of the annual increases within that stretch of time were bigger than others, according to Kenneth Klein, a professor at California Western School of Law, adding that climate change creates the potential of economic “fat-tailed losses,” because storm damage isn’t spread evenly across all insured properties or evenly over time.
“For many insurance companies in the Gulf Coast area, if they economically survived Katrina, the next year was one of their most profitable years,” he said. “Because their premiums adjusted for Katrina, but there wasn’t a Katrina event. So that’s the challenge of insuring climate change.”
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Understanding how premiums will continue to rise in response to severe weather is hard to gauge, according to Martín.
“The data is pretty minimal,” Martín said. “Insurers don’t share how much they’re charging individual homeowners with the world, and there’s not a lot of reporting.”
Scott Shapiro, KPMG U.S. insurance sector leader, said the industry does gather this data on weather-related losses to inform policy premiums, but the detailed data isn’t publicly accessible.
“This data is crucial for rate making and filings,” Shapiro said. “A key challenge is the increasing exposure to weather-related risks and the uncertainty of whether historical losses accurately predict future losses.”

Insurers are pulling back in high-risk areas

The cost of home insurance might be rising, but for some in areas at risk of flood or fire, homeowners may have few options.
In May 2023, for example, State Farm stopped accepting new applications for California policies. Allstate announced in November 2022 that it would pause new home, condo and commercial policies in the state.
Insurance companies “are not in the business of giving you money just because you need it, and they are not in the business of doing the right thing just because it feels like the right thing,” Klein said. “They are businesses that are trying within a set of laws and regulations to make a profit.”
Fewer and pricier insurance options can prove to be a significant barrier to homeownership, experts say, as most mortgages require insurance.

Florida’s legislature created Citizens’ Property Insurance in 2002 as an option for Floridians who couldn’t find home insurance in the private market. California’s FAIR plan was established as a statute in the state’s insurance code to provide fire coverage unavailable in the traditional market, though it’s not a state or public agency. 
Though state-run programs might serve as a last resort, they don’t always provide the same quality of coverage that a private insurer might offer.
“They sometimes are not built on the same actuarial principles as private insurance company would build them,” Klein said. “And as a consequence, it’s problematic. It’s often not good coverage.”
Those feeling the pain of rising premiums the most are existing homeowners, Martín said.
“They’re feeling it, because they see what they’re paying when they first bought the house, and now they see what they’re paying,” he said. “And it’s increasing.”

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Richard Behar’s new biography, “Madoff: The Final Word,” takes readers into the fraudster’s final years in prison, and all that came before.
Madoff saw a psychologist while he was in prison, and listened to NPR in the mornings.
After running a Ponzi scheme for decades, Madoff found that new life was somewhat of a relief, Behar writes.

Richard Behar
Courtesy: Lizzie Cohen

You probably haven’t heard Bernie Madoff’s name in awhile, but that doesn’t mean the infamous fraudster’s story is over, or the pain he inflicted.
Irving Picard, an 83-old court-appointed trustee, still spends his days trying to claw back money from the those who benefitted from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and to reduce the staggering losses of others.

More than 100 legal battles over the greatest known fraud in history still rage on.
Richard Behar, who has just published a new biography, “Madoff: The Final Word,” is also still trying to understand how Madoff’s mind worked. What allows a person to rip off Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and went on to become a main chronicler of it? Or to sit with his wife, Ruth, in a theater and enjoy a movie while knowing that he’s erased the life savings of thousands of people all over the world?
Those questions haunted Behar — who tells CNBC he has long been fascinated by con-artists. So long after most other reporters had turned their attention elsewhere, he reached out to Madoff while the financial criminal served out his 150-year prison sentence in North Carolina.

Arrows pointing outwards

Richard Behar’s book ‘Madoff: The Final Word.’

Behar started by sending his condolences to Madoff, whose son, Mark, had just died by suicide in Dec. 2010, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.
Shortly after, an email subject line popped up in Behar’s inbox: “Inmate: MADOFF, BERNARD L.” That message was the start to a decade-long relationship between the two men, including roughly 50 phone conversations, hundreds of emails and three in-person visits. When Madoff died in April 2021, Behar was still writing the biography. Madoff often complained to Behar that he was taking too long on the book.

“He once joked that he’d be dead when it came out, which of course turned out to be true, although I never planned it that way,” Behar said.
CNBC interviewed Behar, an award-winning journalist and contributing editor of investigations at Forbes, over email this month. (The conversation has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.)

‘He never asked me one personal question’

Annie Nova: You write that you’re an investigative reporter with “a special fondness for scammers.” Why do you think that is?
Richard Behar: I’ve always been mesmerized by how the brains of scammers work. I’m especially intrigued, maybe obsessed, with scammers who steal from people who are very close to them — like Madoff did.
A scamster who I visited in prison in the 1990s did something similar. Until Bernie’s arrest, this guy ran the lengthiest known Ponzi scheme ever, for 11 years. He was orphaned and raised by an aunt and uncle, and yet financially devoured them, as well as his cousins, his wife’s parents, his best friend — even a nun who he charmed with his alleged faith in god. I wasn’t raised by my biological parents either, and spent my childhood in foster homes. I couldn’t pretend to imagine doing that to people who stepped up to care for me, but it’s endlessly fascinating to me. Maybe that’s where that fondness for scammers is rooted.

Bernard Madoff arrives at Manhattan Federal court on March 12, 2009 in New York City.
Stephen Chernin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

AN: Did Madoff take any interest in your life?
RB: Through a nearly decade-long relationship, he never asked me one personal question. That was mind-boggling. I’d sometimes give him openings, like telling him I grew up in a town not far from his hometown — with a similar but poorer Jewish subculture — but he said nothing. He couldn’t care less. I asked a psychologist about this, and she theorized that Bernie was such a malignant narcissist that he couldn’t “hold my reality, he could only hold his own.” I couldn’t be a three-dimensional human being to him, because if he can imagine that, he’d have to imagine the school teacher who has lost a pension.
AN: What was the most remorse you saw him show over what he’d done?
RB: I once asked if he could ever forgive himself for the Ponzi itself, and he said “No, never.” He insisted he felt great remorse for those who he stole from. But I never totally felt it. Never a tear. I asked why he didn’t cry at his sentencing, and he snapped: “Of course I didn’t cry; I was cried out.”

‘Prison was a great relief for him’

AN: How did Madoff say life in prison changed him?
RB: He never talked about it. He once described himself as feeling numb. I said, “I can’t imagine what it would be like.” He replied, “You don’t want to know, you don’t want to know.”
In some ways, I think being in prison was a great relief for him. Running a half-century Ponzi has got to be exhausting. In prison, he’d typically wake up in his cell at around 4 a.m., make coffee in bed with an instant hot water machine, then read, or listen to NPR until breakfast. He worked in the kitchen, then the laundry room and then oversaw the inmates’ computer room.
That last job cracked me up because he told me he could barely turn a computer on in his office, which should have been a red flag to everyone at the company that he wasn’t actually trading stocks.
AN: You write that he was seeing a therapist in prison. Do we know often this was, or for how long it lasted? Did it seem to be helping him?
RB: He ended one phone chat abruptly because he had to get to one of his weekly appointments with his psychologist. When he called me afterwards, I asked how it went. He laughed and said it was helpful, that she was a “terrific lady” and that he thinks he should have done therapy years before. But even if the sessions were helpful, he said he never found the answers he sought about why he did the fraud and why he hurt so many people.

NEW YORK – MARCH 12: Financier Bernard Madoff passes the gathered press as he arrives at Manhattan Federal court on March 12, 2009 in New York City. Madoff was expected to plead guilty to all 11 felony charges brought by prosecutors on financial misdoings, and could end up with a sentence of 150 years in prison. 
Chris Hondros | Getty Images

He was disturbed by press reports that called him a sociopath. He said he asked his therapist, “Am I a sociopath? A lot of clients were friends and family — how could I do this?” Bernie claims that she told him that people have the ability to compartmentalize, like mobsters that kill and then go home and hold their kids.
You just put it out of your mind. I asked if she came up with a diagnosis. He said, no, just a compartmentalizer. Maybe she told him that to make him feel better since he wasn’t ever getting out.
AN: For so many years, it sounded like Madoff was just waiting to be caught. Is that right? Did he always know he wouldn’t be able to get away with this? What was living in that suspended state like for him?
RB: Bernie said he was under constant stress over the Ponzi, and would talk out loud to himself sometimes in the office, because of the pressure. One of his biggest outlets for relieving the stress was sitting in dark theaters with his wife Ruth, he said, watching movies twice a week. He also said he deluded himself into thinking some “miracle” would come along to bail him out of the Ponzi, but that he knew for at least the last decade before his arrest that he’d never get out from under it.

The only time he truly relaxed, he said, was on weekends when he was out on his yacht. I interviewed a former FBI behavioral analysis expert who suggested Bernie felt safe on the boat because he could see 360 degrees around him, all the way to the horizon, so he’d have a lot of forewarning that a threat was coming.

‘Not a single investor’ had complained to the SEC

AN: You paint a really interesting portrait of the figure of Irving Picard, an 83-year-old court-appointed trustee, who has spent years trying to get money back for Madoff’s investors. Has this been Picard’s only job over the years? Why has he made this his life mission?
RB: Picard rarely talks with the press. I was just chatting with John Moscow, a former chief white-collar crimes prosecutor for the Manhattan DA’s office who worked on some Madoff cases for the trustee. He said: “Irving is a very faithful public servant.” He’s laser focused on his task. John’s words were: “He’s not manic about it, but he’s very close.”

In my book, I quote a former federal prosecutor saying that you can probe this case for 50 years and still not get to all the truths, but Picard isn’t interested in that. It’s been his only bankruptcy case since four days after Bernie’s arrest in 2008. He is ferocious towards net winners who won’t return funds, but he can be a soft teddy bear with those who don’t have the money for him to claw back. He may let them pay it over time, or he’ll take someone’s house but leave them a life interest in it.
AN: What do you think people get most wrong about Madoff?
RB: A lot of people who lost money get it wrong by blaming him entirely, rather than looking in the mirror and asking themselves how they could have put themselves in such danger. Madoff’s consistent and high returns were simply not possible. Even so, many net losers think the government owes them because the SEC didn’t capture Bernie. But that agency’s mandate has never been to protect people from stupid investment decisions.

Financier Bernard Madoff arrives at Manhattan Federal court on March 12, 2009 in New York City. Madoff is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on 11 felony counts which under federal law can result in a sentence of about 150 years. (Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
Stephen Chernin | Getty Images

I mentioned to you that I went to a prison back in the ’90s to visit the guy who had the longest-running Ponzi prior to Madoff’s arrest. Just like Bernie, that swindler could not have done it without a big bank’s complicity. In that case — an 11-year-long Ponzi — an investor reached out to the SEC to complain that he’d lost money even though he’d been guaranteed a preposterous 20-25% return. The scamster was arrested the following day.
In Bernie’s case, not a single investor over the half-century of his fraud contacted the SEC. They were too busy splashing around in the gravy. More

Coca-Cola beverages are shown on April 30, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. 
Scott Olson | Getty Images

The U.S. stock market has been volatile as of late, as traders grapple with earnings season and the upcoming elections, but dividend-paying stocks may help investors smooth out the ride in their portfolios.
Investors seeking solid dividend payers can rely on top-ranked Wall Street analysts, who make recommendations after thoroughly analyzing a company’s ability to generate solid financials and deliver strong returns.

Here are three attractive dividend stocks, according to Wall Street’s top pros on TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.
Western Midstream Partners
This week, we will first look at a limited partnership, Western Midstream Partners (WES). The company owns and operates midstream assets in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
It is worth noting that for Q1 2024, WES increased its base distribution by 52% compared to the prior quarter to $0.8750 per unit. WES offers a high dividend yield of 8.8%.
Recently, Mizuho analyst Gabriel Moreen increased his price target for WES to $45 from $39 and reaffirmed a buy rating, saying that the stock is the second-best performing name in his coverage on the basis of the year-to-date rally: Shares are up 36% in 2024.
Moreen thinks that there is scope for further moderate distribution hikes by WES over his forecast period, which represents a catalyst for investors keen on this high-yield stock. “Yield is even more of a differentiator given WES’ MLP structure that optimizes the tax benefits of a higher yield,” the analyst said.

Moreen also highlighted the company’s solid Q1 results and revised outlook. He highlighted the company’s ability to support its higher distributions, thanks to an investment-grade balance sheet, modest capital expenditure requirements and constructive contracts that offer significant visibility into continued cash payout.
Moreen ranks No. 90 among more than 8,900 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 81% of the time, delivering an average return of 12.8%. (See Western Midstream Financials on TipRanks)  
Diamondback Energy
We move to another energy player, Diamondback Energy (FANG). The company is focused on the acquisition, development and exploration of onshore oil and natural gas reserves in the Permian Basin in West Texas. FANG has been in the news for its proposed acquisition of Endeavor Energy, which is expected to strengthen its position in the Permian Basin.  
For the first quarter, the company paid a base cash dividend of 90 cents per share and a variable cash dividend of $1.07 per share to its shareholders. Moreover, it repurchased 279,266 shares for $42 million.
Ahead of the company’s second-quarter results, RBC Capital analyst Scott Hanold reiterated a buy rating on FANG stock with a price target of $220.
The analyst thinks that FANG’s Q2 production gained from faster cycle times and expects 90 well completions, an improvement from his prior forecast of 80 wells. However, the analyst lowered his Q2 2024 EPS and cash flow per share estimates to reflect final commodity price realizations and other adjustments.
Hanold expects Q2 2024 shareholder returns to comprise a fixed dividend of 90 cents a share and a variable dividend of $1.25 per share, with no stock buybacks. He added, “We believe FANG shares should outperform its peer group over the next 12 months.”
Hanold ranks No. 11 among more than 8,900 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 70% of the time, delivering an average return of 27.6%. (See Diamondback Energy Options Activity on TipRanks)  
Coca-Cola
This week’s third pick is beverage giant Coca-Cola (KO), which recently announced better-than-anticipated second-quarter results, reflecting strong demand for its products. The company also increased its full-year organic revenue growth and comparable earnings outlook.
Earlier this year, KO hiked its quarterly dividend by about 5.4% to 48.5 cents per share, marking the 62nd year of consecutive dividend hikes. KO offers a dividend yield of about 2.9%.
In reaction to the upbeat Q2 results, RBC Capital analyst Nik Modi reaffirmed a buy rating on Coca-Cola stock and raised the price target to $68 from $65.
Modi noted the company’s better-than-projected global case volumes, including double-digit growth in markets like the Philippines and India. He also highlighted the improvement in KO’s gross margin and earnings strength.
Despite pressures in the low-income consumer group in the developed markets and a slowdown in the away-from-home channel, the analyst remains bullish on the company’s prospects. “We still believe KO’s fundamentals are strong and the company has the momentum and flexibility to deliver against its targets for the year,” said Modi. 
Modi ranks No. 858 among more than 8,900 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 57% of the time, delivering an average return of 6.1%. (See Coca-Cola Insider Trading on TipRanks)  More