Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – American Bank Wells Fargo announced Monday that it plans to hire 500 employees in the Washington D.C. area over the next few months. The new hires would include tellers, managers and personal bankers.

The hiring is driven by Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia in December 2008 for $15 billion.

Wells Fargo also absorbed $74 billion of Wachovia’s losses. Before the Wells Fargo buy-in, Wachovia shares plummeted 80 percent following lawsuits filed against the bank for providing bank services to fraudulent telemarketers who cheated elderly investors of millions of dollars.

Wells Fargo plans to rebrand all of the Wachovia branches by fall. The concentration of new hires in the Washington area seeks to take advantage of the former Wachovia branches as having the highest deposits in the region where Wells Fargo has 130 branches.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Wachovia overtook Bank of America last fall with a $3 billion hike in deposits in the Washington metropolitan area. Wachovia secured 16.1 percent of the local market share, versus BofA’s 14.6 percent.

Another 1,000 workers would also be hired by Wells Fargo for its 404 offices in the Mid-Atlantic region, but the new employees would be used to beef up existing branches, not to open new ones.

The planned 1,500 new hires would be on top of 600 employees that Wells Fargo took in for the Mid-Atlantic region since the merger.

Industry observers said Wells Fargo’s hiring spree is an indicator of the recovery of the financial services sector from the global financial crisis and recession. In the last 12 months from December 2009 to December 2010, the sector reported a net loss of only 1,700 jobs compared to 6,500 jobs lost the previous year.

Aside from Wells Fargo, Cardinal Bank and Sandy Spring Bank are also boosting their manpower.

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D.C., Washington, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission joined legislators and stockholders who want to rein in exorbitant Wall Street bonuses, pinpointed as the prime incentive for large banks, brokerage companies and hedge funds to take excessive risks.

The excessive risk taking, in turn, is being blamed for the global financial crisis in 2008.

The SEC proposed to mandate companies to provide the regulator details of all bonuses paid out to staff as part of their incentive-based pay. The SEC would have the power to prohibit the award of excessive bonuses.

The regulator proposed the oversight over bonuses because of the 2008 global financial crisis, which highlighted the risks large banks place on the financial system and subsequently the national economy. The proposal is similar to regulations suggested by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and required by the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law.

The SEC proposal came right after Wall Street firms handed out performance incentives amounting to millions to their staff while majority of Americans are still reeling from the impact of the crisis.

Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan got a $9.05 million bonus in restricted stocks and Thomas Montag, head of BofA’s global banking and markets, got $14.3 million in restricted stocks and $900,000 in cash.

Other companies, in response to pressure from regulators on bonuses, increased instead base salaries. Goldman Sachs gave Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein a $12.6 million stock bonus and hiked his base salary to $2 million for 2011 from $600,000 last year.

Citigroup hiked CEO Vikram Pandit’s base pay to $1.75 million from $1 million.

The SEC proposal would give more teeth to shareholders’ opinion on compensation after the regulator allowed stockholders in January a nonbinding vote on salaries, bonuses and retirement packages.

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Actually, money market accounts and CD accounts often play rather different roles. Most commonly, money market accounts, or money market funds fill the need for temporary investment. This allows active investors, the ability to utilize the money market accounts as short-term investment tools. Investors and traders alike, that buy and sell securities, often need a location for assets, when they are not utilized. This is very important, as traders are able to keep their money working for them, albeit at rather low interest rates. The CD type investment is more commonly connected with the conservative investor seeking safety. Certificates of deposit are insured by the FDIC, up to a limit of $100,000 per account. The downside to bank investing is that CDs often require that you lock up your money for a period of time, most commonly one to two years. This makes them less likely than their money market counterparts. As a trade-off, CDs, usually pay a higher yield, but that’s not always the case.

The money market fund, as the name implies has the advantages of a mutual fund, in that it typically invests in several different banks, such as CDs, debt or bond obligations, or U.S. Treasury securities. This can result in a little bit higher return, when compared to its typical certificate of deposit, but does not offer the security that comes from FDIC protection. It’s important to note that money market accounts are often categorized as conservative investments, but they don’t share any government protection. Also, the big complaint associated with the bank investments is that much of the low return is lost to taxation and inflation. There are money market funds that offer tax-free returns. These tax-free advantages to money market funds are invested in municipal type bonds, which offer federal and tax-free advantages. They do not, however, typically pay is high as their taxable counterparts.

Traditionally, if you wanted to start a CD, you would go down to your local bank branch and set up a certificate of deposit. Since your local branch didn’t have much competition, you wouldn’t always get the best CD rates. The Internet has changed all of that. By doing a simple search online, you can find the high certificate of deposit rates, as well as attractive money market account rates. Sites like bankrate.com compare hundreds of the best CD rates throughout the nation, allowing you to find a much more attractive rate than you would have, even 10 years ago. In fact, there are many websites, just like Bank Rate that offer similar services, with the goal of finding you the best CD rates. It pays to check out a few of these services before finding an account to go with, as it is not at all uncommon to find better rates elsewhere. The important thing is to utilize the tools that are now available to us. In addition to finding the top account rate, FDIC protection is also important. Also, it’s always a good idea to go with a respected institution, as they are less likely to play games when it comes to withdrawing your funds.

If you’re looking for the best CD rates you can visit the site for a list of resources. For more on how money market funds work you can get more details on that as well. http://www.themoneyalert.com/savingsrates.html