Armchair detectives rejoice! One of the most useful free tools has been launched for use by the professional and amateur alike to delve into strangers, friends and neighbors criminal histories. If you have ever suspected that the weird neighbor you have has committed some horrendous crime or is reminding you of “The Burbs”, there is a weapon that can be added to an arsenal of investigative or just plain snooping tools.

The creators of the website called PeopleFinders.com, which is a pay site, launched the new criminal investigative tool to the public called CriminalSearches.com. The site is still sporting the infamous BETA logo as most web launches do these days. The tag-line of the new site is, “Do you really know who people are?” After that you are encouraged to start scouring the database with the suspected’s first and last name.

After you first submission you can get more detailed with middle names, city, state, zipcode, county, year of birth or age range. With a quick glance you can see someones criminal offense or offenses with a legend that gives you an idea of the type of criminal they are. Once you get some hits you can view details to pull up offense dates, aliases, previous addresses and more.

Skipping over the individual search for criminal histories, you can also do a broader search for your entire neighborhood. This will produce a long list of offenders that are within just a few feet or miles of your house. You will be able to get addresses of their location, offenses, pictures and identifiable information such as ethnicity, hair color, height and more. Clicking on offense icons on the Google Map layout will take you to the detailed pages of each offender.

While this is a great tool for families with kids, single parents, school officials or just the concerned neighborhood watchdog, it can also open up abuse. It is stated in the terms and conditions of CriminalSearches.com that information cannot be used “(a) as a factor in establishing an individuals eligibility for personal credit or insurance, (b) as a factor in evaluating an individual for employment, (c) in connection with any personal business transaction with an individual, or (d) for any purpose for which one might use a “consumer report,” as defined in the FCRA. You must certify that you will comply with these Limits on Your Use of Our Site prior to accessing information on this Site.” This statement in the terms and conditions will most likely not keep employers, hiring agencies, apartment owners or any number of agencies from using this information to disqualify or scrutinize applicants. We did not experience any verification process or disclaimer of these rules until we dug into the terms and conditions.

Even with the highest standards of usage there is one more flaw that could wreak havoc on someone’s personal life if falsely accused. Accuracy of the information is not guaranteed and another person’s similar identity could be mistaken for someone else. It is stated on the website in the disclaimer section, “The content, information, documents, graphics and images published on the Site may contain inaccuracies, typographical errors or other errors. We make no commitment to update the Site.” It’s most likely enough to be ridiculed and flagged as a danger to society if the information is true but false information could be incredibly damaging to people that might be wonderful neighbors and co-workers.

It’s not as if this public information is anything new. The information is all available from multiple resources throughout the Internet and courthouses. The problem lies in the slew of websites that try to charge for the access to public information. With this new launch the information will be made freely available and more accessible to anyone regardless of their resourcefulness or contacts.

Just as stories appear in the news of employees getting fired because of their Facebook or MySpace pages, you just may see people getting fired for their unknown criminal histories. With the growth of the online dating industry this service could obviously do some good to alert someone that a potential date may not be that dream catch after-all. Families will be able to have more knowledge at their fingertips and understand the dangers in their neighborhood better. All types of relationships in life could be reevaluated if shocking information is found lurking in the piles of criminal records. How do you think this will work? Do the benefits outweigh the potential downsides?

By the time you get to this article you will have probably heard that the US government will bail out the two largest guarantors of the country’s housing mortgage debt, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was announced by US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. While the media rings the bells of alarm on how the sub-prime crisis only seems to be building into a bigger mess before it gets better other issues are ignored, forgotten or not even realized yet.

By briefly paying attention to the news anyone can see that the consumer price index is out of control, making it a public affair that inflation is rising at a record pace. In June of 2008 the Consumer Price Index surged 1.1 percent. The entire year’s inflation rate is currently at 5 percent which is the highest the U.S. has experienced in 26 years. The soaring costs of food and fuel are adding to the woes of Americans that are already facing a credit crunch due to the sub-prime crisis. But what is hiding on balance sheets, trading floors and in the big bank’s boardrooms is a list of problems that could easily spiral out of control beyond the sub-prime crisis.

While everyone understands that the sub-prime crisis was created by passing out loans to unqualified homeowners, most don’t think about the fact that commercial businesses received the same treatment. Foreclosures are forming suburban neighborhoods into ghost towns and those neighborhoods are needing less commercial property and services. Anything like office parks, movie theaters, fast food, strip malls, warehouses and parking garages are finding customers are drying up as the 7,000 foreclosures a day add up to more vacant homes. Ultimately this leads to an increase in commercial property defaults, vacancy and a lack of funding for new projects in the commercial property industry. Industry leaders like Bloomberg and Morgan Stanley are reporting drops could be 15 percent in 1 - 2 years in the commercial property industry.

Ignoring a potential crash of the commercial property market, American consumers still have a long list of secrets in their pile of bills and balance sheets. Forbes released information here, that in May 2008 consumer credit rose $7.78 billion to $2.57 trillion in total consumer credit debt. While home equity went belly up, consumers turned to credit cards to fund their lavish purchases which helps drive the U.S. economy. When comparing the number of $2.57 trillion in total consumer credit debt to worldwide economies it can become quite breathtaking and unsettling. The United Kingdom’s GDP is less than U.S. consumer credit debt totals and so are the GDP’s of Russia, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy and Canada. With Americans hurting and pulling back on paying their bills major credit card companies such as Bank of America, Capital One, Washington Mutual, Citigroup and American Express are bracing themselves for at least a 20 percent explosion in credit card defaults.

With crashes and debt pushing the breaking point of survival in the financial markets and consumer’s lives, the government is briskly picking up the pace of bailouts of financial institutions and consumer’s debt piles. You can see the bailouts in situations like Bear Stearns, IndyMac Bank and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Other bailouts are happening by sovereign funds like Abu Dhabi which forked over $7.5 billion to keep Citibank afloat. All of the bailouts eventually hurt the consumer. When Americans received their $600 tax rebates they paid for it in the next year’s taxes. Currently total credit in the U.S. has went from 150 percent of GDP to 340 percent. This is putting pressure on the value of the dollar as other investors, countries and funds lose trust in the sustainability of the dollar.

If the shell game could be extended for another 10 years some CEO’s, accountants and financial advisers would be thrilled but on November 15th 2007, FAS 157 was made effective for all financial statements for the following fiscal years. The new agreement requires that certain assets held by financial companies, including complex investments linked to mortgages, be marked to market. If there’s no market for those securities — that is, if buyers simply won’t bite — the required markdown could theoretically go all the way to zero. What FAS 157 will essentially do is to force insurance companies and financial institutions to reveals their rotten assets that they have been hiding in level three asset categories where there is a requirement to value them. Once the cat is out of the bag that these assets are worthless, breathtaking losses will be reported putting extreme pressures on the entire U.S. economy. What exactly is hiding in level three assets? These are the huge derivative positions, the private equity investments and enormous slices of the mortgage market. Banks don’t talk about them. The market doesn’t put a price on them.

If the market doesn’t put a price on level three assets, who exactly is putting a price on them? Accountants are given the privilege of guessing what the level three assets are worth and using a “mark to model” pricing method. Big financial institutions like Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merril Lynch and Goldman Sachs were able to pretend their level three assets were worth a great deal but the new FAS 157 regulations that shell game is all but over. In the 2008 fiscal year losses will have to reported when the level three assets are found to be all but worthless.

All of the potential falling dominoes mentioned have been quantifiable in certain ways and the losses can be predicted even if in the worse light in some way. The worldwide derivative markets are a completely different game in themselves. Derivatives are packaged neatly with sub-prime loans and tons of other financial vehicles at large institutions like Goldman Sachs, USB, J.P. Morgan, Bear Stearns, Citibank and HSBC. If the worldwide derivatives market collapses along with total housing wealth, the stock market, bond markets and the value of the dollar the U.S. economy will undoubtedly flirt with a depression.

Before you believe that the sub-prime recovery is around the corner and the economy is ready to turn around, be sure to remember all of the other pieces of the U.S. and world economies that still remain to be tested. One domino has fallen and continues to crash down taking the next in line with it to a level that many never predicted. Presidential candidates talk as if they have a solution with potential tax rebates like you just received in the mail. By the time you receive your next tax rebate you will probably notice the next domino taking it’s fall. Prepare now and ignore the chain reaction as it brings balance and integrity back to the world markets.