Trust

TOKYO -- When the $240,000 retirement payout arrived, these were the places to invest it: a savings account at 2.2 percent interest and a stock market priced at more than triple the world norm.That was June 1988, a year and a half before the burst of Japan's "bubble economy."Four years later -- and 32 months into postwar Japan's worst bear market -- a retiree who put 60 percent into savings and 40 percent into stocks has seen his $240,000 lump sum -- earned in 33 years of six-day weeks -- shrink to just over $192,000.

When Catholic families send their children down the aisle of the church for their first holy communions, the girls are dressed in white and crowned with wreaths of flowers or tiny veils. Their cheeks are flushed with the heat of the church in May. The boys squirm in their suits and their shirttails will be out soon. But they, too, look as if they have been kissed by angels.The palms of the children are pressed together in prayerfulness, but their eyes are wide at the pageantry of the day. The hearts of the parents are comforted: They are entrusting their children to God, his church and God's representatives here on Earth, the priests.

Washington. -- Whitewater began as a routine, if disquieting, peek into a presidential candidate's personal finances. But it has become something else.Whitewater has evolved -- and not just in the eyes of Republican opponents and snoopy reporters -- into a symbolic word for something that has always troubled a sizable segment of the voting public about Bill Clinton.It's as basic as this: Can his word be trusted?"This always was, is and will be Bill Clinton's Achilles heel," said Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientist.

Four Maryland schools will receive $6.5 million from the Hodson Trust early next month, officials announced yesterday. The Johns Hopkins University, Hood College, Washington College and St. John's College will each receive $1.625 million from the trust, which was established in 1920 and has donated money annually to the four schools ever since. In total, the institutions have received almost $155 million. The schools will use the money for various projects, including research, scholarships and construction.

Porter Hayden Co., which sold and installed asbestos insulation, was given final approval yesterday to create a trust to pay claims from tens of thousands of people who said they were sickened by asbestos products, the Baltimore company's law firm said yesterday. The asbestos trust is part of a reorganization plan that essentially says the trust will own Porter Hayden, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since 2002. Numerous bankruptcy cases involving companies involved in asbestos products have been settled in similar fashion.

A suburban Philadelphia real estate investment trust said yesterday that it has agreed to buy the Anneslie Shopping Center, just north of the city-county line on York Road, and plans $1 million worth of renovations.Kranzco Realty Trust said it has a contract to pay $6.5 million for the 175,000-square-foot center, whose anchor tenants are Caldor, Rite-Aid and McCrory's.The center is the first Maryland acquisition for the trust, which went public last fall and now owns 26 properties, mostly strip shopping centers like Anneslie.

Trust funds created by one of the largest real estate developers in the Baltimore area have charged Maryland National Bank with breaching its fiduciary duty by wrongfully allowing, among other things, the developer's son-in-law to divert millions of dollars from the trusts.The five trusts, which were created by Ralph DeChiaro, part-owner of Towson Town Center and a variety of residential and commercial projects in Baltimore County, and their beneficiaries are seeking $175 million in two lawsuits filed earlier this week in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

DETROIT -- Auto-parts suppliers report that their relationships with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler Group are improving and they trust the automakers more than they did a year ago, according to a survey released yesterday. While that was the first group improvement by GM, Ford and Chrysler in the sixth annual survey by research firm Planning Perspectives Inc., the working relationship between the three Detroit automakers and their suppliers is still ranked as poor.

INVESTORS learned some painful lessons in the last few years, from the importance of diversification to the discovery of a host of conflicts of interest on Wall Street. Or did they? Tech stocks came roaring back into favor earlier this year, as did the volatile emerging-markets stock sector. And independent stock research firms - those that don't derive revenues from investment banking business - have failed to catch on. Investor complaints to the National Association of Securities Dealers ticked up again last year after declining steadily since the bursting of the Internet-stock bubble in 2000, and arbitration case filings surged 16 percent last year.

Q: I'm a 14-year-old girl who has a problem. I'm talking to several people, and I'm trying to choose which one I should stay with. I like all of them a lot. But I like one more than the others. But what if he is just playing with my mind? If he is, I'll be giving up several great guys who I know will treat me right. I don't know what to do. Please help.A: It doesn't make sense to go with someone you don't trust. So don't rush your decision. Take some time to see if you can trust the boy you like the most.