With the Federal Reserve cutting rates six times since September, the days of tidily earning 5% on your cash appear to be a thing of the past. Since last June, yields on online savings accounts at HSBC and Emigrant Direct have dropped from just over 5% (among the highest yields at the time) to 3.55% and 3.3%, respectively. The returns on high-yield savings and money-market accounts are even more meager — averaging just 2.64%, according to Bankrate.com.

But there's a small segment of the banking world that is bucking this low-yield trend. Some little-known community banks and credit unions are offering accounts that carry yields as high as 6.26%. Better yet, these so-called reward checking accounts (they're also referred to as maximum earnings accounts) have no monthly fees, and deposits are insured by the FDIC or its credit union counterpart, the NCUA. In order to earn these higher annual returns, however, account holders must meet certain criteria each month, such as paying bills and banking online, using direct deposit and making a set number of debit card transactions.

These banks aren't just being generous — reward checking and maximum earning accounts are one way that the smaller banks are trying to weather the current economic downturn, explains Aaron McPherson, a practice director at Financial Insights, a financial services market researcher. Not only does the bank attract new deposits at a time when many consumers are draining their accounts to settle debts, but it

Ten ways to crash-proof your investments

Everybody's a genius in a bull market, the old saying goes. But a bear market creates fear, uncertainty and costly mistakes.

The conventional definition of a bear market is a decline in stock prices of 20% or more, lasting at least two months. As markets have become more diverse, experts have developed other measures, too. Whether or not Wall Street is in a bear market, every investor can have his or her personal bear too. Your personal bear market is an unbearable price fall in the value of your nest egg.

You can experience two types of bear markets, temporary and permanent. Markets tend to go up and down and then back up. In a temporary bear market, you lose 20% or more but eventually recover. In a permanent bear market, you lose 20% or more and you never get it back. All the historical evidence I've seen indicates that a properly diversified portfolio has never suffered a permanent bear market. Unfortunately, some common investor behaviors can easily turn temporary losses into permanent ones.

Here are 10 ways to avoid permanent losses and crash-proof your portfolio:

1. Diversify among many stocks

If all your money is in Washington Mutual (WM) shares, you're hurting because of the sub-prime mortgage

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Visa Inc. raised $17.9 billion late Tuesday to complete the largest initial public offering in U.S. history and help prop up the wobbly financial services industry.

The world's largest processor of credit and debit cards sold 406 million shares at $44 apiece to easily eclipse the previous U.S. record IPO of $10.6 billion set by AT&T Wireless eight years ago.

The IPO price topped the range of $37 to $42 per share that Visa set three weeks ago just before its executives began meeting with institutional investors and analysts to drum up interest.

If investment bankers exercise an option on another 40.6 million shares, Visa's IPO will end up raising $19.7 billion before expenses.

Visa shares, trading on under the "V" ticker symbol, are scheduled to begin trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. The San Francisco-based company will debut with a market value of about $36 billion.

More than $10 billion of the IPO proceeds are being used to buy back some of the shares owned by the banks that have helped build Visa during the past 50 years.

The money is expected to help banks strengthen their balance sheets as they write off billions of dollars in