NEW YORK (AP) -- When Robert Willumstad said goodbye to Citigroup Inc. three years ago, he boldly declared he was leaving to run a major company. Now, at 62, he's making good on that promise -- at a floundering AIG during the most challenging climate of his four-decade career.

Wall Street has yet to be convinced that American International Group Inc. is headed for profitability anytime soon. Not only did the world's largest insurer get trampled when the credit markets seized up last year, but it also never quite recovered from then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's industry shake-up a few years ago.

But if AIG needs a clean-up, most industry watchers are saying -- tentatively -- that Willumstad is the man for the job. Trained by the master cost-cutter himself, Citigroup's ex-CEO Sanford Weill, Willumstad had a strong record at the world's biggest bank by assets.

"I consider myself a hands-on manager," he told investors on a conference call Monday.

He's also been on AIG's board since 2006, long enough to know the basics of what went wrong at the company during the last year.

Willumstad said he will conduct a review of AIG over the next two to three months. In that time he will meet with shareholders, ratings agencies, regulators, and AIG's noisiest stockholder: ex-CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, whom Willumstad said he telephoned Sunday night and plans to meet with this week,

Question: I’m 65 and retired. A financial planner has told me that by using “modern portfolio theory” he can create a retirement portfolio for me that doesn’t require any bonds. What do you think of this idea? - C.K., Ohio

Answer: I think this is one of those cases where you have to weigh what might be possible in theory against what is the more prudent course in the real world.

I have immense respect for modern portfolio theory - or MPT as it’s affectionately known in investment circles - which, among other things, deals with how to maximize your return for whatever level of risk you’re willing to accept.

One of the more interesting and useful insights of MPT is that by mixing and matching different types of securities, you can actually create a portfolio that, paradoxical though it may seem, is less volatile than its individual parts.

The key is choosing investments that don’t all move in synch with each other, so that while one is being hammered, another might be soaring to gains. The result is that the zigging and zagging of the various investments smooths out the ups and downs of your portfolio, while allowing it to generate attractive gains.

So I suppose it’s possible that an adviser using an “optimizer,” or a software package that incorporates modern portfolio theory techniques, could create a retirement portfolio designed to be as secure as the

NEW YORK (AP) -- Crude oil futures swung wildly on Monday, rising to a record and then tumbling as investors wrestled with whether they should put stock in Saudi Arabia's promise to boost production. Retail gas prices rose to a record $4.08 a gallon.

Light, sweet crude for July delivery fell 25 cents to settle at $134.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier soaring to a trading record of $139.89. Earlier, they dropped as low as $132.84.

With little in the way of news to explain oil's turnabout, analysts pointed to Saudi Arabia's weekend decision to boost production and to Tuesday's expiration of crude options, which are agreements to buy or sell futures at higher or lower prices.

Trading is often volatile in the days immediately preceding options expiration. "That could be the cause of some of the volatility today," said James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla.-based trading firms Liberty Trading Group and OptionSellers.com.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, told U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon over the weekend that it would boost oil output by 200,000 barrels a day, or by 2 percent, from June to July. In May, the kingdom raised production by 300,000 barrels a day.

A sense that the Saudis may be getting serious about boosting output could be growing among some