Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross said today that the US in entering a huge commercial real estate crash. You thought the residential crash was bad, just wait.

In a Bloomberg article, Ross said:

"“All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine money managers participating in a government program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate -- the return that investors are demanding to buy a property -- are going up.”

There has been a lot of talk about a commercial crash for the past six months. Just a week ago, Capmark, one of the largest real estate lenders filed for Chapter 11. The banks are surely quaking in their shoes as they look into a possible tidal wave of commercial defaults.

Ross has been dubbed the King of Bankruptcy and likes buying distressed businesses. Recently, he was part of the investment group that purchased Corus Bankshares. Corus was known on BestCashCow for its very competitive CD rates.

There is a risk free rate. The absolute risk free rate is the Treasury rate, but for private individuals who put less than FDIC insured limits (currently $250,000) in a single account, the risk free rate is the rate on short-term CDs.

That's what you are going to get on your money, unless you want to take a risk.

Stanford Financial offered investors supposed risk-free returns with a rate well above the risk free rate so long as they put their money in CDs on some island in the Carribean. When the entire thing was exposed as a ponzi scheme earlier this year, investors were surprised.

The amazing thing is that there are still people who believe that they can outperform and dramatically outperform US CDs, but making dollar denominated investments in offshore CDs. I was amazed that over the last several days a group of people in Mexico are bombarding the web with the some CDs that are too good to be true (12% over 90 days, 15% over a year and 18% over 18 months, or something like that). Here is the link from one of these sites.

The internet, unfortunately, gives everybody in the world the ability to con people out of their money. Offshore CDs are nothing but ponzi schemes no matter how nice the offices, or the pictures on the website. I am bothered by how professional these sites look, and the likelihood that many will get sucked into this, in spite of how fresh the Stanford Financial experience should be. The allure of outsized returns is something that everybody wants.

The most bothersome thing about these offshore CDs is that Google is allowing them to proliferate and to advertise across their networks, in spite of how obvious it should be that they are ponzi schemes.

The Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service (CDARS) provides up $50,000,000 of FDIC insurance for depositors via its system of banks. It's worth looking into if you have a lot of money and are seeking the return and safety of certificates of deposit.

The registry, which is owned and operated by a private company called Promontory Interfinancial Network operates by helping banks distribute deposits to other participating banks that also provide FDIC insurance. Here's how it operates:

You find a bank that participates in the program.

Let's say for this example you have $5,000,000 you want to deposit.

1. You deposit this into the bank and sign the CDARS documents.
2. Your $5,000,000 deposit is broken into smaller amounts that are below FDIC limits and then sent to other CDARS participating banks. In this case, it might be broken into $90,000 chunks and sent to 50 banks. The fifty-first bank might receive $50,000. The amount is below the FDIC limit of $100,000 to allow for the growth in interest. Because the amount is below FDIC insurance limits ($250,000 if the CD expires before December 31, 2009, or $100,000 if it expires after), the full amount will be covered.
3. You'll receive one statement and one interest rate (the rate initially given by the original bank). The other banks agree to honor this rate when they take the deposit money.
4. At the end of the term, you'll go to the original bank where you can withdraw the full amount, renew a CD, or do something else with the money. Up to $50,000,000 can be insured this way.

I spoke with John Labarre, the CFO of Family Federal Savings in Fitchburg, MA and a member of CDARS. He told me that banks might charge a slightly lower rate on a Certificate of Deposit offered via CDARS to make up for the transaction fee that Promontory Interfinancial charges to use the network. Depending on the customer and their relationship with the bank they might waive the fee or take it out of the yield. He also told me that using CDARS is about convenience. Customers who want FDIC protection on a larger amount of money don't have to open accounts at multiple banks, all providing different rates and statements every month. CDARS consolidates all of this. He also told me that they have seen an increase in interest in CDARS in the past couple of months.

• Learn more about CDARS
• See participating CDARS banks