Rajat K. Gupta leaving court on Wednesday.

Rajat Gupta was rich by almost any standard. He just wasnt rich compared with many of the people who surrounded him. He knew it, and he didnt seem to like it.

More than a few of his friends and colleagues had tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. They included his fellow board members at Goldman Sachs, the alumni of McKinsey Company a firm that Mr. Gupta ran and that paid him a few millions of dollars a year who then made fortunes on Wall Street and, perhaps most important, his friend Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge-fund manager sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading. Mr. Gupta, who was indicted Wednesday for passing along corporate secrets to Mr. Rajaratnam, has proclaimed his innocence.

What seems beyond doubt, however, is that he was envious of the wealth that his peers were amassing. In that way, Mr. Gupta is a symbol of a different kind of income inequality from the one at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests, where demonstrators proclaim themselves part of the other 99 percent and criticize the top 1 percent of earners.

Mr.

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Do you have a question about consumer credit? You may find an immediate answer by using the search engine. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, please fill out the form, being as specific as possible.

Please note: The Ask Experian team cannot respond to each question individually. However, if your question is of interest to a wide audience of consumers, the Experian team will include it in a future column.

I have been applying for work at employment agencies. They want my permission to conduct a credit check. My concern is that I was told in the past that if too many people are doing credit checks on me, it signifies a problem and can reduce my credit scores. Is that true?

Checking your credit history for employment purposes will not affect your credit scores.

When your credit report is requested for employment purposes it generates an inquiry. However, that inquiry is shown only to you on your personal credit report.

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If you have debt over $20,000 and the email I wrote seemed to be written for you, submit your name and email here.

I’ll provide you additional free information that I hope will help you choose the right option for yourself.

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A simple fact, people need somewhere to live. With the extreme slump in both single-family homes and high-rise condo sales, comes an increase in both the occupancy rates and rents in Chicagoland suburban apartment buildings.

At least one group, landlords, are benefitting from the housing slowdown. According to an article by Alby Gallun for www.chicagorealestatedaily.com , suburban occupancy rate hit 93.9% in the second quarter of this year, up from 93.6% in the first quarter and 93.0% a year earlier. In a report from Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago-based consulting firm, this is the highest suburban occupancy rate in almost four years.

The median suburban net rent stands at $1.18 a square foot, up 1.7% from the first quarter and 5.2% from last year. Rents are at all-time highs and have risen over 11% since bottoming out two years ago, the report shows.

Appraisal Research Vice-President Ron DeVries, opines that tenants in their 20s and 30s “also prefer the flexibility of renting, which allows them to move quickly if they get a new job somewhere else. T

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Whats the point – you might wonder – of asking for approval, if you are not going to brook refusal, and keep asking until you get the answer you want?

The implacable internal logic of the European Unions instinct for self-preservation has thrown up yet another victim – the Slovakian government this time.

Opposition parliamentarians objected to bailing out fellow EU economies which are at the same time massively richer and more indebted than Slovakia, and voted down approval for enhancing the blocs rescue fund.

But it goes without saying that the political drama in Bratislava will not disrupt enhancements to the European Financial Stabilty Fund for long.

The Slovak parliament is likely to hold a second vote later this week, and is already being chivvied to give the right answer by the quizmasters – presidents of the European Commission and European Council, Barroso and van Rompuy.

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