I’m Reading…You can’t open a decent newspaper these days without coming across an article warning of impending deflation. (Yes, I know. How many people still open a decent newspaper?) Deflation, the Bizarro twin of inflation, has been a major concern for the United States since the financial crisis unfolded in 2008, and fears of a Japan-style [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance, Silicon Valley | Leave a Comment »
We’re now days away from the potential passage of significant financial reform, and a particular issue in the bill caught my eye. This excerpt is from Businessweek: Currently, a person must have a net worth of $1 million or an annual income of $200,000 if single or $300,000 if married (and filing jointly) to be [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance, Politics | Tagged: accredited investor, financial reform, angel investor, hedge funds, private equity | Leave a Comment »
Only a long time Quicken user will empathize with the trauma of having your Quicken data file fail to open. It happened to me this weekend, and after a couple days of experiments, I finally solved the problem. I’m posting this here on the blog because my Google searches on the topic turned up *nothing*, [...]
Filed under: Personal Finance, Software | Tagged: Intuit, Quicken | 8 Comments »
I’ve been encouraged by a few friends to spend a bit more time writing blog posts about finance and economics in the real world, as opposed to Farmville. (Hopefully the Zynga fans will allow me brief distraction with the real world.) An article last week in the Wall Street Journal on investing in gold reminded [...]
Filed under: Coins, Economics, Personal Finance | Tagged: Black Swan, Gold, US Dollar Bullish | 1 Comment »
Nice quick piece today in the Wall Street Journal about the proposed “Obama IRA”: WSJ: Breaking Down the Obama IRA It’s been a while since I’ve written a personal finance-related post, but this move towards fixing our retirement savings policies in the United States is the most promising since 2005. Here are the basics of [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance | 2 Comments »
Of all the unexpected outcomes that have come out of my blogging experiment here on WordPress, one of the most surprising has been the amount of attention I received for a post on why I like investing in timber. Why I love Timber as an Asset Class (November 10, 2006) Since then, from time to [...]
Filed under: Blogging, Economics, Personal Finance | Tagged: timber, PCL | Leave a Comment »
This is actually news from last week, but Google announced that they are repricing their employee stock options. John Batelle has fairly representative coverage on his blog. His post cites coverage from Adam Lashinsky at Fortune (a personal favorite as a journalist) with a fairly typical dig on the issue. Here’s the actual quote: One [...]
Filed under: Economics, Google, Personal Finance | 4 Comments »
I haven’t posted here to date on the Bernie Madoff scandal. No sense writing a huge amount on the topic at this point – it’s been well covered elsewhere. Let’s just summarize my feelings as: We will never see an end to Ponzi schemes, because they work. This exposes some of the flaws in the [...]
Filed under: Entertainment, Personal Finance | Tagged: Bernard Madoff | 1 Comment »
Caught this article on Seeking Alpha on Wednesday on the problems with using inverse ETFs. It reminded me of a topic that I’ve debated quite a bit with Elliot Shmukler over the past two years, and have been meaning to write about here on the blog. Since I haven’t commented much on personal finance topics [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance | 1 Comment »
With rates plummeting these days, many people are choosing to refinance. My family falls into that bucket, as we refinanced our home almost five years ago (2004) at the low, low rate of 4.5% for a 5/1 mortgage. (In case you are curious, we ended up getting a 5/1 because while 30-year rates were also [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance, Silicon Valley | 3 Comments »
There wsa a good article in today’s WSJ (requires subscription) describing the unique point we hit today in the bond market. Some durations of US Treasury bonds are now actually paying negative interest, -0.01% in some cases. Investors around the world are stuffing their money into a mattress — otherwise known as the U.S. Treasury-bond [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance | 2 Comments »
The price of gold has dropped below $700 an ounce, and that has a lot of people in the precious metals community puzzled. After all, isn’t gold supposed to be a safe haven in times of financial depression and panic? And if these aren’t times of financial depression and panic, what are? After all, every [...]
Filed under: Coins, Economics, Personal Finance | 10 Comments »
I have a special attachment to Saturday Night Live, since it debuted the same year I was born. This skit is genius, and summarizes the best financial advice you are going to get this year. It’s called: Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford Scene: a typical American kitchen. A husband (Steve Martin) and wife (Amy [...]
Filed under: Economics, Entertainment, Personal Finance | 1 Comment »
Interesting timing on a post from Lifehacker today: LifeHacker: How to Create Your Life Plan The article points to a blog post by Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. The post from Michael is extremely detailed about the system he’s used for the past five years to guide his life (not just career, but [...]
Filed under: Blogging, Personal Finance | Leave a Comment »
Vanguard had a funny announcement today that I had to comment on (from Vanguard.com): Vanguard announces share split for three exchange-traded funds June 04, 2008 – Vanguard announced today a two-for-one split of shares of Vanguard® Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO), and Vanguard Extended Market ETF (VXF). The conventional shares [...]
Filed under: Economics, Personal Finance | 4 Comments »
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Adam Nash Sunnyvale, CA |
