Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Monday, July 07, 2008 The ANWR Oil Debate  Lately I've seen a number of Web sites and emails exhorting Americans to press their government to explore for oil in a parcel of land in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeast corner of Alaska. The ANWR debate is nothing new and it was a hot topic back in the 1970's oil crisis. Proponents argue that this location may hold vast deposits of oil which could bring relief to the current shortages of oil and thus tame the high prices in the US and the rest of the world. Opponents include the natives and environmentalists who fear that such exploration and subsequent drilling could endanger this natural setting robbing it and its inhabitants (humans and animals) of its ecological diversity and wealth. I am not sure which side of the debate holds the better argument. Personally I don't like to see natural settings overrun by industrial concerns, i.e. the oil companies. What I do know is that Exxon-Mobil's earnings topped $40 billion in 2007 and surely they will easily exceed that figure this year. As people learn of these outlandish profits by the big oil while their savings are being squeezed, there is bound to be some backlash. That has manifested itself in the form of calls for special taxes on oil companies. Couple that with the inevitable emergence of fuel economics and alternative energy and it's not hard to guess that oil companies are worried about their prospects. To me, these pro- oil exploration campaigns are not about alleviating oil shortages, but more about distracting the public from the abuses of the oil companies. Many go even further to shift the spotlight away from the big oil and cast it on the liberals, democrats, or Arabs in a shameless effort to create public sympathy and support for the oil companies. One wonders who the real authors are. Oil companies already have millions of acres of land they can start exploring, but that's not enough. ANWR may hold large reserves of oil, but this campaign smells more like a land-grab and less like a sincere effort to help calm the oil crunch. Blaring their propaganda machine in times of panic and despair is always a good way to assure power and profits. Review history and see how dictators and tyrants have come to power. Their reigns have almost always preceded by periods of unrest and panic when people are at their most vulnerable and can be easily deceived by empty promises and blustering rants. Once they tap into the herd mentality, they are assured of their golden positions. I want a way out of this oil mess too, but not enough to sell out this country to oil thugs. They're beyond rich enough already. oil,anwr,alaska,oil companies,exxon Labels: environment, financial, oil <The ANWR Oil Debate> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, June 02, 2008 The Inverted CD Yields  I was checking ING DIRECT's CD (Certificates of Deposit) rates today and wondered how long will they continue to be inverted. A 6-month CD currently has an APY of 3.3%, while that of a 4-year CD stands at 2.5%. What I would really like to see is a normal curve, where the longer the CD term, the higher its yield. Bank yields generally follow the economy and when you see this type of anomaly, one interpretation is that there's more uncertainty with the short-term economic outlook than that of the long-term. Another way to put it, there is more perceived risk in the short-term and hence the investment rewards are higher. So what is the person with a long-term goal to do? My approach is not lock in my money for such a long time when shorter rates pay nearly a full percentage more. That can amount to quite a bit of interest. Sure, there's always the risk of buyer's remorse if the rates headed lower, but to me eschewing the long-term, low-yield CD is a calculated risk. I would opt for a short-term, higher-yielding CD and keep rolling it over until the longer-term CD rates become more favorable. In fact, it may make sense to completely bypass CD's for a savings account with a decent rate. ING DIRECT's savings account currently has a 3% APY, and the funds remain completely liquid with no early withdrawal penalties. If and when CD rates become more enticing, one can quickly kick some money from the savings account into a CD. savings accounts,banks,cd,apy,apr,yields,interest rates Labels: financial, money <The Inverted CD Yields> // posted by rh 1 comments Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Yahoo Beats, Microsoft Next  As I had expected, Yahoo reported good earnings, but nothing spectacular. The stock has received a slight dent in after-hours, most likely the effect of selling into the good news. Chances are, barring any big news, it'll stay relatively flat tomorrow. The question still is whether Yahoo can maintain the earnings going forward. I believe most people don't have much faith in that. One quarter is hardly an indication of a trend. The bigger question, however, is the status of Microsoft's offer. A better indication might arrive on Thursday when Microsoft reports its own quarterly earnings. Even with Vista's slow uptake, my feeling is that it will show healthy earnings. Microsoft has a long history of under-promising and over-delivering on earnings. The weak dollar will probably help its bottom-line considerably as well. Many U.S. companies have gotten a boost from the weak dollar, offsetting their weaker domestic intake with higher overseas revenues. While many believe that Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo is inevitable, there is still plenty of twists and turns left in this saga, including piercing the defenses of some heavy-weights such as Google, News Corp., and Time Warner, who would want to see this takeover derailed. microsoft,yahoo,google,earnings,weak dollar,vista Labels: financial, google, Microsoft, yahoo <Yahoo Beats, Microsoft Next> // posted by rh 0 comments Sunday, March 02, 2008 TaxAct Bests TurboTax and TaxCut  Evil or not, paying the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service) is just a part of life. With the April 15th deadline rapidly approaching I decided to file a little earlier and get the drudgery out of the way, especially since there was a refund to be claimed. Why leave that on the table too long? The package I used this year was TaxAct, and I'm confident I'll be using it again next year. Years ago when I was single, had no assets, made a paltry salary, and my home state (Connecticut) was income tax-free, paper forms served the IRS filing just fine. I think the whole process took less than an hour for me. Made a photocopy, licked a stamp and off it went. A couple of weeks after came the meager refund and the process was over. As life and finances became inevitably more complicated, and tax preparation software packages gained traction, I switched to TurboTax (from Intuit) and was a satisfied customer for a number of years. Then came 2003 and Intuit's spyware fiasco when under the guise of DRM (Digital Rights Management) they bundled an elusive spyware with TurboTax. Thankfully, the spyware was widely reported before I purchased the product, and TurboTax lost my trust forever. That year, TaxCut (from H&R Block) probably saw a surge in their market share and I also ended up as one of their happy customer. TaxCut had the same quality as TurboTax. What I also liked about TaxCut was the ability to prepare my entire tax return before I was asked for payment before printing or e-filing. There was also a full rebate to e-file the tax return which made the product even more enticing. But then TaxCut decided to commit the cardinal sin of charging upfront for the product. This year when I received my TaxCut CD and popped it into the drive, I was accosted by the payment demand before I could run the program. While considering forking over the money, I saw an online ad for TaxAct touting their free tax product and free IRS e-file to boot. I had seen their ads in the past and had wondered about their quality and their honesty, but having nothing to lose I decided to give TaxAct a try this year. I refuse to do my taxes online, so I opted for the download version and went to work. TaxAct surpassed all my expectations for a free product. I dare say it was nearly on par with TurboTax and TaxCut. There was the burden of entering all the personal information (there is no import facility, at least with the free version) and there were a good number of up-selling and cross-selling attempts which could get irritating at times. The help screens were somewhat drab, possibly lifted right out of the IRS publications, and in one instance I had to refer to my last year's TaxCut worksheet to understand a question, but the rest of the process was as smooth as that of the competitive products. The interview questions were relevant and easy to comprehend, there were real-time calculations, error-checking was a breeze and the IRS e-file went without a hitch. The only true limitation was the disabled print-to-PDF option (available with the paid versions). But even that wasn't much of a limitation since I already had a PDF printer driver, so I generated PDF copies of my tax return by printing to that device. As for filing the state tax return, TaxAct offers a paid upgrade version of their product to handle that. But these days most states have web-filing available, and the process is much simpler than the federal return. For most people their state tax is a figure based on their AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) save a couple of deductions. One hardly needs a tax software product for that. If you believe that software should be free, but have had misgivings about free tax preparations products, give TaxAct a try. They made a believer out of me, free and high-quality. And if they had a donation option, I would have definitely kicked a few bucks their way. taxact,turbotax,taxcut,irs,income tax,taxes,tax refund,tax software,agi,tax return Labels: financial, tax <TaxAct Bests TurboTax and TaxCut> // posted by rh 2 comments Wednesday, July 18, 2007 Answers Buys Dictionary  I guess you can call this another case of over-inflated pricing for domain names. Answers.com has agreed to acquire Lexico, the parent of dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, and reference.com for $100 million. Answers.com's market cap is currently below $100 million, and I doubt there's much cash in the bank for this acquisition, so I assume there's third party financing involved. Well, I just read that they'll be raising the cash by offering a variety of securities like floating more shares, bonds and warrants. At first strike, it may seem like an expensive domain play. Those are indeed nice names to have in one's portfolio, but there is more to these domains than just their names. They do attract plenty of eyeballs. I myself use dictionary.com often. My choice of online dictionary used to be m-w.com (Merriam-Webster), but I switched when dictionary.com revamped their site and made it a lot more usable and comprehensive. The price seems a bit steep, but it's a calculated gamble. It has success potential, but it'll probably a long-term one. My only gripe with dictionary.com is the incessant advert pop-unders and their trickery to circumvent the browser pop-up blockers. It would send a great signal if answers.com started the new relationship by getting rid of the annoying pop-ups and go with a more civilized format. How effective can pop-ups possibly be these days, anyways? answers.com,dictionary.com,lexico,acquisition Labels: financial <Answers Buys Dictionary> // posted by rh 0 comments

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