While the historic low interest rates are good news to consumers who need to borrow money (that is if they qualify in the tight credit market), they are bad news for those needing to hoard cash. You are lucky to find a CD, money market, or a savings account paying 2% interest these days.But there — Continue reading »
Lessons from Apple's Jobs
📆 January 15, 2009
The off again, on again, off again news about Steve Jobs has been sending the Apple stock on a roller-coaster ride for the past few months. Investors are nervous and that is clearly reflected in the volatility of the company shares. With tonight's news on Jobs' leave of absence, Apple has taken a dive in — Continue reading »
Lessons from Apple's Jobs
The off again, on again, off again news about Steve Jobs has been sending the Apple stock on a roller-coaster ride for the past few months. Investors are nervous and that is clearly reflected in the volatility of the company shares. With tonight's news on Jobs' leave of absence, Apple has taken a dive in — Continue reading »
Oil at $200 a Barrel
📆 December 21, 2008
Seems like an insane prediction when oil is hovering around $34 a barrel, but it was only in July when crude reached $147 and we were paying $4.20 per gallon to fill up our cars. Back then plenty of pundits and analysts were predicting $200/barrel oil and $6/gallon gas and everyone seemed to accept that — Continue reading »
Ponzi Schemes
📆 December 15, 2008
The bad news on Wall Street today was Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This old trick works by paying off previous investors with money from new investors, thereby garnering a false reputation of handsome profits as long as new money keeps arriving, as in the adage: robbing Peter to pay Paul. Of course the problem is that — Continue reading »
GE, FDIC, and TLGP
📆 December 3, 2008
For years the standard FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) protection for single accounts had been $100,000. This mostly covered bank accounts such as savings, checking, or CD (Certificate of Deposit) with FDIC member banks. With the recent global financial meltdown, the government sought to stanch the erosion of confidence in the banking system and raised — Continue reading »
News Robot Incompetence
📆 November 23, 2008
I am a fan of Google Finance. There's a lot to like. Real-time stock quotes, nice charts and graphs and a clean design. But when it comes to breaking financial news, Google just doesn't cut it. Many sites use bots to collect and disseminate news, but in the rapidly changing financial world a news bot — Continue reading »
The ANWR Oil Debate
📆 July 7, 2008
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 — Continue reading »
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