NPCT

This is absolutely the best explanation of the credit crisis I have seen to date: The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The proposed bailout of the financial services sector is a “loan” of $700 billion. I put quotes around “loan” because the whole point is for the government to buy bad debt, so it’s really a handout. We all will buy our little share of these bad mortgages, regardless of whether we took out some ridiculous [...]

There is a great (although badly-drawn) cartoon here that explains very well how we got into this credit crunch.

So, Senate Republicans are hoping to give everyone $100 to help pay for gas. Do these guys know something I don’t? So, they’re going to give everyone $100, which will come from… taxes. But because of government waste, etc, that $100 paid in will really be more like $500. Everyone takes a net loss. Besides, [...]

I gave a talk on personal finance at Offtopic Lunch on Friday. The slides are here.

This article discusses how price gouging might actually be beneficial during crises – ensuring that supplies get to those who truly need them. It places a firm belief in the capitalist market ideal, and I’m not sure if I agree with the argument, but it’s an interesting read. But offering goods for sale is per [...]

Here is an article pointing out that this eventuality was well-known and that the levees had not been repaired because of the Bush Administration’s other priorities: Iraq and tax cuts. New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been [...]

There is an interesting article here entitled “Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies, 1774–2004″ that discusses an interesting range of topics from the classic “Broken Window Fallacy” to deficit spending and mercantilism. Here’s an example to give you an idea: Myth #7: The Late Nineteenth Century was an Era of Laissez-Faire Capitalism Certainly, the late nineteenth century [...]

I am of the opinion that the US is going to face its worst economic downturn since the Depression within the next couple of years. I think this for a variety of reasons, but one of them is what I perceive as the unsustainable increase in home values over the past decade. Except for a [...]

I’ll save the discussion of the erosion of the idea of citizen into consumer for another day. In the meantime, consider what I see as an interesting and logical conclusion to this change: political change through consuption. ChooseTheBlue.com and BuyBlue.org are two sites that categorize various consumer goods and service vendors by political party donations. [...]

I am rather amused at a sidenote in my supervisor’s book, where he uses the British phrase “… such systems are two a penny” and gives this explanation in the sidebar: Translation for American readers: ‘such systems are a dime a dozen’; incidentally, this equivalence (10c = 6p) shows that the correct exchange rate is [...]

The AP is reporting that a toy store owner in Oregon was approached by the Department of Homeland Security to remove a Rubik’s Cube clone that allegedly infringed that patent. The agency claims “One of the things that our agency’s responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation’s financial systems [...]