General Information
How bad will it get? A look at historical unemployment rates
Posted by admin on January 20, 2009 in General Information
Someone I had not spoken to in years call me last week to catch up. In the course of the conversation, the caller, who is self-employed, made an off-handed comment about the economy being in a depression and how we needed to become self-employed soon. My one pet peeve lately is the rather liberal use [...]
Bail-out or the greatest banking consolidation in history?
Posted by admin on October 2, 2008 in General Information
Someone asked me the other day what I thought about Congress trying to curb executive compensation as part of the (now failed) bail-out package. I responded that I believe this is one of those classic misdirections put out by the government where the public focuses on one thing which, emotionally, is a nice hot-button topic [...]
Leaving free money on the table
Posted by admin on August 14, 2008 in General Information
In a couple of weeks, parents send their kids back to school which is the happiest or saddest day of the year depending on which side of the care-giver/dependent side of the fence you sit on and how long or short the summer was. For parents sending away their kids to college/university, the advice is [...]
How bad will the economy get and what can I do?
Posted by admin on June 26, 2008 in General Information
On the heels of the Royal Bank of Scotland warning of an impeding stock market crash, Warren Buffet commented yesterday that the U.S. economy is in a recession and getting worse. The economy is under at least three distinct pressures: collapse of the real estate market in the United States, the financial industry unwilling to [...]
Bondholders Rights vs. Shareholders Rights
Posted by admin on June 3, 2008 in General Information
BCE still could be the largest private-equity privatization in history but it is stuck in legal and financing molasses (one of the most concise summaries of BCE’s privatization woes was made by Michael James on Money). The point of this post is not to address BCE per se. Others have discussed this topic to death. [...]
Joint Bank Accounts and Credit Cards- what happens if my spouse goes bankrupt?
Posted by admin on October 30, 2007 in General Information
A reader writes: “can you blog about married couples having joint bank accounts, credit cards and investments and what happens if one of them is in trouble financially?” I may be qualified and contextually challenged to answer this question since I am a lawyer by training (qualified albeit I am not in practice) but do [...]
Should You Get a Warranty?
Posted by admin on August 1, 2007 in General Information
Recently, I was faced with a situation where I had the option of obtaining an extended warranty on a big-ticket item. This brought up the larger issue of when anyone needs to buy a warranty on any items. A warranty is, at its essence, an insurance policy on a product that you purchase. In the [...]
Warren Buffet Goes Shopping
Posted by admin on May 9, 2007 in General Information
Warren Buffet announced that the company he runs, Berkshire Hathaway, is shopping for a big acquisition (anywhere between $30-$60 billion depending on what you read) and there is much speculation on what he is going to buy. The added twist is that Buffet has recently begun to buy outside of the United State market (for [...]
Protect your assets: best defensive stocks
Posted by admin on April 30, 2007 in General Information
The Dividend Guy Blog had a recent entry about whether recent gains in the market are a good or bad thing. If you have some of the same concerns or that the market dip today will continue, I found this from some research from Thomson Financial: best long terms earnings growth by sectors in the [...]
Become Rich!
Posted by admin on April 27, 2007 in General Information
Fortune Magazine published a survey outlining how households with investable assets of between $1 mil-$10 mil invest their money by asset allocation as of 2006. The results are: 45% domestic equities 15% bonds 13% cash 11% international equities 7% investment real estate 5% private equity 2% other 1% hedge fund 1% commodities A couple of [...]
