Valentine’s Day doesn’t rank highly on my list of important days. As CC Chapman said, if you need a holiday to show someone you love that you care, you have serious issues you need to address in your relationship.
Combine that with crass commercialism and an attempt to raid your wallet through your heart by major [...]

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I’ve got a post on the work blog about beer money, and would LOVE your thoughts and comments on it:
Financial Aid Podcast Community Question: Where do you get your beer money?
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Take a look at these Google search trends for the word recession.

And for just 2007:

You don’t Google it if it’s not on your mind.
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Prospering in the downturn
It’s absolutely no secret that the US economy is headed to hell in a handbag, and honestly, it’s overdue. We’ve spent the last 20 years inflating one bubble after another - defense in the 80s, tech in the 90s, real estate in this decade - and the time for another correction has [...]

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Money is based only on faith
I had the terrific experience of speaking in front of high school students today, and the part that I think disturbed them most was the opening discussion about money and where it comes from. It’s unsettling to a lot of people to realize that money - currency - has no [...]

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Scratch troubled, we are screwed as a country
I read with great alarm on CFO.com that as the housing and mortgage crisis deepens, people are dipping into or even cashing out retirement funds.
“In the last four or five months we have seen an absolute onslaught of people trying to do hardship withdrawals and loans out of [...]

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Could you use an extra $45,000 per week?
If so, you might want to consider having a subscription object written for you in Second Life.
A “bonus” called an allowance is issued in Second Life every week to residents. It’s L$50, or roughly US$0.18 per avatar.
18 cents doesn’t sound like much, but hire a developer to create [...]

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“I have been saying for about two years we’re looking at a 1929 kind of event. I think that we are really in trouble in this country. And what you have seen in the last four months is just the beginning of it.”
-Patrick Byrne, Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com, December 2007
“If home prices decline by [...]

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The Contagion Spreads
If you want to talk viral, let’s talk about the disease of debt that’s spreading. What started out as a portfolio of subprime mortgages going bad is rapidly spreading to any financial sector that touches any form of credit or debt.
Last week, First Marblehead (ticker: FMD), one of my company’s partners, registered a [...]

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A funny thing happens when there’s excess liquidity in a financial market, as has been the cases in the past 6 years due to housing. First, a quick primer. Liquidity is any asset that can be converted to cash quickly and with minimal loss of value. A blue chip stock - like Coca Cola - [...]

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