Here is a dead simple solution for foreclosed houses: offer these at cut rate auctions to affordable housing developers like CASCAP in Cambridge, MA. These agencies can use the properties, otherwise fated to decay, for affordable housing for the poor and homeless. Why we won’t embrace this solution: Few businesses understand the sunk cost fallacy.…
Give people about a month after their subprime mortgage payment balloons to obscene proportions and it’s not hard to guess that in some cases, that will lead to divorce and broken homes. The next big wave of resets begins in March 2008, based on the CSFB data in the chart above. Buckle your seatbelts and…
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…
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?
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.
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…
I had the, shall we say, interesting experience of speaking to high school students recently. The part that seemed to genuinely disturb them? The opening discussion about money – specifically, where it really comes from. It’s deeply unsettling for most people, not just teenagers, to confront the reality that currency possesses zero intrinsic value. None.…
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…
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…
“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…
