University Bans Smoking on Entire Campus | News & Features | Cigar Aficionado.
Of course, keggers are still perfectly acceptable.
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Innovate Without Mercy Is the Lesson of RIM’s BlackBerry: View – Bloomberg
Innovate Without Mercy Is the Lesson of RIM’s BlackBerry: View – Bloomberg.
The biggest takeaway from this: you must be your biggest competitor. Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t get comfortable.
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Time to Concede Home “Ownership” Is a Fraud | Michael Shedlock | FINANCIAL SENSE
Time to Concede Home “Ownership” Is a Fraud | Michael Shedlock | FINANCIAL SENSE.
I’ve been saying this for years. Home ownership is a scam.
Back in 2009, James Altucher wrote an article for the New York Post about this very issue. He lists the additional costs of home ownership that many people fail to consider when purchasing a home, thinking it’s an “investment”:
* Your insurance premium.
* Property taxes (which are usually higher than any tax deduction you get from your mortgage interest).
* Maintenance (pipes break, electricity problems, etc.).
* Utilities (utilities and maintenance for renters is often reflected in the rental price, but it’s not reflected in a mortgage when you own).
* Yard work, pest control, remodeling, etc. (again, rents usually have this built into the price, but mortgages don’t).And let’s not forget those initial costs that always seem to add up to more than you expect:
* A down payment of at least 15 percent, which is $90,000 on a $600,000 home.
* Closing costs, usually 5 percent of loan amount, or another $25,000.
* Initial remodeling costs.
Yes, home prices are down considerably since the crash, despite desperate attempts by the Federal Reserve and the government to prop them up. Still, you must ask yourself if going into this much debt, and paying for all the additional expenses is really worth the effort? My answer is no and that’s why I’ve never owned a home, nor do I ever plan on owning one.
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Online Ad Spending to Surpass Print for First Time in 2012 [STUDY]
Online Ad Spending to Surpass Print for First Time in 2012 [STUDY].
It took a while, but finally.
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Clay Shirky: Sopa and Pipa would create a consumption-only internet | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Shirky writes that this upcoming SOPA and PIPA bills would create a consumption-only internet, leaving the large, politically-protected media firms as the sole providers of content, just like the the good old days when publishing nearly any form of content was prohibitively expensive.
The internet made everyone a publisher; everyone a content creator. The cat’s been out of the bag for 15 years. It just gets easier every year with better and cheaper tools. Look at the recently released iBooks Author app from Apple. This free app lets anyone easily create a book and sell it on iTunes. Amazon and Barnes and Noble make it relatively easy and cheap–read free–to publish eBooks on the Kindle and Nook. I know because I’ve done it many times. You can even publish your own softcover book through CreateSpace for a nominal fee (the cost of shipping a proof of your book is the only charge.) Anyone with a Mac, Garageband, a mic and an instrument can make music that would have cost tens of thousands in equipment and studio time not too long ago. Movies are still expensive but the price has come down considerably over the years. Just think, the iPhone 4s can shoot video in 1080p resolution! You could make a movie with that and a Mac running iMovie for editing. It’s been done countless times.
The point is, the media companies are desperate to protect their aging, declining business models. They say it’s about piracy, but it’s not. They are using political means to protect their business. Media companies are zombies, being kept alive by their friends in Congress.
We still go to the movies, we still buy books and movies, and we still watch TV shows. We have far more choices now beyond the large media companies, and we want to consume our content on any device we own. The days of sitting in front of the tube at 8pm to watch sitcoms is long gone. We create, we consume and there’s nothing the media companies or Congress can do about it. They can censor what we do on the web, but we’ll find another way. There’s always another way.
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Americans raid savings, putting recovery at risk – Business – Stocks & economy – msnbc.com
Americans raid savings, putting recovery at risk – Business – Stocks & economy – msnbc.com.
During the recession, which I believe we are still in, people saved and paid down debt. Now they are using their savings again. Recovery? What recovery?
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Consumer Spending as an American Virtue – NYTimes.com
Consumer Spending as an American Virtue – NYTimes.com.
Economist Robert Shiller writes about the American propensity to spend, based on a new book by Sheldon Garon, “Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves.” He states that spending is, “shaped by deliberate government policies,” but fails to state the obvious: Federal Reserve policies.
Monetary inflation through artificially low interest rates, makes money cheap. What’s the point of saving money when there’s a real, negative return on it? Putting your money in a savings account earning 1% or less means you are losing money–after factoring in inflation–which is not accurately reported by the government.
The government and the Fed are forcing people to spend money before it loses its value as overall prices rise. If you do want to save, you have to go out further on the yield curve into riskier investments to get any positive return on your money.
I’ll probably read this book and see if there’s any mention of Federal Reserve money-printing. If there isn’t, then the author ignored the elephant in the room.
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Offline and Sick for Three Days
It’s been an interesting week. I came down with a cold Tuesday night and spent the next few days working from home. On Wednesday night, my AT&T Uverse modem died. It started power cycling and never stopped. A call to AT&T confirmed the issue and they shipped a replacement modem. No TV, no internet. I was completely offline for over two days. My only internet connection was my iPhone 4.
This morning, my modem arrived and I was back in business in a matter of 15 minutes. My cold has abated and I can get back to writing. This weekend is devoted to the NFL divisional playoffs so my posts will be brief. I’ll be back in full force next week.
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U.S. Consumer Credit Rises by Most in Decades – Bloomberg
U.S. Consumer Credit Rises by Most in Decades – Bloomberg.
Looks like consumers have paid off their debts and taken on new debt. Consumers appear to have confidence in their future employment and income to take on new debt and make larger purchases. Bank seem willing to lend more as a result.
The question now is, will this lead to higher price inflation as banks increase their lending? Are banks starting to utilize their reserves, held at the Fed (and earning interest)? If this trend continues, watch out for inflationary pressures as the money lent out starts multiplying through the fractional reserve banking system. This will be exacerbated if the Fed plans QE3 later this year.
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Plunging prices set to trigger tech boom – FT.com
Plunging prices set to trigger tech boom – FT.com.
This is the normal course for the market. Mass adoption of technology rises, prices fall.
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