If you’re like me, you enjoy reading facts and figures about various countries. While sitting down to do this may sound rather monotonous, the Economist.com has a rather novel way of feeding you this information in small doses. Its offering a free screen saver that provides all this data with a graphical rotating globe.
The Economist Screensaver is a treasure trove of fascinating data on 66 of the world’s major economies. Drawing on the 2007 edition of the bestselling “Pocket World in Figures”, it presents facts and figures on population, demographics, the economy, society, health and education around the world. The screensaver also features a ticker displaying the headlines of new articles published on Economist.com, as well as some of the witty one-liners used in The Economist ’s renowned advertising campaigns.
BlackStone’s much hyped IPO brought private-equity companies into the limelight. Along with that came the usual ‘Do you think its a good investment or not‘ questions from friends. While thats difficult to answer, the fact that a private-equity company is going public is ironic in itself. And if some other private-equity company decided to take them private, then that would be down right hysterical!
One of the three pillars to Financial Independance is having your own business. The other two are having hard assets like Real Estate, and paper-based assets like stocks and mutual funds. The business provides the cash-flow, the real estate provides leveraged returns and tax shelters and the paper assets provide liquidity.
But starting a business takes both perseverance and guts. You are venturing into uncharted territory and the road ahead will be bumpy and filled with challenges. Having said this, it can also be extremely rewarding and put you on the path to living the “American dream”.
In the November 2004 issue of BusinessWeek, Eddie Lampert was called the next Warren Buffett. At the time, he was single-handedly responsible for turning around the bankrupt KMart and making it a cashcow.
Despite having been kidnapped, he negotiated control over bankruptcy proceedings after buying a controlling stake through his hedge fund ESL Capital. Like Warren Buffett, he started it when he was just 25 years. He studied Berkshire’s annual reports and often reversed engineered the data to analyze how the deals took place.
One of the ways, was to invest in foreign currencies. Apparently I’m not alone in thinking this might be a good idea. Amongst those who agree with me is Chris Gaffney, of Everbank. I’m a big fan of Everbank’s products, especially their Japanese REIT CD. According to Chris, who incidentally is Vice President of Everbank World Markets,
Continuing on the thread of Mortgages, today’s post is by guest writer Anders Bylund of MortgageLoan.com.
Rampant mortgage fraud has been driving up home prices for years, and it’s not always easy to catch the bad guys in the act. Learn to pick up on the warning signs before it happens to you.
By now, you’ve heard all about the deflating housing bubble. But you might not have heard the whole story. Did you know that some of the inflation in housing prices a few years back came from mortgage fraud on a grand scale? Federal authorities are on the case now, but shady business has been going on for years.
For most people, their home mortgage is the largest financial commitment they will ever make. However, people will spend more time selecting the kitchen appliances than understanding how mortgages work. Considering that your mortgage will likely be over a hundred thousand dollars, getting a sub-optimal mortgage can cost you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan.
Lets go through some of the common terminology used in the mortgage business.
Fully Amortizing Mortgage : You pay interest and principle payments every month.
According to Mark Nestman, Wealth Preservation & Tax Consultant and President of The Nestmann Group, there are 50,000 new lawsuits filed everyday in the US. The odds of every US resident being sued is 100% every 16.5 years!!! A study published in March, 2007, entitled “Jackpot Justice,” estimates that lawsuits cost the U.S. economy US$865 billion annually. This figure represents a yearly “lawsuit tax” of US$9,827 for a family of four. Pretty unbelievable!
I mentioned in the previous post that I’m bullish on gold and that I think in the long term I think it will go up while the US dollar will depreciate. Generally, gold and the US dollar have a negative correlation, so if the dollar depreciates, gold will definitely go up.
I previously commented on some of the reasons why the dollar will depreciate, but another reason is that globally, less and less people want to hold it. Its a basic law of supply and demand. As the demand for something drops (while at the same time the supply increases) the value (both actual and perceived) for the product drops. In this case, the product is the US dollar.
Most people think that since Gold was in a bear market for nearly 2 decades (between 1981 and 2000), its a poor investment. They also claim that its speculative, you can’t leverage it, and its highly illiquid. But none of these are really true.
In January 2000, Gold was trading at less than $300/oz. Today its at nearly $700/oz! Its been in a stealth bull market and not a lot of people have been talking about it.
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Car needs repair? Need to make an important trip? Get a payday loan . A $500 payday loan is for people who want to manage their expenses before their expenses manage them.
![[Image of Eddie Lampert on the cover of November 2004 BusinessWeek]](/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/bizweek-cover.gif)
