Featured Photos


Baseball Hall of Fame - 8/23/11

Featured Video


Avery's QuEST Project - It's Healthy!

House Construction


The Completed Home Renovation


Home Renovation - Complete!


Our House Construction Photoblog

RSS Feed

Money Talk

« Previous Entries                     Next Entries »

Random Acts of Blogging – 1/9/09

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Happy New Year to all! We start off 2009 here at I Should Be Sleeping with a random smattering of things I’ve seen since New Year’s that I thought you’d find fascinating:

First, there’s Burger King. Last month, we discussed their new meat-scented cologne. Now, they’ve gone hi-tech. The Whopper Sacrifice

Categories: Family Matters, Money Talk, Political Rantings, Random Acts of Blogging, The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Random Acts of Blogging – 1/9/09

Fair & Balanced…

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

The other day, I slammed the New York Times for running a “Wall Street is Evil” article on the front page.

Yesterday, in the Sunday paper, there was a longer article that went into more detail about the financial crisis. It’s still laced with political invective, but it does a much better job of presenting the history of what happened than the one from last Thursday. Credit where credit is due (no pun intended).

What it shows is an administration suffering from the same things it’s suffered from throughout it’s eight years – a desire to do the right thing, coupled with an inability to waver from an initial decision, and an inability to control the message and/or inspire any confidence:

Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal.As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming.

Categories: Money Talk, News and/or Media | Comments Off on Fair & Balanced…

The Root of All Evil is Money

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

This was the front-page article in the New York Times this past Thursday. Here are some quotes:

In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million.

But Merrill

Categories: Money Talk, News and/or Media | 1 Comment »

A penny saved is a penny blogged…

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Still putting away some final items from the big House Renovation, and I came upon this, which seemed oddly appropriate these days:

When I was a kid, my grandfather gave me coin collecting books. Basically, nicely bound pieces of cardboard with circles cut out on the inside and years printed below them – one the size of pennies, one for nickels, one for dimes and one for quarters. I don’t know what happened to the nickels, dimes and quarters, but the penny book survived until we packed up to move out of the house, which means I still have it today, now that we’re back in.

Of course, once my grandfather gave me the books, he had to start giving me coins. I remember holding coins up to the light to read the years on them, so I could put them in my book (much like my kids go through their grandparents’ quarters to collect all fifty state quarters & put them in a similar book, also given to them by their grandparents, but I digress…)

Anyway, one of the oldest pennies in the book is this one from 1930. That’s a penny from The Great Depression, folks. Forget everything you know about interest rates and the time value of money. I can promise you that when this penny was minted, it was more valuable to the owner(s) than it is today.

I gotta say, Honest Abe’s holding up pretty well after 78 years. If only he could talk, huh? That would be . . . . . . well, exceedingly frightening, I suppose. Better he just sit there and stare to his left. Yes, yes – that’s better. That way, I won’t have nightmares when I go to sleep just after posting this to the blog. Definitely better. Definitely…

Categories: Money Talk, Random Acts of Blogging | 2 Comments »

We all knew this day would come…

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

In my mailbox (the actual mailbox, not my e-mail inbox) today:

Sigh…

Categories: Money Talk | 2 Comments »

A Sense of Humor is Important

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Categories: Money Talk | Comments Off on A Sense of Humor is Important

It’s just so….NORMAL!

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

What’s this?? Single-digit moves on the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P500 on the same day? Why, I haven’t seen something like that since, well….early September!


Ah, the good ol’ days…

Categories: Money Talk | 3 Comments »

Helpful or Hurtful?

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

My wife and I leased a car a few months ago.

Categories: Money Talk | 3 Comments »

When will we learn?

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

This is disturbing:

WASHINGTON

Categories: Money Talk | Comments Off on When will we learn?

When Excel Gets in the News…

Monday, October 20th, 2008

As a self-proclaimed spreadsheet jockey, stories like this hurt me in places I don’t like to talk about.

Categories: Money Talk, Tech Talk | Comments Off on When Excel Gets in the News…

« Previous Entries                     Next Entries »