Investing Early
06/18/2010 3:14 PM

Yahoo posted an article by Ryan Guina on Thursday about his experiences investing at a young age and the good that has come from his decision. If you think of investing as a bill that should be payed every month, you could be well on your way to being financially comfortable by retirement. Click here to read the article.

Meet the Average American Family
06/18/2010 3:14 PM

The average American family has put themselves in a precarious financial position, with no room for unforeseen problems or planning for the future. Meet the average American family...

How Much Does the Average American Spend on Entertainment?
06/18/2010 3:13 PM

The "staycation" has arrived and will remain the main source of American leisure for many years to come. The exotic vacations we use to take will be harder to justify, given the cost of those trips, and the fact that there are simply too many "closer-to-home" options vying for our attention.

Young Americans, Spending Habits, and Social Media
06/18/2010 3:12 PM

Here is an interesting and relevant visual representation from Visual Economics of the spending habits of young adults in America and the connection these habits have with social media. This probably isn't a surprise, but America's young adults are not starting their financial lives off on the right foot. Apparently, the "apple doesn't far too far from the tree."

FBI Will Be Arresting Hundreds on Mortgage Fraud
06/18/2010 3:12 PM

Finally, the good guys are gong to arrest some bad guys.  Perhaps they are a little too late.  The FBI is planning to arrest hundreds of people across the U.S. as early as next week for offenses such as misleading home owners about foreclosure rescue programs, inflating home appraisal, and encouraging borrowers to falsify their income on mortgage application.  Typically, the FBI would arrest the loan officers for fraud, but during the housing bubble, the line between the loan officers and the borrowers became blurred. To read more about the FBI's action against mortgage fraud, click here.

Here's What Americans Are Most Worried About
06/18/2010 3:11 PM

It's always fun to find out how we are all so much alike.  A visual of the latest Gallup Poll from EconomPic Data, found that Americans are more concerned with the level of Federal Debt than with Terrorism.  We truly have made quite a shift!

50 Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe
06/18/2010 3:10 PM

Depressing? No, not really.  Just facts that we need to stomach before we can really understand the economic challenges we face.  And if you are an analytical type of person who likes to recite facts, this is the motherlode! 50 Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe via Business Insider by Michael Snyder on 6/4/10 Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is.  The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession".  What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive.  Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era.  We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.  A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious. But the truth is that you cannot defy the financial laws of the universe forever.  What goes up must come down.  The borrower is the servant of the lender.  Cutting corners always catches up with you in the end. Sometimes it takes cold, hard numbers for many of us to fully realize the situation that we are facing. In 2010 the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined Source: Forbes It is being projected that the U.S. government will have a budget deficit of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars in 2010 If you went out and spent one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollar Source: DefeatTheDebt.com In fact, if you spent one million dollars every single day since the birth of Christ, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now Total U.S. government debt is now up to 90 percent of gross domestic product Source: WorldNetDaily Total credit market debt in the United States, including government, corporate and personal debt, has reached 360 percent of GDP Source: PIMCO U.S. corporate income tax receipts were down 55% (to $138 billion) for the year ending September 30th, 2009 Source: Forbes There are now 8 counties in the state of California that have unemployment rates of over 20 percent Source: LA Times In the area around Sacramento, California there is one closed business for every six that are still open Source: Sacramento Bee In February, there were 5.5 unemployed Americans for every job opening Source: BLS According to a Pew Research Center study, approximately 37% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have either been unemployed or underemployed at some point during the recession Source: Pew Research Center More than 40% of those employed in the United States are now working in low-wage service jobs Source: CNN According to one new survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year Source: CNN Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005 Source: BLS and NYT Mortgage purchase applications in the United States are down nearly 40 percent from a month ago to their lowest level since April of 1997 Source: CNBC RealtyTrac has announced that foreclosure filings in the U.S. established an all time record for the second consecutive year in 2009 Source: Bloomberg According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in March 2010, an increase of nearly 19 percent from February, an increase of nearly 8 percent from March 2009 and the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005 In Pinellas and Pasco counties, which include St. Petersburg, Florida and the suburbs to the north, there are 34,000 open foreclosure cases. Ten years ago, there were only about 4,000 Source: NYT In California's Central Valley, 1 out of every 16 homes is in some phase of foreclosure The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10 percent of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment during the January to March time period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago Source: AP U.S. banks repossessed nearly 258,000 homes nationwide in the first quarter of 2010, a 35 percent jump from the first quarter of 2009 For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together More than 24% of all homes with mortgages in the United States were underwater as of the end of 2009 Source: CNN U.S. commercial property values are down approximately 40 percent since 2007 and currently 18 percent of all office space in the United States is sitting vacant Source: Vancouver Sun Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. That was almost twice the level of a year earlier Source: Bloomberg In 2009, U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in private lending since 1942 Source: WSJ New York state has delayed paying bills totalling $2.5 billion as a short-term way of staying solvent but officials are warning that its cash crunch could soon get even worse Source: Reuters To make up for a projected 2010 budget shortfall of $280 million, Detroit issued $250 million of 20-year municipal notes in March. The bond issuance followed on the heels of a warning from Detroit officials that if its financial state didn't improve, it could be forced to declare bankruptcy Source: CNN The National League of Cities says that municipal governments will probably come up between $56 billion and $83 billion short between now and 2012 Source: CNN Half a dozen cash-poor U.S. states have announced that they are delaying their tax refund checks Source: NYT Two university professors recently calculated that the combined unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states is 3.2 trillion dollars Source: Forbes According to EconomicPolicyJournal.com, 32 U.S. states have already run out of funds to make unemployment benefit payments and so the federal government has been supplying these states with funds so that they can make their payments to the unemployed Source: EconomyPolicyJournal.com This past recession has erased 8 million private sector jobs in the United States Source: USA Today Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of 2010 Source: USA Today U.S. government-provided benefits (including Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs) rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010 Source: USA Today 39.68 million Americans are now on food stamps, which represents a new all-time record. But things look like they are going to get even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011 Source: Reuters Phoenix, Arizona features an astounding annual car theft rate of 57,000 vehicles and has become the new "Car Theft Capital of the World" U.S. law enforcement authorities claim that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs inside the country. These 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the crimes committed in the United States each year Source: FBI via The Final Hour The U.S. health care system was already facing a shortage of approximately 150,000 doctors in the next decade or so, but thanks to the health care "reform" bill passed by Congress, that number could swell by several hundred thousand more Source: American Medical Association via thetruthwins.com According to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation the health care "reform" bill will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes on the American people by 2019 Source: CJCT [PDF] The Dow Jones Industrial Average just experienced the worst May it has seen since 1940 Source: Bloomberg The gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties Source: via The Nation Approximately 40% of all retail spending currently comes from the 20% of American households that have the highest incomes Source: CNN According to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, two-thirds of income increases in the U.S. between 2002 and 2007 went to the wealthiest 1% of all Americans Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info Half of America has 2.5% of the wealth Source: Institute for Policy Studies If you only make the minimum payment each and every time, a $6,000 credit card bill can end up costing you over $30,000 (depending on the interest rate) According to a new report based on U.S. Census Bureau data, only 26 percent of American teens between the ages of 16 and 19 had jobs in late 2009 which represents a record low since statistics began to be kept back in 1948 Source: Reuters According to a National Foundation for Credit Counseling survey, only 58% of those in "Generation Y" pay their monthly bills on time Source: USA Today During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter Source: WSJ According to the Tax Foundation’s Microsimulation Model, to erase the 2010 U.S. budget deficit, the U.S. Congress would have to multiply each tax rate by 2.4. Thus, the 10 percent rate would be 24 percent, the 15 percent rate would be 36 percent, and the 35 percent rate would have to be 85 percent

Buyer Beware
06/18/2010 3:09 PM

Ouch! Apparently, if you can't figure out in advance which companies are going to be the in the top 25% of returns (and who consistently can?!), then you might be in a world of hurt.

The U.S. Becomes Best Investment Prospect
06/18/2010 3:08 PM

There's only way to win, no matter what the game is, and that's to be the best.  This latest Bloomberg survey shows that apparently the U.S. is still seen as one of the best investment markets available to investors, even if it is still the best amongst some really poor choices!

Daniel Kahneman “Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion.”
01/05/2010 12:28 PM

 

“When people consider the impact of any single factor on their well-being — not only income — they are prone to exaggerate its importance; we refer to this tendency as the focusing illusion.”

Click Here To Read: Daniel Kahneman ” Would You Be Happier If You were Richer? A Focusing Illusion.”

The New Consumer credit Card Debt Facts
10/19/2009 5:42 PM

 via (visualeconomics.com) on 10/15/09 

The New Consumer Credit Card Debt Facts

Chart of The Day: Not Your Average Recession
10/15/2009 8:10 PM

via The Pragmatic Capitalist by TPC on 10/3/09

Rosenberg On The Jobs Report: Thud, Dud & Crud
10/15/2009 7:59 PM

via The Pragmatic Capitalist by TPC on 10/2/09

FDIC Seeks $45 Billion in Prepayments from Banks
10/15/2009 7:47 PM

via Calculated Risk by CalculatedRisk on 9/29/09

From the FDIC:

The Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation today adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) that would require insured institutions to prepay their estimated quarterly risk-based assessments for the fourth quarter of 2009 and for all of 2010, 2011 and 2012. The FDIC estimates that the total prepaid assessments collected would be approximately $45 billion.

Absent the prepaid premiums, the FDIC said that the agency's Deposit Insurance Fund ... would face a liquidity crunch early next year, and that it will be operating in the red by the end of this month. ---> FDIC Seeks $45 Billion in Prepayments from Banks

Retirees, Procrastinate At Your Peril
10/15/2009 7:33 PM

via The Psy-Fi Blog by psyfitec@googlemail.com (timarr) on 9/27/09

Fun or Future Famine

Given a choice between doing something light-hearted and fun which brings immediate gratification or something boring and difficult that won’t pay off for decades – if ever – most of us wouldn’t find it very difficult to make a choice.  In fact we’re probably designed to operate this way, since the probability of surviving long enough to enjoy our future wasn’t very great for most of human history.
---> Retirees, Procrastinate At Your Peril

You Can't Print Your Way to Prosperity
10/15/2009 7:06 PM

via The Pragmatic Capitalist by TPC on 9/24/09

I am hopeful that yesterday’s Fed meeting marked a change in sentiment.  Investors are fed up with seeing the dollar get trashed by the Federal Reserve and wasteful government policies.  The boom, bust cycle and blatant manipulation of the capitalist system must not be allowed to continue.  This flawed idea that we can somehow print our way to prosperity is finally seeing some resistance ---> You Can't Print Your Way to Prosperity

Roubini: Investors Too Optimistic
10/15/2009 6:01 PM

via Calculated Risk by CalculatedRisk on 10/4/09

“I see the risk of a correction, especially when the markets now realize that the recovery is not rapid and V-shaped, but more like U- shaped. That might be in the fourth quarter or the first quarter of next year.” [Roubini said in an interview in Istanbul on Oct. 3.]  ---> Roubini: Investors Too Optimistic

Entrepreneurship, Government, and Development in Africa
10/15/2009 5:58 PM

via Simoleon Sense by Miguel on 10/10/09

Spend Less Than You Earn
10/15/2009 5:36 PM

via Get Rich Slowly by J.D. on 10/12/09