Housing Wealth Lost: $6 Trillion!

According to Peter Viles, a senior producer for Real Estate at LATimes.com, the wealth homeowners have built up through owning a home is going down the tubes. $85,000 is the magic number that the average homeowner has lost in terms of home wealth this year alone, and it’s only going to [...]

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War is Good. For Some Companies, Anyway…

War is never good. Unless you’re a company that profits from wars. Below are some stats provided by AOL about moneymakers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that any of this will come as a suprise to anyone, but Bush and Cheney have plenty of contacts, I am sure, in [...]

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Oil Profits are Skyrocketing. And We’re Paying $4 at the Pump?

BP and Shell posted record profits from record crude oil prices–to the tune of $17 Billion! I don’t know about you, but that infuriates me. I’m intentionally not driving anywhere because of how costly gas is, yet the oil companies are continuing to reap the [...]

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Home Prices Going Down, Down, Down

No shock here. Home prices posted another record decline (read, getting back to normal). Over the past 12 months, the housing markets around the country that skyrocketed during the boom are coming back to earth. Prices in markets tracked by the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which covers the top [...]

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The Markets

Here’s some positive news. More than half of the institutional money managers surveyed in Barron’s semi-annual Big Money poll are bullish on the U.S. stock market through the end of this year. In fact, the survey found that 87% of the money managers expect to be net buyers of stocks over the next three [...]

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The Check is in Your Mailbox

Georgie Porgie’s stimulus checks arrive in the mail today for a certain number of Americans. If you’re among the few chosen (according to your Social Security number and you’ve signed up for direct deposit) you should be seeing as much as $600 deposited into your account.
130 million American taxpayers will [...]

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The Gecko Likes Chewing Gum

Apparently chewing gum is a good bet. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and Mars Inc. bought WM. Wrigley Jr. Company, which makes such sweet favorites as the mint with a kick called Altoids, Eclipse, Juicy Fruit, and Orbit. The deal is worth a pithy $23 Billion, which Warren could probably deliver from [...]

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Moving Expenses

Yep, we’re moving. Heading back East after about six years living in the West. Time to get away from the Seattle rain, and soak up some of that Atlanta humidity and climate. And with the move comes a lot of goodbyes. Goodbyes to friends, habits we’ve acquired in Seattle like visiting Pike’s Market, Uwajimaya [...]

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Weekend Jokes

Here are some weekend jokes to keep you entertained. Some of them are funny, some maybe not so much.

Three economists are out deer hunting one day when they see a huge buck in the clearing in front of them. The first economist takes aim with his rifle and fires. The bullet goes flying by [...]

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Arby’s Buying Wendy’s. New Name to be ArWe’s. (Just Kidding)

Five years after the passing of Dave Thomas, Wendy’s’ smiling, white-shirted, red-tie’d founder, Arby’s is buying the restaurant chain which has grown from a one-shop burger joint into a global empire selling Caesar salads, Frostys, and square hamburgers. The Thomas family was hoping for a takeover [...]

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