According to today’s report on MarketWatch.com: The U.S. economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2007, the first quarter of negative growth since the 2001 recession, the Commerce Department said Thursday in its annual revision to gross domestic product. Real GDP fell 0.2% in the quarter; a 0.6% increase had previously been reported. Many economists [...]
Monthly Archives July 2008
New Brokerage Account
If you remember my post from the end of last year, I closed my brokerage account in order to pay off my home. I also wasn’t too happy when Vanguard (VBS) didn’t proceed correctly (they said it wasn’t their fault) with an arbitrage transaction, and I lost a little money. So, I also directly-registered some [...]
Neuroeconomics
The concept of delayed gratification is that we succeed in life when we put off what’s immediately most pleasing and sacrifice for a better tomorrow. The Marshmallow Experiment has shown those who learn to master the habit of delayed gratification are the ones who increase their chances for a more productive and enjoyable life. Makes [...]
Saving and Investing: You Can Do It!
I’m sure that you’ve heard the following phrase before: “There will always be those who have, and those who don’t“. If you’re an observer of peoples’ behavior like I am, then you’ve probably figured out that this phrase should actually read: “There will always be those who will, and those who won’t“. In all of [...]
Guzzo the Contrarian Redux
I’m back. I should’ve never left. I made a mistake. I thought that I wanted to narrow my focus to the stock market and blog with more anonymity, but it just wasn’t fully me. I lost focus of what was important to me as a blogger, promoting the “hands on” triumvirate of personal finance, investment [...]
Subprime Responsibility
I was reading Treasury Secretary Paulson’s: Remarks on U.S. Housing Market before FDIC’s Forum on Mortgage Lending to Low and Moderate Income Households, and wanted to point out an excerpt from that speech which negatively caught my attention: ..Due to the lax credit and underwriting standards of the past years, some people took out mortgages [...]