Archive for August, 2008

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

A Capitalist Blogger Puts Down Her Pen

I’m sorry to see Trisha from Building An Empire considering shutting down her blog and it looks like it might be a foregone conclusion but I perfectly understand her situation.   A capitalist will often invest his/her time pursuing the most profitable endeavor and blogging isn’t quite the profitable venue for most.   I know a few [...]

No Comments » - Posted in Raves by

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

PF Blogger Ethics

I’ve noticed a disturbing new trend with some PF Bloggers – the deletion of dissenting comments to skew the discussion in favor of the authors point of  view.   I’m not going to name names and it’s a free country and PF Bloggers can censor their blogs in any way shape or form they please but [...]

9 Comments » - Posted in Evil Profits by

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Oil Is Down Because Beijing Drivers Aren’t Driving, Construction Halted

Beijing has an estimated 3.3 million cars.  By most estimates, half have been banned from driving during the Olympics.   If we assume that each car has a 10 gallon tank then Beijing consumes 33 million gallons of gasoline per week (assuming typical usage).    Since half the cars have been banned then that represents a drop [...]

2 Comments » - Posted in Observations by

Monday, August 11th, 2008

FDIC Entering Danger Zone – Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned!

Bloomberg is reporting that FDIC is nearing the legal reserve ratio limit mighty fast. Some notable quips: The FDIC is required to shore up the fund when the reserve ratio, or the balance divided by the insured deposits, slips below 1.15 percent or is forecast to fall below that level within six months. A 2006 [...]

No Comments » - Posted in The Fed,Watch Out by

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Dave Ramsey, Car Payments, & Investment Returns

So I ran across this post at Financial Nut which was discussing the evilness of car payments per the Ramsey gospel.   Since I’ve never read Dave’s books I was intrigued by this paragraph Financial Nut quotes: “Taking on a car payment is one of the dumbest things people do to destroy their chances of building [...]

10 Comments » - Posted in Watch Out by

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

Opening Olympic Ceremony = Awesome!

If you had any doubts about the power house China is becoming you need not look any further than yesterday’s opening Olympic ceremony.  I was in awe of the entire show but what caught my eye was the segment with the movable type.   My wife insisted that the movable type was computer controlled and mechanical [...]

No Comments » - Posted in MMO by

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Amateurs vs. Professionals, Gardeners and Lenders

The world is a marketplace of ideas, commodities, and services and I’ve always believed that the person that finds the most effective and efficient way to churn a profit would be a person of great wealth.    So when I read about people home gardening as a way to wealth or joining peer to peer lending [...]

2 Comments » - Posted in Observations by

Friday, August 8th, 2008

George Bush To Sell Alaska Back To Russia For Oil & Cash

In an unprecedented move, President Bush announced early this morning that he is requesting Congress approve the sale of Alaska back to Russia in exchange for 200 million barrels of oil and $500 billion in cash to shore up the US Government’s balance sheet and pay for the Freddie and Fannie bailout. “If Russia don’t [...]

1 Comment » - Posted in Evil Profits by

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Is Prosper.com Falling Apart?

I’ve been trying to do some research on Prosper.com and all I could come up with for research info is a website named Prospers.ORG which has some interesting information about loans and defaults. I’m surprised the usual PF Bloggers haven’t been saying much about Prosper recently and some seem to have very high default loan [...]

8 Comments » - Posted in Observations by

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Can A Fire Department Be Privatized?

I was having a discussion with a friend about private capitalism vs. government supported services. He is a die hard capitalist that believes government should cease to exist where I believe in limited but necessary government. The debate finally boiled down to whether or not you could privatize something like a fire department. Let’s look [...]

1 Comment » - Posted in MMO by