Cheaper More Expensive By the Dozen Usually, the more of something you have to sell, the cheaper it is. That’s just basic, “supply-and-demand” — Economics 101. So, when is that not the case? When it comes to rental properties in today’s housing market. Buyer’s vs. Seller’s Markets Currently, there is a huge disconnect between what duplexes and...Read More
Ben Bernanke, Flame-Thrower In an ideal world, investors would allocate capital to the stock market because the potential returns were attractive. Not because The Federal Reserve had obliterated all the alternatives. Yes, the Fed’s announcement that it would keep interest rates at zero through 2013 arrested the markets’ free fall (and has the added, noxious...Read More
Wasting a Perfectly Good Postage Stamp How low are interest rates today? So low that it literally doesn’t pay to spend 44¢ on a first class stamp to mail a deposit to my broker’s local branch, vs. using their (free) self-addressed envelope and sending it out-of-town. Time Value of Money? Infinitesimal Once upon a time...Read More
Defective Designs — & Their Fallout Usually when a nuclear reactor is first shut down, an electric pump pulls heated water from the vessel to a heat exchanger, and cool water from a river or ocean is brought in to draw off that heat. But at the Japanese reactors, after losing electric power, that system could not...Read More
Why is This Man Still Collecting Speaking Fees? Why can’t Alan Greenspan retire? About to turn 85 next month, it’s not that he isn’t old enough. And, after all these years of lucrative consulting and speaking fees, it’s not exactly like he needs the money. So, why is Greenspan spending his time going around the...Read More
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul Wall Street “THERE it is.” –“30 Rock” character Liz Lemon, upon identifying the inevitable flaw in each new, too-good-to-be-true suitor. Want a culprit for now-rising prices at the grocery store and gas pump? No, it’s not because of worldwide droughts and floods — headline-grabbing shortages in places like the Soviet Union are roughly...Read More
