A great little movie talking about how to motivate and engage people in the professional work environment. Interestingly, offering more money just doesn’t equate to more productivity. Some interesting theories that resonated with me and my job.
Apr 17 2010
Update on Market Riggers
Yesterday, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs for selling collateralized debt obligations (the CDOs I referred to in my previous post) without properly informing the investors of the risks. They have emails and other communications between Goldman and the hedge fund Paulson & Company where both parties knew they were creating really risky CDOs and then selling them to the market as triple-A rated securities.
I hope the fact that the SEC filed the suit (rather than settling) means that they have a solid case. It will be very hard to prove intent, even with ‘smoking gun’ emails.
Whether or not they win or lose the suit, we should prosecute Goldman and these hedge funds in the court of public opinion. It is clear that they value their own bonuses and bottom lines over the security and health of their customer’s investments. I will never invest a dime with these companies, even if they are the last ones standing.
Apr 13 2010
Hedging? or Rigging the Market?
Last week’s episode of This American Life was a super-interesting deep dive into some of the players that caused the financial meltdown. They started with the premise that the oft-repeated phrase “no one saw this coming” was unacceptable. Wall Street is supposedly filled with these financial wiz kids, and can we really believe that no one saw the risk? No one is responsible for the creation of so many worthless assets?
Because the podcast is an hour long, and WAY to dry for most normal humans, I’ll try to sum up some key findings here.
Feb 11 2010
Retirement Planning: To Roth or Not to Roth
So Mrs. Brows and I spent last Saturday working on our finances, fixing our budget for this year, and trying to predict the future. In the process, we started talking about our retirement savings strategies.
Continue reading “Retirement Planning: To Roth or Not to Roth”
Dec 02 2009
Mao de Vaca
Those who really know me might know that I’m a tight wad. On the exterior, yes, I seem like a pretty cool cat when it comes to money, but deep down nothing makes me more gleefully giggle with joy than money miser’d away in the bank. In Brazil, I’m known as a “mao de vaca.” Literally translated, that’s “hand of a cow”. Just let that imagery work for you…
Oct 13 2009
Spending
You know it’s gonna be a bad month when you log into Mint and see this graph for your monthly spending:
That is what a small vacation, a huge car repair, new tires, and a couple trips to wal-mart will do to your monthly cash flow… 
I guess it could be worse…
1. I could be FavUnc and see that bar getting longer and more negative with every pre-wedding month…
2. I could be the Federal Government and not have seen that bar anywhere near the 0 mark for the last 75 years.
I suppose I could always raise my wife’s taxes for being married to me… who says I am “tight”?
Sep 12 2009
A Smart Economist
I ran across this guy, Peter Schiff, yesterday, and he makes so much sense it’s a little scary. He is one of the only economists who predicted an economic crash due to the housing bubble.
Aug 21 2009
Health Care: a System or Industry?
As a nation, we are now deeply embroiled in a debate about the future of our health care industry. My next few posts are going to be delving into the grimy details of this debate with two goals:
- to define what we currently have
- to understand what is being proposed and where it might lead us
I want to get it #1 nailed down, first, before we get into #2. Perhaps the single most frustrating thing is to discuss a topic when not everyone in the room is coming from a similar basic understanding of the actual state of affairs…
So here we go…
Jul 27 2009
New Retail Strategy
Retail has always had catchy slogans to help train the masses of employees and customers they try to get to buy stuff. I’m thinking:
- “The Customer is Always Right”
- “We sell for less”
- “Where’s the beef?”
Well, I’m here to inform you that there’s a new strategy out there. It must be due to the recent recession, so I’m calling it Recession Strategy 09 or RS09 for short. It appears to be: “We pay you to shop here!”
Three examples from this past weekend:
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