The Treasury Department has released details on the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) to help remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets.  Unfortunately, I see this as a further transfer of taxpayer dollars to Wall Stree (around a trillion dollars). Here is the way it works.  For every dollar you invest to buy toxic assets, the [...]

Taking the family skiing.  Wont be back until next month.

With banks and money markets paying virtually nothing these days finding good places for short term cash is a bit tricky. Even most of the traditional high yield savings accounts have gone under 2%.  Currently GMAC Bank is offering 2.5%.  As of 2008, GMAC Bank is FDIC insured and has full access to treasury liquidity [...]

Many studies have shown that Harvard graduates go on to have more successful careers (on average) than their state university counterparts, even when you control for SAT scores and high school academic success. This has led many a family to believe that going to Harvard is a golden ticket.  However, Malcolm Gladwell notes when researchers [...]

The following graph shows how many gallons of fuel it take to travel 350 miles using different modes of transportation.  Beware of one sleight of hand.  When the graph gets to the SUV, cars and hybrid it no longer divides by the number of passengers (i.e., it is assuming only one person in a car). [...]

When shopping for immediate annuities or life insurance it always amazes me how far apart quotes can be from different companies.  To make things even worse, the same companies aren’t always the cheapest, so you ALWAYS need to shop around. Here are a few sites where you can get instant quotes without the hassle of [...]

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr As the AIG bailout goes north of $160 billion dollars, I have been trying to figure out who this money is really supporting.  The latest round of money illuminated that a major thrust was on maintaining AIG’s AAA rating.  A number of people are starting to dig out [...]

Numbers like a trillion are way beyond our every day comprehension.  With the economic crisis taling about trillions has become common place and James Hamilton has come up with the following to help make the numbers more real. A trillion dollars is about the total amount collected in income taxes by the U.S. federal government [...]

I was reading some Adam Smith and came across the following and was struck by the timelessness and relevance of his insights.  It is worth your while to work your way through the dense prose (typos and formatting is mine, words are Adam Smith’s).  With all the negativity that swirls around us in these chaotic [...]

After the rundown we have had over the last two weeks, I find it useful to take a step back and check on how current valuations measure historically.  I should reiterate that I don’t believe that I have the ability to time the market.  And for me, these valuation exercises are about assessing risk so [...]