Thanks to Jason over at Smith Barney for sending me over the link to this looney old Barrons stock strategist’s prediction that the Dow Jones is going to hit 18,000-20,000 within the next 12 months.

I’m sure glad I know this, because now I can go ahead and dump any of those crap “conservative” investments I’ve been holding on to and go “all in” on the stock market! I mean heck, if it’s going for nearly a 100% ride in the next year, that’s the place to be!
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Folks, I’m going to go ahead and call it, even though no one else seems to be willing to do so. We’re officially in a recession.

The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as:

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

Let’s take a look at some of the leading indicators, shall we?
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I recently got the following question from one of my readers:

Dear The Man,

I’m a broke ass college student. And by broke I mean not only don’t I have any money, but I’ve probably already spent about 2 years worth of my expected salary after graduation. And that’s if I DON”T go to grad school!

What should I do?

Your fan,
Broke Dope

Well Brokemeister, don’t worry. Lots of people incur mountains of debt while attending school. Some of them even actually do it on tuition and books! But regardless of what you’ve blown it on, there are solutions for student consolidation of debt.
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I don’t normally pass along things that circulate the Inter-Tubes via e-mail, but this is pretty interesting information - if it is all true. I have no idea where it originated, but a family member sent it to me. I’d be curious if anyone could actually vet this info and prove / disprove it’s validity.

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon.

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Holy crap. Has anyone heard of the film / book called The Secret? I hadn’t, but after watching this funny little video I feel fully informed.

After reading through the massive Wikipedia entry on The Secret, you’ll learn it:

…uses a documentary format to present the “Law of Attraction.” This law is the “secret” that, according to the tagline, “has traveled through centuries to reach you.” The film features short dramatized experiences and interviews of a team of personal transformation specialists, spiritual messengers, feng shui masters, and moneymaking experts.

Well, I’m glad they didn’t forget the moneymaking experts!
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We often hear about how the US is such a consumption oriented country. We’ve got the fattest people, we pollute the most, we’re spoiled… yeah, yeah, whatever.

But here is an interesting way to look at the economic impact the US plays on the global economy. You see, comparing the Gross Domestic Product of another nation, say… Canada, to the US is just silly. In fact, the entire output of Canada is roughly equal to just the state of Texas.
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Entertain me!

• ‘In Economic Terms, You Are a Depreciating Asset’
• Tequila Vision!
• Traffic Signals Video - Not kid safe!
• All Linkin Park Songs LOOK The Same
• Driving like a Video Game

I was inspired by a fantastic article published by the Sietch Blog called Bending Swords Into Wind Turbines, so I decided to bring together some data to share on the opportunity costs associated with the ongoing war in Iraq.

Just to be clear, I’m not espousing any political position. I’m only interested in coming to an understanding of what alternatives we are forgoing by spending money, effort and lives in Iraq as opposed to spending them on something else. We’re talking about a whole boatload of money here, so it’s nice to know what else we could be getting for our dollar.
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Back in June Ben Popken over at The Consumerist pointed out that while reading the New York City 2006 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report he spotted the following item from the FAQ:

Should I buy bottled water?
You do not need to buy bottled water for health reasons in New York City since our water meets all federal and State health-based drinking water standards. Also, bottled water costs up to 1,000 times more than the City’s drinking water.

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A couple of weeks ago I came across this article on The Consumerist written by an anonymous former Circuit City employee. Having had a friend who did time at CC, I will say that this seems like a very real article and I recommend that everyone give it a read.

It sheds light into the sales tactics employed by Circuit City, and you should also keep in mind that many of these are similar to all other consumer electronics (and other) stores. The moral of the story… information will set you free.

One other little note. Instead of simply asking you to take this anonymous guy’s word for it, I’ve provided substantiating links within the various points where available for more background reading. Hope it helps.
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This is just a quick tip… If you ever find that you need to transfer money to someone and wonder what it would cost to do it via PayPal then you definitely need to check out the PayPal Fee Calculator.

Two very useful things I can come up with for this site are:

1. You want to send money to a foreign country, but you aren’t sure what all of the fees are going to be.
2. You want to sell something on EBay and would like to set pricing based on how much you will receive after PayPal fees.

Enjoy!

You know, people always talk about a million as if they actually know what it would look like if they were actually staring at one million things. But for most of us, we’ve never actually seen a million of anything!

So, I decided to take a look at one million, and to do so I created a document that has one million periods in it. It’s attached here.

The file is a 976kb download, and if you open it in Word it takes 254 pages in single spaced format.
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