Earn What You Spend

There were too many good articles to post only to Twitter.
The WSJ examines why renting is the new American dream.  I agree.  Homeownership, while certainly a nice thing, is not necessarily better than renting, and there is not a strong case for promoting one method of consuming shelter over the other.  Especially after having seen [...]

It was certainly a rough week for the economy: it shrank at a rate not seen since 1982, we saw the quite high bonuses of Wall Street even as they beg for TARP money, and layoffs continued unabated. 
Here the President touches on all of these subjects, and outlines a few of his next steps. 

Paul Krugman keeps the conversation about the stimulus going, this time with an open letter to the President-elect published in Rolling Stone. It’s a long letter, but worth the read. 
Here is a post that is quite valuable as a reference point in this downturn: Clusterstock answers the question, what are troubled assets? Through a poignant example, John Carney [...]

Just how bad were those jobs numbers?  Really bad, it turns out. 
Clusterstock takes a look at why they are, in fact, much worse than we think.  
Calculated Risk shows the real story behind the data: 8 million part-time workers. 
And Kyle asks whether the data in the BLS is manipulated.  (His answer is an emphatic no - [...]

Bob Herbert at the NYTimes implores us, as a country, to stop being stupid. It’s a great op-ed - detailing how our country has wasted away the past decade fighting wars and letting our financial system run wild.  But Herbert closes with a great quote on the average American: 
And, finally, we need to start living [...]

The fallout from the largest investor fraud in our history is just beginning.  Bernard Madoff created an unbelievably massive ponzi scheme, and it’s looking like all that money is lost.  Madoff had such a strong following that his investors often forsook even the most basic financial advice of diversification: “Richard Spring, a Boca Raton resident and former [...]