Earn What You Spend

From the WSJ: 
As part of a sweeping bill to change the rules for credit cards, a pair of senators are pushing to lift constraints that Visa, MasterCard and other credit card networks impose on merchants’ ability to offer discounts for paying by cash or check.
Retailers have long chafed under the restrictions, which make it burdensome [...]

An interesting video from Charlie Rose featuring Tim Geithner.  Rolfe Winkler caught the best exchange: 
Rose:  “Looking back, what are the mistakes and what should you have done more of? Where were your instincts right, but you didn’t go far enough?”
…
Geithner: “…I would say there were three types of broad errors of policy and policy both [...]

Leverage is a dangerous game - it magnifies both returns and losses - but a historically safe bet has been education.  Not only do I (strongly) believe in the intrinsic value of education, there is little doubt a college education substantially raises your future earnings.  Just look at unemployment rates for confirmation: those with a bachelor’s degree or [...]

Consumers have been curtailing their spending for months now - we’re now deep into this recession, and virtually everyone is trying to save cash.  The savings rate has rebounded from it’s near-negative numbers.  And now, consumer debt - the money individuals borrow through car loans and credit cards - is falling in tandem.

Source: WSJ
Some of [...]

[via Option ARMageddon]  This is truly an astounding number.  I didn’t know this, but the government updates the total outstanding debt for the United States here every day. 
Option ARMageddon has the graph: 

I’ve written before about the paradox of thrift we now face; we desperately need to reign in our debt-fueled consumption.  Not because there is something bad about consumption, but rather because we have been spending money we don’t have.  That is, plain and simple, unsustainable.  I noted a couple of months ago: 
Our financial system is [...]