Posted October 14, 2009 - 07:00 by Jabulani Leffall
Some well known mainstays of Corporate America have decided not to wait for an official recovery but to sell the idea of it to you. Can we collectively as corporate citizens and consumers think our way out of a downturn?
Posted August 10, 2009 - 12:00 by Philip Brewer
Especially for things people often buy on credit, like a car or a house, there's a tendency to divide the ownership into two periods--while the loan is being paid off, where the item is expensive, and after the loan has been paid off, where the item is free. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of capital costs.
Posted July 7, 2009 - 14:24 by Philip Brewer
Corporations were invented a few hundred years ago--created to increase the wealth and power of favored businessmen (and the governments that favored them). They have become such a universal feature of our economy that few people give much thought to their origins--or how our economies are structured to suit them. But exactly that is the topic of Douglas Rushkoff's new book.
Posted June 30, 2009 - 05:34 by Philip Brewer
The economy is way short of full employment, so naturally, consumer spending is down. Sooner or later employment, I think, will return to normal levels. Consumer spending will return to normal too--but don't look to the first half of this decade as "normal." Normal is something very different.
Posted May 4, 2009 - 12:59 by Philip Brewer
Preventing a collapse of the financial system is part of preventing a depression. However, the shorthand term for this--getting the banks able and willing to lend--is misleading. There are plenty of banks that can lend. The problem is the borrowers: Those that could be counted on to repay their debts are mostly uninterested in borrowing, and those who want to borrow probably can't afford to take on more debt. That's the truth about the fix we're in. There are, however, two ways to fix it.
Posted September 19, 2008 - 01:13 by Philip Brewer
Is there a limit to how much Americans can spend? Clearly there is: All they earn, minus savings and service on their existing debt, plus new borrowing. Since the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts numbers on those very items, it's possible to see just how close we are to the edge. In a fascinating paper, Ron Laszewski does exactly that. The results are rather depressing.
Posted July 12, 2008 - 19:12 by Philip Brewer
You can choose how you want to live. If you choose to live simply, you gain a certain kind of freedom. In particular, you're free to choose to do the work that's the most satisfying, rather than the most lucrative. Choosing to live simply doesn't mean that you have to give up all the cool stuff you want. It means, rather, that you have to focus on a small number of wants--the ones that matter the most to you.
Posted March 31, 2008 - 05:49 by Philip Brewer
Ever notice that we have names for a period when the economy isn't growing (recession or depression), but there's no name for when it is growing? If they call it anything, economists and politicians call it a "period of normal growth."
Posted January 2, 2008 - 09:50 by Jabulani Leffall
These postings will pertain to the economy of life, which is all about personal alternatives that shape our financial world. Common Currency isn't your father's pesonal finance blog. This is mostly because when your father came of age, Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet yet but in practice this means that you won’t get me to lying or falsely waxing about the latest, greatest mutual fund.
Posted October 20, 2007 - 14:50 by Philip Brewer
Localization--eating locally grown foods and buying locally produced goods--has become trendy just lately. For the past twenty years, though, globalization has been the dominate force. The tension between trade and localization is not a new one.
Have more to say? Join the discussions at Wise Bread's Finance and Frugality Forums.
© 2009
Wise Bread |
About |
Advertise |
Contact |
Forums | Financial Blogs | Login |
Subscribe
User Agreement |
Privacy Policy |
Copyright
A Killer Aces Media FairBlog™
Subscribe to all Wise Bread articles
All comments