Your Guide to Financial Clarity
David
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Posts by David
Stamp Prices Increasing on Monday
15 years ago
On Monday, May 11th postage rates are increasing. This means any mail dropped off after the last pick up this weekend will be charged the new rate. First class letter postage will be increasing from $0.42 to $0.44. If you have forever stamps, they will be still be good at the new rate (hence the [...]
Tax Free Money Market Alternative
15 years ago
in Investing
With tax-free money market funds paying well under 1% (Vanguard’s Tax-Exempt Money Market is currently paying around 0.61%), it is hard to find a place to park cash if you are in a high tax braket. You can still find high yield savings accounts that pay around 2%, but that interest will be fully [...]
Unemployment — Going Where? Which Means?
15 years ago
in Commentary
The March Employment Report is out. This graph from CalculatedRisk shows the job losses from the start of each employment recession of the last 60 years in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost).
The trend shows that as we have moved away from a manufacturing dominated economy [...]
Pensions Dramatically Increased Risk Over 50 Years
15 years ago
in Commentary
Over the last 50 years public pensions have gone from negligible equity exposure to averaging over 65% equity exposure with another 10% in alternative investments and only 25% remaining in bonds before the latest down turn.
This is going to hit the states and municipalities the hardest over the [...]
Fruadulent Transactions Made Real?
15 years ago
in Commentary
I just finished reading Chris Whalen’s piece on AIG and the implications leaves me speechless.
Here is the gist. Before credit default swaps came into vogue, insurance companies would create reinsurance contracts with each other. Reinsurance is simply one insurance company transferring some of [...]
Skype for International Calling
15 years ago
in Software
I have been using Skype for all of my international calling for almost 3 years. I was coordinating a trip to Europe and discovered that most of my European calls on Skype were around $0.02/minute compared to over a $1/minute from the local telephone company. When my brother’s family moved to [...]
Public-Private Investment Program – More Taxpayer Looting
15 years ago
in Commentary
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 [...]
2.5% from GMAC Bank
15 years ago
in Investing
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 [...]
Economy Recovering?