Mutual funds are the best investment vehicle for people like you and me.  If you read any finance blogs, you’re likely invested in them yourself (good job).  I’ve talked about them before in the College of Weakonomics series, so if you’re a regular reader you should be good to go.  If you’re new to mutual [...]

Economics is a social science, like history, communications, or psychology.  For the most part their concern is with humans and how they interact with each other.  Those that study economics can cover a wide range of specialties.  From Steven Levitt’s fascination with the implications of naming your child “Shatisha” to Ben Bernanke’s current problems of [...]

Being an all around hater of the traditional news outlets, I don’t like it when the daily moves of the stock market are mentioned as news.  The daily exchange rate isn’t, oil isn’t, mortgage rates aren’t either.  Sometimes the overall performance over a length of time is mentioned in the same breath like “The Dow [...]

“Bank of America will layoff 35,000″ “Almost 250,000 Layoffs in January Alone” “Macy’s to Cut 7,000″ “Circuit City Bankruptcy Will Eliminate 40,000″ Every day we see headlines like these coming from newspapers, news networks, radio coverage, magazines, and even us bloggers.  Sometimes they are broad and cover the entire country, other times it’s only a [...]

In my house growing up there wasn’t much point in talking on Sunday mornings unless you’ve read the comics in the paper.  We all had favorites, which changed with time.  Most of the ones I liked are either gone or no longer appealing.  Even still, I don’t read the comics in the paper anymore, I [...]

Thomas Friedman’s follow-up to “The World is Flat” is currently slowly integrating it’s message into my brain.  ”Hot, Flat, and Crowded” preaches the message of the coming problems the world is expected to face in the next generation. Most of his focus is on increased energy demand.  The middle class is expected to grow by [...]

Well folks I’ve done it again. Every once in a while The Weakonomist loses his posts and has nothing prepped for the next day. This is the price I pay for not keeping ahead on my posts. Anyway, there is this thing floating around Facebook and the blogosphere where you write 25 things about yourself. [...]

Yesterday I talked about hating the word “frugal.” Today I want to talk about how being “cheap” is better.  But first a little background.  The idea of frugal vs cheap vs thrifty vs whatever has come out of several conversations in the blogosphere and twitter over the last month.  It first struck me in a [...]