CNN Money ran a story about the 10 most popular franchise businesses. The data comes courtesy of the Small Business Administration which offers loans for a number of businesses (but usually for people that can’t get loans elsewhere). While the list isn’t definitive since there are other sources of start-up capital than the SBA, it [...]

This is a repost of a post from last year.  For some reason, I thought today would be a good reason to repost it.  I’ve included a couple of new links and comments.  The original is here with some great comments. Marijuana has become a cultural icon in the last 50 years. When you talk [...]

So if you heard the news at all on Friday you no doubt heard about a suit filed by the SEC against Goldman Sachs. The suit alleges that Goldmand Sachs (GS) mislead investors with a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) they were selling. The suit claims that GS sold the product knowing full and well that [...]

There’s no denying that I’m a fan of Apple products.  My wife and I both own iPhones, she’s got a MacBook Pro, and we both have 1st generation iPod Nanos.  I even take the credit for getting my parents on the iPhone bandwagon.  But I am no loyalist.  I’ve only owned Windows computers, am currently [...]

This post is the first of a series that I will eventually call The Personal Finance Paradox.  But because I’m too lazy to write all the posts at once we’re starting off with my first: The Credit Card Paradox. The premise is simple: in personal finance we advocate paying off your credit card every month. [...]

In honor of the filing date for taxes here in the US (today), I thought we could take a look at all the different kinds of taxes that exist. Last year, I did a whole tax week that looks at some of these in greater detail. I encourage you to explore those if you want [...]

This week, Kerry Killinger, the disgraced former CEO of Washington Mutual (WaMu), presents a long document to a Congressional committee investigating the WaMu takeover by the FDIC and eventual sale of the firm to JP Morgan for a fraction of its previous value during the financial crisis of 2008. A lot happened in September and [...]

Moral Hazard is a media buzzword that became very popular in 2008 thanks to the financial crisis. It was used to refer to the situation where banks knew they were too big to fail and thus took on more risk than normal, but more on that in a second. Moral hazard is a legitimate economic [...]