Though I started Nudge last year, I’ve just now resumed reading it. If you’ve already read the book this subject should be familiar. If you haven’t read the book, you should. The only warning is that it’s written by academics, and they never seem to strike the balance between good reading and good material (Freakonomics [...]

I’ve been blessed with a bit more spare time than usually lately and have decided to blow it by watching ridiculous television shows. Lately, I’ve been watching The Marriage Ref. Surprisingly, it’s pretty funny, and I can listen to it in the background when I’m doing other work. It’s actually playing as I write this. [...]

Why is it that so many good ideas come to us as we’re drinking? Thankfully for me it’s because I’ve got great friends with great ideas. They have bad ones too. But anyway, I was talking to one of my friends at a bar and we got to talking about loans and borrowing money to [...]

Back in the early days of Weakonomics I wrote a series on money. One section was on the future of money. In it I talk about the eventual takeover of credit cards and such from cash. I also talk about how RFID tags and scanners will eventually allow you to pick up what you need [...]

Did you know if you were a company and borrowed money that the interest you pay is a tax write-off? So imagine you borrowed $1 million to finance a new project and had to pay 5% interest. Your interest payments are considered an expense worthy of a tax deduction. Finance departments factor this tax advantage [...]

Oil prices spiked yesterday to their highest levels in a year ($86 or so). Compared to the high of $147 in 2008 this is hardly painful. But gas prices are increasing and with summer around the corner it’s only going to go higher. But we’re still in the middle of a huge recession/recovery right? Oil [...]

I don’t talk much about economic indicators because their weekly and monthly releases don’t really say much about the economy.  But occasionally something interesting happens that’s really worth noting.  This happened recently with the latest release of a economic data from the government.  The chart above is showing you three different indicators: Personal Savings Personal [...]

…buy lots of t-shirts I have a t-shirt problem. I don’t buy that many, I just see a lot of tshirts I want. It seems almost every day I encounter another t-shirt I want. Many of them are very nerdy in nature. But most of them are also well out of my normal price range [...]