656,000.  Would you believe that is how many pieces of mail are delivered every day?  I’d hope not because the actual number is 660 million.  656,000 are the number of employees at the United States Postal Service.  That is second only to Walmart in civilian employees.  Here are a couple of other statistics, 263,575 and [...]

Just like Wednesday, I’m on a statistics kick.  And like I told you yesterday, beta deserves its own post.  Beta is an interesting measure that you’ll often find listed among stock quotes.  But what is it? Before we start I must warn that while the first half of this post is a simple explanation, the [...]

Sometimes it’s just not enough to invest in the S&P 500 anymore.  You’re burned out by public companies, hedge funds, and real estate.  You’re looking for a return on your investment that isn’t as tied to the Dow as other investments.  Naturally, you’re the type of person with plenty of money to invest.  Private equity [...]

When times get tough and cash is in short supply, local economies sometimes turn to printing their own money to keep things moving.  Local currencies a method of exchange in commerce that is not backed by a national government. By this definition local currencies are not legal tender.  This would keep them from being considered [...]

A couple of weeks ago I received the most flattering email about my work on Weakonomics since I started about a year ago.  The gentleman that sent this message also took the opportunity to ask some questions about finance, and business as a whole.  To protect his identity, I’ve changed his name to Sam.  Sam [...]

If you’re at work today, you should be ashamed. Today is a hallowed day and we should celebrate it as… oh I’m just kidding. Technically the holiday exists to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, but thanks to some douche-bag politicians and American advertising, we now celebrate “President’s Day”. I thought this would be a good time [...]

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 [...]

Whew! What a year 2008 was. The financial industry collapsed, we elected our first black president, and we bailed out the companies that sold us those gas hogs that caused our oil to spike to $150. Despite hundreds of trillions of dollars being used to bail out the economy, we’ll likely remember 2008 for the [...]