A new study says that a significant majority of people would be fine to have their employers temporarily increase the amount the employee contributes to retirement plans up to 10%. I would certainly fall into that category myself as most of you likely would too. But isn’t that sad? Why don’t people just temporarily increase [...]

That’s what the US Department of Treasury may be telling investors in the near future.  What that effectively means is that the rate the US pays to borrow money would be negative.  Investors would be paying the US for the privilege to lend to them?  How can this happen in a world where our debt [...]

The following is a guest post provided by Forex Traders. Views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Weakonomics.com The year of 2011 may go down in history as the year that never was. Our financial markets, despite a rollercoaster ride throughout much of the period, ended the year amazingly enough at roughly the [...]

I’d almost forgotten about how much I loathe the personal finance magazine and site Kiplingers (see here and here). Should you not be familiar with the publication, Kiplingers publishes many articles which I find to be lazy and in some cases, irresponsible. A lot of people subscribe to the site and magazine and probably think [...]

If your humble blogger had the time, he would create a database the documents all the outrageous calls people make. Pundits predicting stock market results, economists calling for some kind of statistic, or any idiot that the traditional media calls up can actually shape opinion. But that doesn’t mean they are qualified, or accurate. I’d [...]

There are some elements of finance that even I struggle with.  For example, how can you draw a line from a wheat farmer in Nebraska to a bankrupt brokerage in New-York City?  Maybe that connection is easy, but why is the farmer’s money missing just because the farmer’s brokerage company went bankrupt?  And why are [...]

The media was abuzz on Monday about this whole Congress getting to trade on insider information thing.  60 Minutes had a segment devoted to their investigation that ran on Sunday night.  It is most definitely worth a watch.  If you don’t want to watch it, here’s the skinny. Insider trading is basically investing using information [...]

“In college, I smoked a lot of pot.  I still smoke a lot of pot” “Math was too hard” “My sense of entitlement comes from my parents giving me trophies even for losing” “I have an engineering degree, am willing to live anywhere, and can’t find a job” “I was dumb enough to believe I [...]