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The Best of 2011 List

The Weakonomist — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:55:02 +0000

This blog lacks the editorial patience to determine what the best posts of the year were. However, we do have enough time to pull together a big list of other publisher’s best of 2011. Many of them are lists within lists:

Lifehacker Best of 2011

Main Street most popular stories of 2011

Top political scandals of the year (from ABC News) – And the wiener is….

2011 review of life science (from New Scientist)

CBS News review of 2011 including: notable deaths, best quotes, and of course news.

Sports news of the year from USA Today – Sports are usually boring, but this year had all the drama of an Oscar film.

2011 in nine charts, Economist style

Health news of the year from CNN – AIDs, cancer, and concussions.

The Atlantic’s super site of 2011s including:

Yahoo’s year in review including:

Harvard Business Review’s top posts of the year

2011 year in financial blogging (not personal finance) from The Reformed Broker

Tech’s biggest misfires of 2011 from Engadget

And last but not least. In fact, it should be first and most: Dave Barry’s year in review. Always a great laugh.

Happy New Year and if you’ve got other lists throw them in the comments.

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Weak Links: From Cocaine to Wall Street to Sperm

The Weakonomist — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:27:27 +0000

How Much of a $100k Salary is Taxed Around the World: You could move to Europe and pay more taxes, or go to Russia and pay less. Or, America, you can maybe not complain so much. (Economist)

How the Plummeting Price of Cocaine Fueled the Nationwide Drop in Violent Crime: Need I say more? (The Atlantic)

Why our brains make us laugh: Interestingly, humor is a reward system in our heads. We are rewarded for finding errors in logic and data. This is what makes jokes funny too. Thankfully, this research does not ruin humor. (Boston Globe)

Should you be able to get rich in charity? Basic economics says yes. So long as you add more value than you are paid, you should be able to get rich. A guy at HBR has the stones to say it out loud. Not sure if I agree yet, but the argument is compelling (Harvard Business Review).

Black Market Sperm: Sperm is actually expensive, and anything that’s expensive that can be readily replicated will be offered on the cheap in a black market. (Freakonomics)

Time to start negotiating with dentists?: A study shows a wide variation in the fees dentists charge for various procedures. Be extra cautious if you go to a dentist you may not be comfortable with. In my wife’s case, they recommended a number of fillings that turned out to not be necessary when she checked with her childhood dentist. (NY Times Bucks Blog)

Wall Streeters now working as cabbies: Some keep resumes in the front seat, others are just trying to pay some bills. Lately Wall Street has been cutting jobs. Keep in mind that getting to the 1%, or even the 10%, is not a permanent thing for many. (NY Times)

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Turkey Day Links

The Weakonomist — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:59:33 +0000

Good for reading while your spouse preps the food, and impressing people at the dinner table with your useless knowledge.

The economics of turkey: Do turkey prices go up around Thanksgiving? Or do they fall? If they fall, why would they fall when everyone buys turkey at the same time? How much turkey can you afford with your disposable income? What kind of turkeys do the 1% buy? All that and more.

How to keep the stress out of meal prep: Research shows about 3/4 of people stress about Thanksgiving, and one of the biggest reasons is for food prep. Research shows how to outsource labor to your guests, and why the host should focus on just a couple of core dishes. (Via CNBC)

Can’t blame the turkey on your afternoon laziness: No it’s not the tryptophan, it’s not even the turkey. But there is a benefit to serving coffee after the meal.

A collection of Turkey Day links from Lifehacker: How to carve the turkey, leftovers recipes, and even some tips to fix grandma’s computer.

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Weak Links: Yes The Downgrade Was Weeks Ago But This Is Still Funny

The Weakonomist — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:06:16 +0000

Do you remember Robert Reich? You probably don’t but he was the Secretary of Labor under Clinton and a well-known political economist. Apparently he’s got a sense of humor about his profession as here he is explaining what happens to the US if our debt continues to get downgraded. (Via Gizmodo)

Here are some other stories I’ve been itching to share lately but just haven’t gotten around to writing about:

The Mathematics of Basketball – Yes I know football just started but basketball isn’t too far off either. If you’re really nerdy or just a big basketball fan this is a great article that breaks down the strategies of basketball in terms of math and statistics. So much of the game can be broken down into when you should actually take the shot.

The Etrade Baby Gets Smoked – I don’t do much with brokerages, but I’ve always like the Etrade commericals with the talking baby. My buddy Josh at Reformed Broker came across this little gem of a video that shows what’s more likely to happen to folks that trade all the time than the success the baby tends to have in the commercials.

You can’t get a mortgage because interest rates are too low – It’s a good thing the Fed is going to continue to drive down mortgage rates.

Rick Perry And Texas Job Numbers – The most definitive look yet at a what will be a controversial topic for the next year.

Your Law Firm Does Not Have Your Incentives – I know I know, this is the most surprising news of the last decade. Law firms have every reason to screw you, lie to you, and overall just try to squeeze as much money as they can out of you without regard for customer service. Why? Because it’s hard to tell if a lawyer really did a good job or not.

Got something that should be in my semi-random link roundups? Send it in!

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Weakend: Plutus Awards Are Back

The Weakonomist — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:12:56 +0000

Loyal readers will remember last year when I was nominated for a Plutus Award. These awards are for bloggers to be recognized for their contributions in personal finance related fields. There’s a specific section for small and part-time bloggers such as myself. Last year I won the award for best Economics blog and I’ve been nominated for the same award again. Like last year, I don’t want you to vote for me, but I’m not going to beg you not to vote. Instead I’ll ask you to vote by explaining my competition a bit.

I’m in the category of losers that write about economics. Here are the other losers:

Darwin’s Money
Pop Economics
Studenomics
Zero Hedge

The first three are very much like me in that the authors are largely small fries and we hardly ever even end up linked to by the big dogs. Zero Hedge is in a class all its own. It is much larger and is regularly linked to from big websites. But let me give you a brief description of each.

Darwin’s Money is a guy I follow on Twitter regularly because he’s just brilliant. The blog covers everything from stocks to real estate investing and economics. There are plenty of opinions expressed, as is the point of most blogs. Our topics don’t overlap all that much so I always appreciate his posts since we usually see different areas of the finance/economics world as important. His site is also a lot more well organized and easier to read than mine.

Pop Economics was an awesome blog with great images when it first launched. But (to give you an idea of the competition we’re in), it hasn’t been updated since April. When he writes it’s good, but it’s hard to write regularly. Well thought out posts that cover topics with precise strokes that get you thinking about stuff you don’t normally think about. Maybe this nomination will bring him back to write more often.

Studenomics (no relation) is fairly self explanatory with the title. It’s targeted towards people in their 20s. They may still be students or launching their careers or getting married. It’s very much personal finance oriented but MD does a good job of showing how economics impacts someone’s day to day lives. A different market than me but an important one nonetheless. Plus, I love the blog’s title.

Zero Hedge is the closest blog to a pure play on economics with a flare for Wall Street. The language can be crude but I regularly read Tyler Durden (the pseudonym for the author) because he will say what no one else will. He isn’t PC, and he’s not afraid of anything. His blog is large enough that he can do it full time and post a lot. I’d love to do that but as of right now I love my day job.

So all the nominees are clearly very different. There really aren’t that many small time economics blogs out there so we’re pretty much the prettiest pigs at your local fairgrounds.

But someone nominated me which means someone actually likes what I’m doing here. To be honest, it’s damned hard to write 6 days a week; even when I don’t edit, plan, or really think about what I’m writing. It’s meant to be terrible and published from the seat of my coffee stained pants. Weakonomics is not large, and likely will never be without active attempts to grow it. But I won this award last year and I’m nominated again this year. For you readers, I am thankful, and it’s all I need to keep writing.

But vote for the blog that is truly the best. There is nothing that I excel at so I don’t deserve to win this year. Head over to the voting site and pick your favorites in tons of different categories (nominees here). Maybe you’ll discover some new blogs too.

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Three Headlines From Yesterday That Make Me Hate The News

The Weakonomist — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:02:15 +0000

The 24 hour news cycle on TV was once considered the worst thing to ever happen to news. But I would argue that the presence of too many news websites and blogs has ruined journalism even more. Still, here’s a collection from both that just makes just makes me sick.

Apple touches top spot by capitalisation: So for a while now Apple has been playing catch up to Exxon in becoming the world’s most valuable company. For just a few moments yesterday Apple did pass Exxon, but then Exxon took it back. People pretend this is significant since a tech company would now be the top dog amongst industry. But we’ve known for a few decades now tech is a big deal. This is just one tiny step up a staircase we’ve been climbing longer than I’ve been breathing. What kills me the most was I can’t even call this a meaningless step. If the Celtics were beating the Lakers in the 3rd quarter and lost in the 4th does it matter? This was a story about something that could almost have been a story but wasn’t.

Gold Advances to Record on Slowdown Concern: So gold prices are at all time highs, what else is new. But Whenever gold goes up, headlines just tie to the underlying economic headlines. Gold goes up because of a slowdown, a recovery, inflation… The truth is no one ever knows exactly why anything goes up or down in value because investors buy and sell for different reasons. But it’s worse with gold, because it’s more or less done nothing but climb recently, there is no direct underlying explanation other than fear of the future.

Fed extends uncertainty until 2013: Wrong, they did the exact opposite. But that wouldn’t get you to click and watch their pre-roll.

I had one more from John King or someone on his show acting like we should have a right to see the names of the Navy SEALs we lost recently, but I couldn’t find evidence of it. If anyone has this, please send it to me or drop it in the comments.

These are just a sampling of the terrible headlines we read every day. But something else gets to me too. Every media outlet from newspapers to crappy news networks on satellite TV makes a point to tell you they not only do the news, but also opinion. Few bother to try and differentiate between the two. And even the laziest of the media know you can blur the lines further by reporting on people’s opinions. Do that and you can cover hot topics with opposing opinions under the facade of “news”. Weakonomics publishes once a day because you shouldn’t have to get bombarded with everyone else trying to get clicks by one more no talent schmuck. Be wary of headlines, even my own sometimes.

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Weakend: Debt Deal Comic Links

The Weakonomist — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:30:46 +0000

The best comics:

The one using pictures of politicians

A collection of cartoons about us from around the world

A slideshow from MSNBC

And here’s a huge repository of political cartoons: PoliticalCartoons.com

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Weak Links: Job Loss Headlines

The Weakonomist — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:37:09 +0000

It seems like for over a year we saw headlines of nothing but layoffs. Over the last few months we’ve started to see that again. The official statistics on jobs make this not at all surprising. Unemployment is up and jobless claims numbers are not where they need to be. But other companies are hiring too. So wouldn’t it be nice to keep track of all these headlines, good and bad?

Daily Job Cuts has just exactly that. Every headline that mentions a company or organization laying people off shows up here. They even cover plant closings. But it’s not all bad, you can see announcements of hiring as well. Hopefully once all the drama around the NFL lockout debt ceiling gets cleared up the economy can pick up again.

Secret Oil Rigs In LA - Bet you didn’t know LA is one of the most industrial cities on the globe. It’s because the city has done a really good job of hiding it. The link includes a short film where the filmmakers go out and hunt for some of these facilities. If you live in LA, let us know if you’ve ever seen any of these.

Corporate Perks: Jets - The WSJ ran a story that didn’t get nearly enough media attention about the use of jets by corporate executives. I’ll let the article speak for itself, but this is disturbing especially in a time where people are still fighting just to find work. Thankfully our governments don’t abuse such privileges.

Bill Gross Agrees With Me – Late last year I said we needed a reformed education system that focused more technical training. Bill Gross, the sometimes crazy head of the world’s largest fixed income investment company, PIMCO, agrees with me. He didn’t say that outright, but it’s clear he got his ideas from me.

Another Program To Save Housing – While we’re all distracted with debt ceiling headlines, the government continues to operate as inefficiently and unfairly as possible. After a string of failed programs designed to save housing, I would suspect Obama to have moved on to other methods to ensure reelection. But nope housing is still the thing. So the new plan is just like any old plan. If you were responsible with your homebuying and still are underwater because no one else was smart, then you’re screwed again. This program helps the unemployed, which isn’t a bad thing. It just sucks that responsible people, who may need help, never seem to qualify for such programs.

A Visualization of US Debt – Not much else to say. Via The Reformed Broker

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What You Think About Things

The Weakonomist — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:53:57 +0000

Often times in the media you hear of presidential approval ratings, Congressional approval ratings, the state of the economy, or many other questions that are polled amongst the American people. Just about any media outlet, from Fox News to Newsweek conducts some kind of polling to gauge how people feel about a lot of stuff. Instead of just focusing on headline making poll results, I’m going to list a bunch of them and (when it exists), compare it to other things when appropriate.

How is Obama doing?: In February of 2009 62% approved of him but now it’s just 47%. That sounds terrible but it was lower in February of 2010 than it is today. Not surprisingly, his approval ratings and his ratings on how well he’s doing with the economy are about the same.

Most important issue today: From April of 2009 to June of 2011 the only issues that seemed to be the most important were economy and jobs. Things like Medicare and education are not on the radar.

Obama on terrorism: Killing Bin Laden did wonders for this stat, but more people disapprove today than they did when he took office.

Obama on Libya: Like any “war” or “conflict” the longer we’re involved the worse things get.

How Congress is doing: The only real takeaway from this number is that dating back to the 1970s, Congress has never had a good approval rating. It’s the nature of Congress so bad numbers don’t deter them. Notably, the highest approval rating was after 9/11, with a 67% approval rating. This is an outlier statistic.

Overall view of the economy: Our feeling of the economy today is not indicative of tomorrow. Peaks in economic optimism were before asset bubbles burst. In our forward view, the numbers seem to follow short term swings in the stock market.

Spending vs Jobs: The margin is small, but more people favor cutting spending and lowering debt over increasing spending for the sake of jobs.

The American Dream: Almost everyone still believes home ownership is an important part of the American Dream.

Dems vs GOP: The GOP is more hated, but both have a majority vote as unfavorable. This poll is not indicative of who wins elections. It rarely happens, but currently more people identify with independents than Democrats or Republicans. Tea Party support peaks whenever Republicans in Congress make a stand.

2012 Nominations: Romney and Bachman are equally favored among Republicans. But Romney actually has some love from non-GOPers. This isn’t surprising because he’s much more moderate and Bachman is swinging from right-field.

Housing Crisis: People blame lenders more than borrowers or regulators for the crisis. About three years ago much more blame was on regulators but now the banks are getting the blame. Few seem capable of blaming themselves. 93% of people think it’s important for the mortgage interest tax deduction to stay. 18% of people feel the housing market has prevented them from moving to take a new job.

Personal Finances: The number of people who feel their financial situation is getting worse has reduced significantly since 2009. The number thinking it’s getting better has doubled.

Demographics: 1% of people don’t know if they are of Hispanic origin or descent.

You can see the full results of what is an extensive poll (and history) here. Via Business Insider

Photo: Martin Bamford

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Weak Links: Loss Aversion In Government

The Weakonomist — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:30:10 +0000

U.S. hesitant to sell its GM stock due to low price: This isn’t surprising by any stretch of the imagination. Replace “government” or any reference to government in this article with “you”, “I”, or “money manager” and it’s easy to see the government is no different than anyone else when it comes to investing. They are suffering from loss aversion with regards to the sale of the GM stock the government owns. It’s worth less today than it was a couple of months ago and the government just doesn’t want to feel that pain. (Autoblog)

Long Commutes Are Relationship Killers: We’ve known for years that long commutes can be bad for your health. You sit in traffic and get impatient. It reduces the time you can spend with family and even eats into your sleep and eating habits. But now we know that long commutes can also be hazardous to your marriage. The causes are different than the ones for your health. Be less concerned about the commute and more concerned with making sure both spouses feel like equal economic contributors to the family. (Infrastructurist)

President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout: If you start the auto bailout accounting the day Obama took office, things are looking pretty good. But it’s just a numbers game played by anyone with something to gain from it. This article closely examines the math behind the game. (Washington Post)

The Case for Inherited Wealth: The counterargument against an Atlantic article saying the government should get everything when you die. It’s a ludicrous argument, but makes for thought provoking discussion. (CNBC Net Net)

Citi Backs Up FICO 8 Credit Model: I’ll bet you didn’t know your FICO score is essentially a statistical representation of how likely you are to default on a loan. But all models have weaknesses and can be improved. It looks like this new score, called FICO 8, is more accurate. Should that be the case then creditworthy borrowers will look better. But if you’ve ever had a statistics course you will know that new models are subject to hindsight weaknesses and are often backtested with bad data. Hopefully the FICO folks know all that, but it will take years before we know for sure. (MainStreet)

Five Tips For Remembering Names: I’m a chronic name forgetter. I can forget a name before I’m even done shaking your hand. Many tips have never worked for me mostly because of the same reason most diets don’t work for you. You have to stick with it. All we should need is focus, but that’s hard to do. Give some tips a try, or if you’re good at remembering names, please tell me how you do it. (WiseBread)

Do Paid Chores Pay for Themselves?: Interesting thought process about how parents paid us for chores. If you are a parent, this is a great way to trick your kids. To my parents, I’m on to you. I only recently found out that I was forced to pay my own way to an amusement park as a child, AFTER we were bribed saying we could go if we did an educational trip the day before. I’m watching you parents. (Freakonomics)

My Money Is Cooler Than Yours: A new currency called Bitcoin is becoming more and more popular because it’s not controlled by a government. Money launderers should love it too. (Slate)

More People Using 401(K) Funds As Piggy Banks: Borrowing from 401(k)s has picked up. Not a good sign for the economy for sure. New legislation hopes to make it more difficult to borrow from your future self. (Consumerist)

If you ever see an article you want me to talk about or that should be shared with your fellow readers, feel free to send it to me. Note: it cannot be something you wrote and if you’re a professional promoter I will see right through it.

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