Finance Geek

Investing for retirement can be rough task when you’re facing day-to-day struggles in a down economy. These investment vehicles offer simplicity, safety and a decent return.

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If you moved after filing your 2008 return and never gave the IRS your new address, some of that money could be yours. Claim it easily by phone or Internet.

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“Without short sellers, ‘there would be no one to criticize and restrain the false optimism that always leads to disaster.’” ~ Bernard Baruch
Amid the difficult markets of recent vintage the role of the short seller has once again come into question. According to some, short sellers hastened the demise of firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. When the collateral damage of both firms’ decline was taken into account, seemingly easy solutions were naturally trotted out by regulators.
In particular, a ban was briefly put in place in the fall of 2008 on the…

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Last month, both the House and Senate passed versions of health care reform bills designed to expand health insurance coverage to a large majority of Americans. Both bills include substantial tax increases, but they diverge greatly in the taxes they would raise, and the Senate bill’s tax provisions stand out as much less economically damaging.
While the House Bill takes a “soak the rich” approach, the Senate bill includes few tax rate increases. Instead, it includes a new tax on “Cadillac” health plans that would offset the existing tax exclusion for employer-provided…

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AOL wants to automate its editorial system, substituting data-mining decisions for editors. It’s all part of a plan to bring make media production cheap and turn AOL into an online content empire.

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President Obama this week is trying to tackle his biggest foe: the economy. On Thursday the President will hold a “jobs summit” at the White House with some of the nation’s top CEOs. The goal is to come up with ideas that will help ease the 10.

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American shoppers hit the stores and Web sites as expected over the Thanksgiving weekend. But while malls were more crowded, consumers spent less — sticking instead to their budgets and hunting for deals. Average spending over the weekend fell to
$343.3

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While most Americans were focused on the turkey, financial markets around the world tumbled late last week amid a brewing debt crisis in Dubai. The Dow fell 150 points on Friday in a holiday-shortened session, but the decline was not as bad as initially

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From The Business Insider, Nov. 30, 2009:Niall Ferguson is travelling from publication to publication,
spreading his message of fear and the end of the US empire, unless we
do something to get our debt in check.
This time he shows up in Newsweek, in an

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This chart showing US online advertising spend offers a glimmer of hope for internet businesses everywhere, but it is too early to call this a trend.

There are some good reasons to be positive right now, alongside the continuing good news on the macro economy I keep hearing stories about the effectiveness of Facebook’s new targeting system and the continued growth in ecommerce can only bode well.

These good news vibes are offset by the following:

• The overall market is still below Q4 2007 numbers and we have only seen one quarter of improvement
• We could be on the cusp of a significant shift from paid media to earned media – i.e. away from buying ads to facilitating engagement that results in consumer advocacy

I’m starting to get excited about the potential for startups in this second area.  The next couple of quarters will be interesting both for that and for the market overall.

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Ever since its creation in 1913, the Federal Reserve has grappled with a daunting political contradiction. The Fed is charged with preventing the collapse of the banking and financial system, whose health is essential for the “real economy” of production and jobs. But financial bailouts usually occur when mistakes or misdeeds by bankers and investment professionals make them public pariahs. To do its job, then, the Fed protects — or seems to protect — an unpopular, disgraced and undeserving group. We are now witnessing this contradiction in full bloom.
The Fed has become a…

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A storm broke out last week, emanating from the part of the world that is widely seen as a major beneficiary of the rise in oil prices. Yet Dubai’s story is not about oil. Indeed it is precisely the absence of oil and natural gas (less than 6% of GDP) that prompted this emirate go down the path of tourism, hospitality, and commercial real estate development, that lies at the heart of the matter now.
Perhaps it is another case of being tricked by randomness, butit does look the financial crisis in Dubai continues the Tower of Babel curse. Attempts to build the tallest building in the…

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Black Friday finally is here. The day after Thanksgiving unofficially kicks off the holiday shopping season. (Merchants use the term “Black Friday” to refer to the period when retailers’ books historically go to black from being in the red.) But

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Thanks everyone who chipped in with suggestions for the talk I’m giving to a CASS Business School MBA class in a couple of hours.  One of the reasons I write this blog is to help shed some light on the often murky world of venture capital and it has been helpful to hear which areas are the murkiest.

I’ve embedded the slides below and they will hopefully answer most of the questions raised, although as ever there will be more in the voice over than the Powerpoint.  There are a couple of points that bear repeating in the body text of this post, although they won’t be surprising to many of you:

• Taking money from a VC usually locks a company into shooting for a big exit, and rules out the possibility of a lucrative low level exit or running a lifestyle business
• Venture capital is rarely for starting companies, but rather for accelerating the success of those that have gotten off to a good start

Finally – Ben Holmes, if you are reading I have copied a couple of slides from your Glasshouse presentation.  Thanks and I hope you don’t mind!

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Putting Peter Schiff on a panel with St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and former Fed Vice Chair Alan Blinder is asking for trouble or, at the very least, a heated debate.That’s just what occurred last Sunday night in New York at an event sponsored by

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