Finance Geek

In Douglas Adams’s best-selling novel The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a space traveler could stick the Babel fish right into his ear, making it so he could understand speakers in any language. Emirates airlines’ iLingual iPhone app doesn’t exactly realize his dream, but it’s a step in the right direction.

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Not happy with your bank?  The feeling is likely mutual.Don’t be surprised if your bank soon decides they don’t want your business anymore, says Rochdale Securities bank analyst Dick Bove.Why?Bank regulators and Congress are looking at ways at making

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Since 1999, the S&P 500 has been a loser, and the next 10 years could be just as grim. But with new strategies, you can position yourself well for the decade to come.

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Despite shrinking endowments, these 100 institutions offer high-quality education for less than you might expect. For some students, they’re cheaper than state schools.

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Another quarter has passed, and another report is out from the Rockefeller Institute showing the sorry state of state revenues. Yesterday the Institute released third quarter collections data for 44 states, all of which posted revenue declines compared to the same quarter a year earlier. The average decline was 10.7%. But performance varied widely across states, with revenues falling off 52.4% in Alaska, but just 1.3% in New Hampshire.
The report teaches two key lessons about state income tax, the largest component of state tax collections. One is that going without a general income tax…

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You and your wallet will be jollier if you avoid these financial pitfalls.

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News Corp hopes to delete its news articles from Google’s search engine and put them on Microsoft’s search engines instead, in return for payment. Although this represents a new option for funding journalism, the effort seems doomed to fail before it even gets off the ground.

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From The Business Insider, Nov. 23, 2009:Microsoft (MSFT) wants to pay News Corp (NWS) and other large
publishers to de-list their Web sites from Google’s (GOOG) search
index, the Financial Times reports.
The idea is to force Google (GOOG) to pay for c

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From The Business Insider, Nov. 23, 2009:The New York Times
– not usually the first publication you’d think of when it comes to
calling for fiscal prudence — sounds the alarm over the government’s
massive debt load. …

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Do you have friends and colleagues who invoke the principle of “Social Justice” to justify new entitlement programs like the trillion dollar health care bill? Do their explanations of what constitutes Social Justice sometimes sound vague or situational, a bit like Justice Potter Stewart’s infamous definition of what constitutes pornography? I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.
The phrase Social Justice was coined by a Jesuit priest named Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s. The economic inequalities generated by the industrial revolution deeply troubled him. Reaching…

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In the greatest trade ever, a New York hedge fund manager scored big betting on the housing collapse. Even average investors can learn from his tactics.

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YouTube has begun enforcing a 16-month-old change in its terms of service that requires device manufacturers to become “strategy partners” in order to display YouTube videos on televisions.

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As the precious metal continues to soar, naysayers abound. But a few things need to happen before the yellow fever cools off.

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On the heels of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankenfein’s apology for his firm’s role in the financial crisis, some of Goldman’s largest shareholders are unhappy more of Goldman’s prosperity isn’t being passed along to them, The WSJ reports. …

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Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner took some heavy fire on Capitol Hill Thursday. Days after Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio called for Geithner’s resignation, Texas Republican told the Secretary: “The public has lost all confidence in your ability to do

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