Finance Geek

You’re a savvy political appointee, and you’re bringing out the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards for Power Plants rule that will raise electricity rates all over the country, particularly in battleground states of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, and Michigan. What can you do to get the public to swallow the costs?
Timing is everything, and you choose the Wednesday before Christmas, when most people aren’t paying attention.
And then you schedule the announcement at a place designed to tug at the heartstrings, say the National Children’s Hospital in Washington D.C. You ask…

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“The world has been carried forward on the shoulders of a few of our ablest and most constructive men.” Howard E. Kershner, Dividing the Wealth, p. 53.
Almost like clockwork, whenever a giant of American capitalism achieves great financial fortune, the media and politicians begin to call for this individual to begin giving away the money earned. It’s said that those who’ve been financially successful must “give back.”
Not asked enough is why the wealthy in our midst owe others for the act of growing wealthy. Also not addressed is what made them so rich to begin…

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The European Central Bank kicked off its new borrowing facility with a bang Wednesday, lending $645 billion to 523 banks at 1% for up to 3 years. Both the dollar volume of loans and the number of banks seeking funds exceeded expectations. “In view of everything that’s happened, the fact so many banks are locking [...]

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Follow Yahoo!’s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! The stock of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion rose modestly on Wednesday on reports that several potential buyers had recently looked at the company. One of those reports, by Reuters, said that one potential buyer, Amazon, stopped looking at the company because they weren’t interested in buying it, [...]

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‘Tis the season to travel, travel, travel and like almost everything else this year, the cost to fly is not getting any cheaper, especially when you factor in all the additional fees. There are fees to change your travel plans and fees to use your frequent flier miles. There are checked-bag fees, fees for bags [...]

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Does this scenario describe you over the next few days: at the mall, standing in line as you struggle with all those shopping bags containing presents which will be left under the Christmas tree? It’s the vision retailers are happily painting this year and industry trade groups are more than eager to proclaim that this [...]

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Follow Yahoo!’s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! Three-plus years since the subprime mortgage crisis — aided and abetted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — triggered the collapse of Lehman and bailouts of the big banks and AIG, scant little progress has been made to safeguard the markets, investors or the economy. To add [...]

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