bigmoney

The Oil Sands: Profiting from a Misunderstood Patch in the Oil Complex

@ Mad Hedge F

I also saw that National Geographic. What confuses me is the chorus of peak oil deny'ers, even with the oil majors are searching the far end of the globe for oil. Deep water, polar, war zones, sands, shale, etc. If oil was so abundant, then we could just sink some additional rigs in West Texas and get the entire world into V8 powered SUVs and a suburban way of life.

Why Did Economists Fail to Predict the Crisis?

this one is easy ~ group think.

personality also factors in. There are perma-bulls (extroverted sales types), and perma-bears (introverted bookish types), but rare are those that can easily move between the camps as conditions change.

Uh-Oh: Banks to Stop Accepting California’s IOUs

either accept California IOU's, or the Terminator will get you.

The Terminator: I need your clothes, boots and your motorcycle.
Cigar Biker: You forgot to say please...

Is the Free Version of Google Apps History?

I'm not sure I understood this article. Looking at the chart above, it looks like Google Apps will stay free. The $50 version, Premier gets you 99% uptime, tech support, more disk space and access to API.

How Precious Metals Can Preserve Your Wealth

@OldNavySailor:

there actually are things that will weigh coins. Some are cheap, and use balance to measure a coins weight. If they are adulterated, then it messes up the balance. Others, are just fancy scales, that measure in tens or hundreths of a gram.

and you can keep coins in a safe deposit

the physical gold market is not very liquid. You may or may not find a decent coin shop near you. It will probably be very unlikely for you to ever barter your coins for goods and services as most people won't understand or trust gold. They won't know what "spot value" is, or whether the bullion is real.

What's Driving Single Family Home Investors?

what are the price to rent ratios on these houses?

How Public Pension Funds Avoid the Truth

why do government employees get such plush pensions? Ditch the pensions, and if they don't like it, they can get a job in the private sector. The only time a pension makes sense is for those that have dangerous jobs, such as police, fire, and military, which is probably a tiny fraction of all government employees.

Religious Muslims Now Have an ETF to Call Their Own

We need a redneck ETF, that also excludes financials (international banksters), but includes guns, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pit bulls, strip clubs, and miscellaneous "survival gear".

States Starting to Realize 'Amazon Tax' Won't Save Them

Amazon rocks, in part due to tax advantage. I'd almost be for sales tax, but guaranteed the state legislatures are just going to pork up even fatter. More bloat, more heartburn, more pepto. Government really needs to go on a diet.

Why Employment Retraining Programs May Not Work

there may be a number of things going on. I notice that some older folks seem to be much more set in their ways, mentally, which means they will scoff at things that they should be taking more seriously. In addition, being older, they are more accomplished, with more self-confidence, and with that comes a sense of entitlement. They may be "hungry", in the sense of needing a good job, but they don't have the attitude and energy of the truly hungry.

Choosing an ETF Indexing Strategy

PRF trails SPY sometimes, and leads other times, at least according to my yahoo chart. Seems to be a wash in the end. Or maybe i am not comparing apples to apples?

Why I'm Bullish on Brink's Home Security

these sort of companies might be like a put option on society. As society becomes "coarser", shady characters proliferate, and anxiety increases, they will want more and more security.

This Economy Is Getting Uglier

what inflation? Helicopter Ben was lampooned throwing cash out of helicopters, presumably getting cash into the hands of eager consumers. However, just trucking cash over to bloated banks who just give their execs even fatter bonus's isn't inflationary.

Flee 'Safety', Embrace 'Risk': The Case for Muni Bond Funds

what about buying a muni ETF, such as MUB, and then putting a stop order behind it? If its stable, then you earn interest slightly better than SHY. If Cali defaults, I'm guessing it will tank MUB, and trip the stop.

The Looming Facebook Privacy Fiasco

there seems to be a bell curve for personality and privacy. Some people don't care about privacy at all, and post nude photos of themselves, including zoomed in close ups of private parts. Many of these women even have wedding rings on. And some people prefer to keep their work lives separate from social lives, etc. This probably has roots in extroversion / introversion.

for Facebook, the majority are probably indifferent to privacy, and get pulled into the privacy (or lack of) vortex by the "lets all get naked" extroverts.