Why the Poor Will Always Be With Us

The Naked Economist (and no ladies, he is not actually naked in the picture, disappointing I know) in his most recent Yahoo Finance Article made this comment: The living wage: Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in America earned at least $12 to $15 an hour? I think it would be. The fact that America’s (more…)

Round ’em Up

Thought I’d share a few articles I found over the past week or two, that I think are worth a read. We have two articles from BusinessWeek. The first one profiling great companies with which to launch one’s career. Lucky me I work for one of them ;-). Content is still King, but it seems (more…)

The Spontaneous Combustion of a Hedge Fund: Amaranth

Natural Gas Fire?The big news this week has been the failure of the hedge fund Amaranth. Reports are stating that, in just a few days, the fund’s value fell about 50% from a high of $9.5 Billion. The fund is down “just” 35% on the year, thanks to a nice 25% gain last month. Most of the funds early gains and eventual losses were from heavy bets on natural gas derivatives.

At this level, many expect the fund to break up. The quick liquidation of the Amaranth’s assets (and everyone else who is worried by it) is playing havoc on the markets. Here is some interesting coverage I’ve come across:

Pheedo: Ads for Your RSS Feeds

PheedoPheedo places text ads into your RSS feed. Publishers are paid for click-throughs and ad impressions. For publishers with a substantial readership through RSS, this is a great option for monetizing traffic that may not always make it to your site.

We have integrated Pheedo into our RSS feeds here at InvestorGeeks and think that you should consider it for your own sites. (Apologies to any of our feed readers who may have witnessed some anomalies in our feed as we switched things over.)

Credit and Debt: Did you know…

Whether it’s due to bad or irrational decisions, youthful naiveté, a bad streak of luck, or situations totally beyond our control, we’re all faced with mounting debt at some point.

If it gets bad enough, some of us may even have to work with our creditors to forgive some of our debt just to remain solvent. But did you know that getting a break on your debt could greatly effect your tax situation? How about the effect of accepting a settlement offer has on your credit report?

Pension Reform Bill Saves the Stock Market

Today President Bush signed into law a bill that is designed to encourage 401K participation. There are many good points to this bill and estimates are that it will increase the number of people participating in retirement plans. The numbers are still foggy but you are looking at anywhere from 30% to more then double (more…)

Wal-Mart Buying a Revolution?

It was Thomas Jefferson who said: “Every generation needs a Revolution.” He was, of course, talking about the fact that every few years there comes a time where the old administration must be replaced by a newer one in order for our nation and liberty to survive. Every four years this nation has an opportunity for a revolution of sorts.

Soon in 2008, whether you love them or hate them, the old administration will be gone. What does this mean for the investor? It is impossible to predict all the possibilities that will flood in when a new President, and therefore a new vision, takes the oath on those gleaming white steps. Wal-Mart however is hedging its bets.

Should You Submit Your Blog to TheMoneyBlogs.com?

Howard Lindzon “smells a rat” at TheMoneyBlogs.com:

I called Brice (owner of TheMoneyBlgs), who picked up his own phone and asked him some questions. I immediately smelled a rat. Trading Markets will take my content and brand it in moneyblog design and keep all the advertising dollars from the aggregated data.

I love blogging and don’t mind doing it for free, but this is just plain sneaky.

If you run an investing, personal finance, business, or “money” blog, you’ve probably gotten an email from Brice Wightman of TheMoneyBlogs.com. InvestorGeeks got one, and we initially signed up since we’re proud of the relationship we have with a similar service pfblogs.org. But once we found that TheMoneyBlogs would not include a link back to our site the original article, we immediately removed ourselves from their network.

So how can you make these aggregators work for you? Find out how some people are trying to make TheMoneyBlogs work them. More importantly, I’ll go through some questions you can ask yourself to determine up front if a blog aggregator is really offering a win-win situation.