It may surprise some readers to discover that I am recommending that people study real estate investing, in light of my previous posts such as Real Estate Is Not Done Falling.  However, those posts merely mean that I do not recommend investing in real estate in the United States right now.  Long-term,...

I received an email notice from Amazon terminating my participation in the Amazon Associates program. I have been earning around $120 a month from this program, by placing ads for recommended books on various web sites that I own.  This was a nice bonus for recommending good products from a company...

Most Americans are wondering if home prices have bottoms out or if they will continue to fall.  The obvious answer is that they will continue to fall, and that answer comes from two important (and simple) pieces of data. The first is a comparison of median home price to median income.  Everyone’s...

SeekingAlpha published an article, Sovereign Debt Default Risk Declines Significantly, which contained an interesting chart for investors. The chart list major nations of the world and the cost of insuring money loaned to each of the nations.  If you loan $1,000 to Venezuela, you can insure your risk...

If you’re one of the minority of Americans who has a job and drives to work every day, I have a suggestion that could make better use of your drive time. The folks from the Cato Institute are now putting together  daily podcasts to which you can download and listen.  They also share podcasts...

The situation in the United States looks bleak as the country completes the first year of what will most likely become known as The Second Great Depression.  At the same time, our friends in Europe are showing encouraging signs of recovery. Over the last few years, the voters of Germany, France, and...

Award winning economist Steven Levitt and bestselling author Stephen Dubner have teamed up again to create a followup to their phenomenal hit Freakonomics.  In these two tomes, the authors show how seemingly irrational decisions are actually the result of misunderstood but entirely rational economic...