A Pandemic of Fear

The recent swine flu (er, H1N1 virus) outbreak has reminded me a lot of our economy here over the last few days.  Is there a real problem?  Yes.  If you catch the swine flu, could it be serious?  Yes.  Is the size of the swine flu anywhere near the pandemic the media is making it [...]

The Death of Equities

This was the Business Week headline on August 13, 1979. Almost 30 years ago we were asking similar questions as we are today. I agree that the events that got us to the situation we are in today are different in some ways than past events. However at the same time as we look back [...]

Making Your Extra Paycheck Cash Pay

Obama’s new “Making Work Pay” plan has been officially enacted, and you should have noticed a nice little bump in your takehome pay over the last several paychecks (assuming you’re not making a boatload of money already; it gets phased out).  The tax credit is essentially a $800 tax break for married couples ($400 for [...]

What the Recession is For

I recently listened to John Piper’s sermon on What the recession is for. I thought it was excellent and worth passing along. He delivers a message about God’s purposes in the Recession.  Pastor John  gives 5 purposes of the Recession. 1. To Expose Sin and Bring Repentance 2. To Awaken us to World Poverty 3. To Relocate the Roots [...]

The Crisis of Credit – Visualized

What is a “collateralized debt obligation”?  What does it mean to “securitize” debt?  We’ve all heard many of the fancy terms that supposedly got us into this financial mess, but there’s no one who seems to want to bother explaining it all.  It would probably take us about 20 posts to do a mediocre job [...]