How the Wall Street Journal Covers the Economy

There’s a great bit of unintentional media self-mockery at CNN.com.  It’s a profile of, and video interview with, one of the principal economics reporters at the Wall Street Journal.  She’s 23, perky, suspiciously videogenic, and has 18 months of professional experience.   She explains her job thusly:

I take really jargon-heavy reports and turn them into ‘No one is ordering U.S. products. So that’s why U.S. manufacturing jobs are being cut. So that’s why your cousin is out of a job.’

Sometimes the blog just writes itself.

Is Owning or Renting Best?

There was a time when owning the roof over your head was considered an attainable and wholesome mark of prosperity for American families.  See, for example, the higher calling for which George Bailey gives up his youth in It’s a Wonderful Life.  (In retrospect, George was making sub-prime loans from a dangerously over-leveraged and illiquid bank.  It was a simpler time.)  Over the decades conventional wisdom on home ownership morphed from wholesome goal to sound idea, then to great idea, and finally to such a great idea that it was practically free money.

Then it all went kablooey, and conventional wisdom started denying that it ever said any such thing.  It’s really not clear what mainstream advice on home ownership is right now.  Big time gurus like Suze Orman and David Bach (author of, among other bestselling titles, The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner) now spend time cautioning people about the dangerous waters of home buying and contradict, without apology or even acknowledgement, advice they gave a few years back to jump in with both feet.  (See excellent article on this at the Wall Street Journal here, and my discussion of Orman’s latest book here.)

So perhaps now is as good a time as any to step back, push aside the headlines of the day, and reconsider if owning the place you live in is a good idea in principle or if maybe renting has gotten a bum rap all these years.  Moreover, it’s worth asking if owning vs. renting is a question that should have a general one-size-fits-all answer.

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Forbes.com Taken to Task

I’m just back from a week’s vacation, all rested and ready to blog.  The big event while I was gone was a really positive post about Bad Money Advice on Get Rich Slowly, which I earned by taking several cheap shots at it the week before I left.  The mention brought a significant bump in traffic, which was unfortunately met by the blog equivalent of a “Gone Fishin” sign.  Sorry about that. I’m back now, and I’ll have a real post up first thing in the morning.

In the meantime, one of my newly acquired fans sent me a link to a post on CreditMattersBlog that’s right up Bad Money Adivce’s alley, about some very sloppy journalism at Forbes.com, an outlet that really ought to know better.

Five Blogs and a Book

I’m still in sunny Florida standing on line with the kids at Disney.  So no combing the frugalosphere for tips this week.  Instead, here are some largely pointless but weirdly amusing links you might enjoy.

Cheaper and easier than college:  Smugopedia

A place I could have put my last four posts, but didn’t: Halfbakery

Laugh at missing limbs: PhotoshopDisasters

One the most famous books nobody has actually read: All Work

A blog about stuff that could be called neat, but is mostly weird: Neatorama

And winner of this month’s WTF prize, blog division:  Scanwiches

Feel free to add a link to your own favorite dark corner of the web in the comments.

I’ll be back to my old tricks Monday.

King Francis: Marriage

I’m on vacation this week, taking the little Curmudgeons to Disney World.   So I am lightening the blog load by posting some somewhat off-topic items that I wrote in advance.   Since I may literally be in Fantasyland when you read this, I am taking as my theme one of my favorite fantasies, that I am King of America and can rearrange things as I see fit.  Today, the topic is government recognition of marriage.

When I am king, there shall be no government sanctioned marriages.  Adults may have whatever domestic arrangements they like, blessed or not by the religious organization of their choice, but this will have no impact on their legal rights, the taxes they pay, or the benefits they receive from any government program.

Every time I see or read some impassioned friend or foe of same-sex marriage make their case I keep asking myself why so much energy goes into  something so entirely symbolic.   It is as if the concept of a marriage license was invented just so we could have something to fight over.  So I say  enough.  Do what you like.  It’s a free country.  (Except that it is ruled my me, your king.)