Regular readers of Bad Money Advice will not be surprised to hear that I prefer numbers to words. (Allegations that I prefer computers to people, however, are greatly exaggerated.) I think this is a natural inclination. Any halfway thoughtful 
person favors evidence over feeling, and numbers have the appearance of being hard facts.
But not all published numbers are factual, even when widely repeated in respectable places. Which presents a difficulty for us lovers of digits. How can we separate the real from the realish? Not to worry, because today I am revealing for the first time my Law of Numerical Fiction which will help identify the imposters.
To be successful, that is, repeated widely as if it were true, a fake number must satisfy three criteria.
Read more »
There now seems to be a consensus that the collapse of Lehman Brothers last fall was the watershed moment of the Great Recession. What exactly happened and why will be a hot button topic in some circles for many years to come. Books and websites will argue the the government should/shouldn’t/couldn’t have saved it. In a decade or so some professor of economic history will probably write a book about how it wasn’t that important an event after all. And inevitably some cranks will come up with a conspiracy
theory linking the whole thing to the Chinese government or orbital mind control lasers.
That’s all in the future. In the here and now the big arguments about the Lehman failure are over the pathetically small morsels of flesh still left on the carcass. In as much as Lehman still exists, it exists as a small band of people with the grim task of liquidating what is left, trying to get the payout to Lehman’s remaining creditors increased to, say, two cents on the dollar from one cent.
Lehman expired owing $200 billion it couldn’t pay. Its brokerage business and real estate (a.k.a. the only big obvious bits worth anything) were sold in a hurry to Barclays a few days after the bankruptcy. Barclays paid $1.54 billion, which may sound like a big check to write under the circumstances, but amongst the assets they got $4 billion in securities and cash. It was thought at the time that along with the assets went matching liabilities, including equipment leases, money owed employees, etc.
Read more »
It’s not turning car companies into government agencies that bothers me so much as turning the government into a car company. And not a car manufacturer, you understand. I mean a car dealer. The kind with the big lot on the edge of town covered in balloons and promoted incessantly by radio 
commercials with catchy jingles.
This trend kicked off in March when the president announced new car warranties backed by the government. That was on top of an assortment of other incentives then in place to get folks to come on down and kick the tires, such as a temporary deduction for state sales taxes and tax credits (a. k. a. rebates) for hybrids.
The latest gimmick under consideration by our national dealership is a version of the old "we’ll pay you $1000 for any trade" scheme. Working its way through Congress is a cash-for-clunkers promotion. Turn in any drivable car with mileage at least 10 MPG worse than what you are buying to replace it and Crazy Uncle Sam will pay you $4500. Hurry hurry hurry. At these prices these deals just won’t last.
Read more »
It’s the first Friday of the month, so it’s time to review all the exciting recent developments in the frugalosphere.
May was a month of themes, some old, some new. In the old category there was the ongoing frugal controversy over toilet paper. We were cheered to read that a California county stopped buying four-ply tissue. Much of 
California’s current budgetary troubles are no doubt traceable to this luxury. And the Frugal Duchess shared a related tip: flatten the roll "a bit" so it doesn’t roll so easily and waste paper.
But then One Caveman’s Financial Journey had a long and well researched post making the case that, in the long run, more expensive toilet paper is actually cheaper. Apparently, his research shows that a person uses less of the good stuff, resulting in a net savings of $0.002 (a fifth of a penny) per bathroom visit. We will have to wait for other frugal scientists to reproduce these results before we accept his findings.
Read more »
Many years ago (19 to be exact) an otherwise unknown research firm put out a report on the average amount of time spent during an American’s life doing various mundane tasks. It was presented in terms of years, so many years spent watching TV, so many washing dishes, and so on. The media loved it 
and widely reported the numbers along with the obvious commentary that we Americans were wasting our lives with trivia and drudgery.
Except that to anybody who thought to do some simple math in their head, the numbers were hilariously implausible. I wish I could find a copy of the report now, but this was in the pre-internet dark ages. My possibly faulty recollection is that they said we spend an average of 6 years in the bathroom.
If you don’t think about it, and want to write about how we spend too much time alone in a tiny room, 6 years sounds just believable enough to use. But if you do some quick calculations, you realize something is very wrong. Assume the average life expectancy is 72. (About right and it makes the math easy.) Then each year of your life is 20 minutes per day. Two hours a day in the bathroom? Every day? Average?
Read more »
person favors evidence over feeling, and numbers have the appearance of being hard facts.
Government, Media, Musings, Taxes, The Big Picture | Frank Curmudgeon | 
June 26, 2009 12:30 pm | 
Comments (1,017) 
Subscribe