If you are to believe the pundits and financial commentators the end of the western economic model may be at hand, OK not all of them, but the DOOM and GLOOM and naysayers are out there. Is now the time to panic? No, it is not.
My Musings for the Week
- Crisis in the U.S. Financial Industry Remember the financial crisis of 2008? The hell you do or you wouldn’t be here. Fraud, credit scams and the start of historically low rates.
- Inflation at 3.5% for August 2008 Yikes, now that is real inflation, with the CPI being announced at 3.5% for August 2007-08, and my first reaction is “yikes“.
- Election Update: Only 1 Sign So Far What was going on in 2008? There was an election, I was laid off from Nortel, my bank account was frozen and other stuff? No wonder I was stressed!
- Job Hunting Update Job hunting is never easy, and I did keep a log of my search between 2008 and 2009, in the end networking was important.
- Sunday Thought: What is Giving? It’s easy to think of Charity only in monetary terms, because that is how many of us think of what charity is, giving of our monetary wealth.
- Indicators are OK Our friends at Stats Canada published their Leading Indicators for August 2008 yesterday and things in the Canadian economy seem to be doing ok, not great, but not as bad as some might think.
- Stupidest Bill Ever Check all of your bills.
- Debit Card Fraud and TD Sometimes the Toronto Dominion (TD) bank get it right (not often, unfortunately, but sometimes).
- Cash is King as a Budgeting Tool When it comes to budgeting and controlling spending cash is king, and should be your fallback to making sure you don’t spend too much on the wrong things.
- Students and Taxes What are the implications about students and taxes ? There are some obvious tax credits, but maybe some other things to think about.
- End of Week 1 in Election All I can say is I am glad that the Canadian Elections are only about a month long, unlike our American cousins who can revel in them for almost two years.
- Election 2008 Predictions? The 2008 Election looked like it was the Liberals to lose, and they did. The Tories snuck back into power, with the NDP holding the balance.
- Election Plank: Household Income One of my favourite topics to discuss with anyone political is: why is it that the Canadian Tax system seems to be skewed against the single income family?
- Statistics and Damn Lies There are lies, damn lies, and stock predictions keeps running through my mind. Disraeli wasn’t far off on this thought.
- Election Time! Now remember this is a historic view of the 2008 Election (Federal that is). Also when Google turned 10 years old, wild times.
- Sunday Thought: Diligence in Financial Planning Will Pay off Planning in life and in specific financial planning is important.
- Take the Pension or Leave it? #Redux Should you leave your money in your company pension or take it out. In my case the Pension was failing, so I took it out.
- Toronto Dominion Bank Bungles Another One As my regular readers know, I complain about TD very often, since they are my bank of choice (for now), and I am also a shareholder, and I must again pull out this topic.
- Canadian Bank Rates are Unchanged Bank of Canada, today announced no changes in their overnight rates, which stands to reason.
- Back to School University Style Back to school costs are quite high, but when your kids are going to University those costs can end up being astronomical.
- Happy Labor Day Today we celebrate the workers control of the means of production, or Labor Day !
- Debt is Bad in the Bible Too? The bible does seem to have an opinion about finances, and Debt is Bad is the simple interpretation to take.
- Long Weekend Gas Prices Long Weekend Gas Prices I note the gas prices in Ottawa have inched their way back up by about 11 cents in the past few days, in preparation for the long weekend.
- BMO and Scotiabank Numbers Stink BMO Numbers Stink Is now the time to buy then? I have no bloody idea, but it is an interesting question to ask.
- Financial Planners an opinion Historical article from the period when I was laid off from Nortel, and then had to figure out what to do next.
- Financial Olympics? After watching athletes work hard to reach their goals, I feel invigorated to attempt new financial goals of my own.
From the Blogosphere:
- Preet over at Where Does All My Money Go writes today about the single largest bank failure in the U.S. so far and how in Canada we have only had 2 small banks fail since the early 1900s.
- Michael James on Money wrote about Understanding the Current Financial Mess, at first I thought he was writing about my finances, but found out it was a Big Picture story .
- Ellen Roseman write about How to Invest in a Bear Market (two), pick your “bargains” wisely.
No Fraud Payback Yet
Still have no resolution on the fraud on my bank account, and no payback from my bank yet either. Hopefully this can all be cleared up fairly soon.
Thanks for the link. Funny to think that AAA rated debt which went bad is the same rating a Government gets… Hope something is done about the ratings agencies. Seems possible that investors just assumed they knew what they were doing.
Stop aiming low, you need to shoot for the fences, you can squander that much money, I have confidence in you!!!
Thanks for the link. I don’t want to appear greedy. I’ll accept a low, low, $7 million for some bad debt.
Give me a week, I can blow that kind of cash in Vegas in less than a week, but, there can’t be any video of it!
That is more than Canada’s National Debt, the Canadian Government could blow that much, and end up about $100B ahead of the game, which they’d blow on Hockey Cards and Penny Whistles
Thanks for the link. Any ideas how we could create some bad debt for the US government to buy from us at inflated prices to get our slice of the $700 billion?