A Indiana billboard misspelling has the nation giggling. The billboard in South Bend was intended to show how marvellous the schools were in their city, but as you can see below, the billboard conveyed a very different message.
It's amazing how important one letter can be...
From Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture Blog, comes 7 ways to fix the economy:
1) One Year Payroll Tax Holiday: Want to increase job creation and reduce unemployment? Tax it less. A 12 month employer FICA holiday will encourage job creation.
How to pay for it: Raising both the retirement age and the cap on FICA contributions.
2) Capital Investment 1 year 100% Deduction: The administration has already proposed a variation on this. It was an effective tax credit when done in 2004-05, but the drawback was it encouraged CapEx over new hiring. The idea of the payroll tax holiday is that it prevents that drawback.
How to pay for it: Via gains from the Corporate Tax-Free Repatriation (#3)
3) Corporate Tax-Free Repatriation: US corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars of cash in their overseas divisions. A one year tax holiday to bring that back to the US. It can be structured in tiers (0%, 5%, 10%). The goal should be to bring to the US a trillion plus in overseas profits.
How to pay for it: Its free; These are overseas revenues that are untaxed by the US.
4) Pure Science R&D Program for Alternative Energy: Gains in the basic science of solar energy conversion, battery storage, alternative biofuels, etc has been incremental. The private sector does not patience for multi-year or basic science R&D.
How to pay for it: Via a Pigouvian tax on gasoline, phased in over 5 or 10 years.
5) Mortgage Principal Write Down Plan: Buyers paid too much, banks lent too much against residences at the top of the RE cycle. To get the sector healthy again requires prices to normalize, which is now occurring thru Foreclosure. An alternative is a voluntary principal write-down, where both the borrower and lender split the losses. An underwater home is refinanced at its 2011 appraisal value, with the mortgage shortfall rolled into a 10 year interest free balloon payment. Banks cut the balloon loan in half in year 10, rolling it into the existing mortgage (assuming the owner stays current on mortgage).
How to pay for it: There is no costs, but Congress would need to make the 10 year zero interest free tax free, and permission the banks to defer reserving for eventual balloon defaults for the same 10 year period.
6) Electrical Grid Refurbishment: This is both an economic and national security issue: The electrical grid is an unreliable mishmash of public and private ownership, vulnerable to both blackouts and cyber-attacks. It needs to be upgraded yesterday.
How to pay for it: A one cent per kilowatt hour grid tax.
7) Airports, Ports, Roads, Bridges, Tunnels: The US was one of the first nations to build out a massive interstate highway system. We love big construction projects, but we seem to dislike the maintenance. Most of the transportation grid in the US is falling apart, in need of a massive repair. Many US airports look like they are from 3rd world countries.
How to pay for it: Usage tolls on roads, ports, bridges, landing slots.
From: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/economic-stimulus-try-these-7-ideas/
From: http://www.luxist.com/2010/09/15/dunhills-biometric-wallet/
The wallet has traditionally been a low-tech device but not anymore as biometrics is changing the way we carry money. Dunhill has come out with their own version of the Biometric Wallet that promises to keep your money, id, and credit cards safe from thieves even if they pick your pocket. A carbon fiber exterior keeps things light but unbreakable while a biometric finger-print lock keeps the contents under wraps to all but the owner. And for even more high-tech protection you can connect the wallet to your cell phone via Bluetooth and get an alert if the wallet finds itself too far for comfort (i.e. you've been robbed or dropped it somewhere).
Great infographic that displays the cost of being an NFL and how it has risen over time:
http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/nfl-tickets-2010-083010/?display=wide
A very interesting look at your portfolio's performance if you remove the 10 best & 10 worst single days of trading:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/missing-best-worst-days-of-sp500/
NY Times: How to End the Great Recession
Newsweek: Young Adults Investing Cautiously
Slate: The Gender Pay Gap
This following chart shows the cost of college tuition compared to historical housing prices and the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI is designed to track our cost of living by estimating the average price of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Everything was normalized to 100 starting in 1978:
- According to a Gallup poll in 1999, 18% believed that the earth was the center of the universe. On a side note, 3% said "no opinion". For some reason those folks could not be bothered with such pedestrian quandaries.
- As of a couple years ago, nearly one-third of Texans believed that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth at the same time.
- A 2004 study showed that 51% of Americans believed in Creationism. Over half of the people in this country thought humans just showed up one day and were ready for homeschooling.
Which leads me to the most recent study illuminating some very interesting perceptions. According to a new Pew Research Center study, 18% of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, and 43% don't know what religion he prescribes to. Only 34% can correctly identify him as a Catholic.
From: http://www.funnyordie.com/lists/1750272a44/ridiculous-things-americans-believe?playlist=featured_documents
A spoof website very much like The Onion, CAP News is always capable of providing a good laugh:
http://www.crystalair.com/index.php
Some of the top stories from today:
Facebook Introduces New 'Mulligan' Button
Palin Names "The Situation" As 2012 Running Mate
Tiger Woods Converting To Islam "For The Virgins"
Microsoft's Allen Sues For Being Less Cool Than Apple
What’s the hardest word to solve in Hangman?
Jon McLoone, director of business development for Wolfram Research was inspired to investigate the English language’s hardest-to-guess word after his six-year-old daughter asked him how she could beat her Hangman computer game.
To find out, McLoone wrote a program that would play Hangman with all 90,000 words in the dictionary, attempting to guess each one in a semi-random way similar to a method a good human player might use. In total, he simulated some 15 million Hangman games, tying up several office PCs for a weekend in the process.
“Difficult,” for example, isn’t very difficult to guess at all, taking on average 3.3 wrong guesses per game -- not even close to losing. Contrary to his expectations, McLoone found that shorter words were harder to guess than longer words, and the fewer pieces you use in your Hangman drawing, the truer that gets.
And the hardest of all? “Jazz,” which topped the rankings in all the variations of the basic game he tried.
McLoone also lists the top 25 hardest Hangman words, according to his program. Words with double Zs or Fs, like “buzzer” or “faff” rank high, but he suggests players pick longer words to fool their opponents.
From: http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/hangman-s-hardest-word-discovered/1408256
Is America preparing to emulate the fall of the Roman Empire???
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/07/26/when_will_the_us_go_the_way_of_rome__98588.html