Steadfast Finances

 Business Trends,Consumer Education         10 comments

I’m probably a little biased in this debate having worked as a gene jockey in my undergrad days, but it’s quite disturbing to see the growing number of U.S. farmland being converted to genetically modified food production. For the mathematically lazy, 1 hectare equals 10,000 m². So 66,800,000 hectares of U.S. farmland equates to 6,680,000,000,000 [...]

 Business Trends,Infographics & Chartology         No comments

This is quite possibly my one of my favorite chartporn graphics ever. At first appearance, it’s a graphic on tech gadget purchases (yes, FM radios were once considered high tech), but if you read into it a bit, it’s also a look at the enormous quantity of money that’s been paid by consumers over a [...]

 Business Trends,Small Business,Taxes         No comments

When speaking of financial innovation or the future of money, rarely does the downward trend of paying cold hard cash come up. DiscountWithCash.com hopes to change that… DiscountWithCash.com will be a database of small businesses that rewards its customers for paying cash, and needs your help in finding them. So if you know of a [...]

 Banking,Business Trends,Entrepreneurship,Peer to Peer Lending         No comments

In an older post that made the rounds with the entrepreneurial and innovation crowd, I touched upon the idea that the Internet is making middlemen obsolete. This isn’t a novel concept, but if you’re in a business where you’re acting as an intermediary – a centralized position where you purposely keep your customers away from [...]

 Banking,Business Trends,Real Estate         No comments

In my 2010 financial market predictions, I predicted that strategic defaults (e.g. a homeowner stops making mortgage payments even though they can afford the payments, but feel they have made a bad investment) would be a small trend that continued to gain momentum. Follow up data from PBS Newshour suggests this prediction has been proven [...]

 Business Trends,Career,Economy,Infographics & Chartology         No comments

Gee, anyone else see a long developing trend, followed by a step off the precipice here? Image via Chart Of The Day When people begin to wonder why the rest of the world is catching up to the U.S, and why our middle class is shrinking, you must remember that the majority of the companies [...]

 Advertising,Business Trends,Investing 101,Investor Psychology,Politics,Strategic Planning         No comments

I’m a self-confessed word play nut. I love the wordsmith process because it’s a constantly evolving process that illustrates new or existing concepts, that describes the etiology of new areas of study, and highlights the evolutionary process of how crowdsourcing and groupthink enriches the English lexicon. Not surprisingly, I bookmark like crazy and, sometimes annoyingly, [...]

 Business Trends,Politics         No comments

This sort of irony is just too good to make up… Fresh humiliation for Eurozone as China says it will bail out debt-ridden nations China has said it is willing to bail out debt-ridden countries in the euro zone using its $2.7 trillion overseas investment fund. In a fresh humiliation for Europe, Foreign Ministry spokesman [...]

 Business Trends,Consumer Education         No comments

It’s official… 100% of my Christmas gifts were purchased online. First ever for me. Toys and Dr. Seuss books for the new niece and nephew – all from Amazon.com. College alumni paraphernalia for the sports fans of the family – CollegeFootballStore.com. Books, housewares and electronics – all from Amazon.com Baby picture prints – WalMart.com. Also [...]

 Business Trends,Consumer Education,Personal Finance         2 comments

Being that I loath shopping, I’m among a growing trend of lazy busy Americans who are buying a majority of their Christmas gifts online. As a personal first for me, nearly all of my gifts will be purchased online from Amazon.com this Christmas, but without free shipping, this probably wouldn’t have happened. Here’s why. While [...]

 Economy,Investing 101         1 comment

While Jim Rickards doesn’t have as much game as Master Yoda (he’s close), his discussion of the current currency war between the economic super powers of the world reminded me of an infamous quote from Stars Wars Episode II: Obi-Wan Kenobi: I must admit that without the clones printing presses, it would not have been [...]

 Business Trends,Consumer Education,Personal Finance         No comments

When times are tough, it would appear that cable TV subscribers are cutting the cord/cable. Recent data from 2007 to 2009 suggests that Americans are making due with less, so it’s not surprising that an elastic commodity (e.g. things we don’t absolutely need: chocolate, diamond rings, etc.) like cable TV providers are taking an overall [...]