Black Coffee: My Favorite Blogs, Money News & Opinions #33 (Decaf Edition)

It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe…

Blogs I’ve Been Following This Week

Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance. Here’s what caught my attention over the past week…

Boy, am I excited!  This coming Monday, February 15th, I am honored to be hosting the 244th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance.  As you might imagine, I am an extremely busy beaver right now reading all of the great personal finance articles that have been submitted and preparing the write-up.

I can attest to the fact that hosting carnivals can be a labor of love.  For example, I spend close to 16 hours each month preparing for and hosting the Best of the Best in Money and Finance Carnival.  That carnival routinely attracts well over 100 articles per month.  In fact, I just finished hosting that carnival last week.

In comparison, the Carnival of Personal Finance, which I consider to be the creme de la creme of personal finance carnivals, can attract 100 articles per week.

Add it all up and, by tomorrow, I will have read over 200 personal finance articles in less than 10 days.  How I managed to write several other personal finance articles over that same time period is still a mystery to me.

So I hope you’ll forgive me if this week’s edition of Black Coffee is a bit shorter than usual this week.  That’s right, you’re getting decaf this week, whether you like it or not!

Since time is short, I’m going to the lightning round on articles that caught my attention this week (er, that’s on top of the ones that weren’t submitted for Carnival of Personal Finance).

Financial Samurai – Sam rated his top five Super Bowl commercials.   My favorite, which didn’t make his list: The Snickers commercial with Betty White and Abe Vigoda.  Sam had the Monster.com violin-playing beaver on his list – I won’t say where he ranked that one, but it was my second favorite.  I guess you could say the Monster.com commercial ended up playing second fiddle.  As I told Sam, I think that was one of the few times in my adult life that I ever gave preference to something else ahead of the beaver.

20s Money – Kevin wants to know if you are maxed out on personal finance.  In this post, he notes that good personal finance isn’t all about cutting expenses – it’s also about figuring out alternative ways of increasing income.

Bucksome Boomer – Bucksome shares her Craigslist shopping story.  The booty: a very nice  “pre-owned” GE dryer for $85.  No word if it was a “genuine certified pre-owned General Electric dryer.”  Lord, I hope so.

My Life ROI – MLR wrote another excellent resume article.  This one is entitled Take Your Competitive Resume and Tweek the He#$ Out of It! There are some really good tips here, but I am still trying to figure out what offensive word “He#$” could be.   I can’t think of many that start with ‘He…’  Let’s see, there’s “Herpes” and “Hemorrhoids,” but those don’t make sense when you insert them into the title.  Ah, hell – I give up.

The Digerati Life – My gal, The Silicon Valley Blogger, has some advice on do-it-yourself debt reduction programs that suggest a few ways to reduce debt without paying an arm and a leg.  One method she left out: Begging mom and dad for free money.

Darwin’s Finance – Meanwhile, Darwin’s evil twin took over his blog just long enough to announce his very own top secret plan that will allow the United States to corner the world oil market. Mwhahahaha cough cough ha!

Punch Debt in the Face – Although Ninja is only engaged, he’s already showing the signs of battle fatigue already well-known to us hardened veterans of the marriage wars.   Submitted for your approval: This piece on wedding registries from a man’s POV.   Now drop and give me twenty, soldier.

Go Banking Rates – My friends at Go Banking Rates asked this week if we are losing out by not legalizing marijuana?  I think it is safe to say that those of us you who partake in that herb aren’t losing out; the fact that cannabis is illegal is irrelevant to us, I mean you.   The real loser is the taxpayer, as the excellent info-graphic supplied with the piece clearly shows.

The Way-Back Machine: Past Posts You May Have Missed

From May 2009:

Inflation: Why You Should Fear It, and Why the US Wants It – What are you talking about, Len? Ronald Reagan accurately warned us in 1984 to be vigilant against inflation because it can come, “like a thief in the night to rob our savings, rob our earnings, and take the bread off our tables.”  Back then the government had a vested interest in fighting inflation, but not any more.  In this article I explain why that is.  You better prepare yourself because the thief President Reagan was talking about is coming.

Credits and Debits

Credit: Dang.  The Senate Committee Hearing on Global Warming was canceled this week due to the biggest snowstorm in Washington D.C.’s recorded history.

Debit: When temperatures were rising the academics told us it was a clear sign of global warming.  With temperatures dropping during the past decade and, now, record snowstorms up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the same crowd is telling us terrible winters are also a clear sign of global warming.

Credit: Yes, using the record cold and snow to poo poo global warming is as anecdotal as it gets – but no more so than using a string of record setting summers to justify it.  Keep in mind that “the disbelievers” aren’t the one’s making extraordinary claims here; it’s the Al Gores of the world who are.  If the global warming alarmists are to get their way by virtually destroying the world’s major economies with their restrictive “Earth-saving” environmental policies – and killing the developed world’s standard of living in the process – then the burden of proof is on them to show with absolute certainty that global warming is due to man and not simply a part of the Earth’s natural climate cycles.

Debit: On Thursday, Business Week reported that President Obama said he is officially “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.  This is news?  The President is really in a tough spot here and has two options available to him: overtly raise taxes or covertly do the same thing by letting inflation do the dirty work.  The party is over people.  We can’t borrow our way to prosperity any longer.  The piper is here and it’s time to pay up – and we will one way or the other.  With that in mind, I’m still trying to figure out why he refuses to cut back on the government spending too.  When you find yourself stuck in a hole, why keep digging?

Debit: Based on the White House’s own estimates that the US gross federal debt will exceed 100 per cent of GDP in just two years’ time, it is no surprise that an opinion piece in The Financial Times this week predicted a coming Grecian-style sovereign debt crisis that will bring the United States to its knees.  

Credit: A southern Minnesota man created a massive Valentine’s Day gift out of manure in a farm field for his wife of 37 years.  The, um, gift – a giant heart so huge that it has to be seen from the air to be fully appreciated – took two days to create.   When asked where he found enough crap to create such a gigantic ode for his honey, the farmer told Len Penzo dot Com that it wasn’t hard at all – his wife had been giving it to him since they first got married back in 1972.

By the Numbers:

122 The US National Debt as a percentage of GDP in 1946, the year immediately following World War II.

61 The current US National Debt as a percentage of GDP.

10 The percentage of this year’s federal deficit as a percentage of the United States GDP

100 The projected US National Debt in 2012 as a percentage of the United States GDP.  In 1946, after World War II, there was pent-up demand by a nation of debt-free consumers that fueled a tremendous economic expansion; the resulting boom reduced the nation’s record high 122% debt-to-GDP ratio relatively quickly.  This time there isn’t anything like that on the horizon.

383 The interest paid, in billions of dollars, on the National Debt in 2009.  Keep in mind, interest rates are relatively low right now.  When they finally start rising this number will increase quickly and potentially overwhelm the federal budget.

Letters, I Get Letters

It’s feast or famine here in the letters department! I got six letters this week, including one article suggestion from Paul (I am taking you up on your offer, Paul – give me a month or so to create and run the experiment and then write about it) and four from Canadians who answered my request for their thoughts regarding a story I featured in Credits and Debits last week on Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams‘ decision to undergo heart surgery – in the United States.   Specifically, I wanted to know if this was much ado about nothing or a valid indictment against national health care?

Here are some key excerpts from each of those letters regarding the health care issue…

From Mike: “Usually the things you have to wait for (in Canada) are procedures that are not time sensitive. Which doesn’t mean it is fun to have to wait since sometimes it would be good to get them done earlier – either for comfort or peace of mind.  This is one big advantage of the US system in that it is more convenient if you can get things done when you want them. It seems to me that it is an issue of coverage – in Canada, everyone is covered for the big stuff (doctor visits, anything to do with a hospital, i.e., operations) so you don’t have to worry about a major event ruining your finances if you don’t have coverage.”

I’d consider the US system’s quicker service for non-critical procedures a big disadvantage when it comes to colonoscopies.

From James: “The jury is out as to whether or not this is a scathing indictment of our health card system or the fact the surgery may not yet be available in Canada…  I am very happy with our system personally, I have read and heard some horror stories about wait times and screw ups but that is true in the US as well. All in all I think our system is far superior for the majority of patients, but there are obviously flaws as no system is perfect.”

Apparently, James is still waiting at the back of a very long line for his colonoscopy.  I wouldn’t complain either.

From Suzanne: “…the wealthy have always been able to jump lines here by going elsewhere.”

You’re not the only one to tell me that.  If it will make you feel any better, it’s the same story here in Los Angeles for those of us who like to spend our Friday nights at trendy Hollywood night clubs.

From Anne: “I am not bothered by this at all, so why should you be?”

It’s my job to be inquisitive, Anne.  It’s a thankless job – but I’ve got a lot of karma to burn off.

Anyway, thank you everyone for your comments.  Just for writing in, Paul, James, Mike, Suzanne (and even Anne) will all be receiving a CD from my old band, The Relics.   Yep, 15 years after we cut the CD, I still have a few shrink-wrapped copies still hanging around in storage.

If you have a question you’d like to ask, or a comment you’d like to make regarding some of my irritating opinions, please feel free to drop me an e-mail at: Len@LenPenzo.com

I’ll feature the most interesting question or comment I get each week here on Black Coffee – assuming I get one, that is.

If you’re lucky enough to be the only question in the mail bag I’ll highlight your letter, whether it’s interesting or not.

Who knows, you might even win a lame CD.

Other Useless News

Here are the Top 5 referring blogs (excluding aggregators) to Len Penzo dot Com so far during the month of February…

1. Frugal Dad
2. Get Rich Slowly
3. Wisebread
4. Cash Money Life
5. The Simple Dollar

I really appreciate the links, folks!

As a reminder, if you happen to enjoy what you’re reading – or not – please feel free to follow me on Twitter. And don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed too!

Carnival News

This week I had articles featured at the following carnivals:

- The Carnival of Personal Finance at Get Rich Slowly (Where my post was ranked as JD’s least favorite article in the “Finance” category!  I’ve got nowhere to go but up, people.  More proof that I really am the worst personal finance blogger!)