Wal-Mart heir John Walton died Monday when his ultralight aircraft crashed after taking off from an airport in Jackson, Wyoming. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Money
We Don’t Have the Money, So We Have to Think
We don’t have the money, so we have to think. — Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford was an illustrious scientist — the 1908 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and the father of nuclear physics. His humble upbringing as the fourth in a family of 12 children in rural New Zealand influenced his approach to science, as summarized in the above quote. A recruiter called me today about a job managing an $80 million IT project. How in the world can you spend $80 million on an IT project?! I could put your company logo on Mars for $80 million. Most of the big, expensive IT projects that I’m familiar with, there really was no reason for them to take so long or cost so much. A lot of time and money could have been saved with some upfront thinking. I get a lot of this now — recruiters asking me if I… Read more →
Often-Repeated Lies
A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. — Lenin As the GOP drifts further to the right, and becomes more starkly the party of the wealthy, it is gaining support among the working class. I have never seen a wholly satisfactory explanation for this trend, which now spans two generations. . . . Republicans, of course, will argue that it’s simply the working man’s understanding that the GOP has the better argument, i.e., that the best way to help the working class is to shower the rich with tax breaks. But the Bush administration has been showering the rich with tax breaks for more than four years, and the working class has nothing to show for it. — Timothy Noah, “Conservatism As Pathology” Read more →
OC Real Estate Report
I recently sold a house in Laguna for $3.5 million. It was on about 2,000 square feet of land, maybe a twentieth of an acre, and the house might cost about $500,000 if you wanted to replace it. So the land sold for something like $60 million an acre. — Warren Buffett Read more →
Evidence?!
Explanations of daily changes in aggregate stock market indices are among the most ridiculous, speculative, and uncertain causal inferences made by journalists . . . Read more →
Mister Lucky
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. — Matthew 19:24 Is money a guarantee of happiness? Read more →
Into the Digital Abyss
The Globe and Mail reports that a “small but determined group of computer geeks [is] trying to translate open-source software into African languages, in an effort to reach the continent most isolated by the digital divide.” Read more →
Now That You Mention It
From a Wall Street Journal article on excessive lender processing fees: An application fee? Charges for document preparation? An “administration” fee? They even want you to pay their postage. I’m surprised lenders aren’t charging for in-office backrubs for overworked loan officers. Ho Ho! Actually, the mortgage bank I work with does subsidize 50 percent of the cost of in-office massages . . . Read more →
Wasted Time
There was a profile of Jerry Buss, the owner of the Lakers, on TV the other night . . . Buss spent very little time with his family when his kids were growing up. When he and his wife separated, they didn’t tell the kids, and it was five years before any of them noticed the difference. True story! Clearly, I have not been nearly as ruthless as I could have been at disregarding my family in my pursuit of success. Read more →
Thanks, Bill!
Microsoft said Tuesday that it will boost its dividend, buy back shares and offer a $3-per-share one-time payout as part of a plan to return up to $75 billion to shareholders over the next four years. — “Microsoft to share its wealth with investors,” CNET News.com Bill Gates announced that he will donate his share of the proceeds — he owns over 1 billion shares, so that comes to $3+ billion — to charity. Read more →
Lost and Found
We lost our dog the other morning. My wife thought the boy was watching him and he thought she was watching him . . . it turns out no one was watching him, so he ran out the front door and disappeared. Read more →
HW Solves Two of the Thorniest Problems in American Education
Racial Gaps On average, black students who graduate from high school are equipped with the skills the average white student mastered by the eighth grade, according to federal tests. — “Equal access to schools fails to equalize education,” USA Today Blah blah blah . . . Read more →
Other People’s Money
The ability to ignore costs is at the heart of the attraction of government for some and of the expansion of government over time. Anything that might conceivably be of some benefit to someone, sometime, is worth doing, if someone else is paying. In our own lives, we pass up all sorts of benefits when we decide that they are just not worth their cost. Maybe we would like to have a new car or add another room onto the house or take a vacation in the Caribbean but it may not be worth what it would cost. So we keep driving the old jalopy, get used to not having a den and take in a few ball games during the summer instead of going on a cruise. Life is full of trade-offs when it is your own money. — Thomas Sowell Read more →
Warren Buffett Gets the Last Laugh
Warren Buffett published his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders this week: Our gain in net worth during 2003 was $13.6 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 21%. Over the last 39 years (that is, since present management took over) per-share book value has grown from $19 to $50,498, a rate of 22.2% compounded annually. Read more →
Market Recap for Dummies
Explanations of daily changes in aggregate stock market indices are among the most ridiculous, speculative, and uncertain causal inferences made by journalists. — Edward Tufte My son was looking over my shoulder as I checked my online portfolio tracker . . . The Dow was down, the Nasdaq was down, the S&P was down, all the stocks I own or track were down, nothing but red numbers from top to bottom. Read more →
A Moron’s Guide to Success
You could easily conclude from reading profiles in OC Metro that there’s not a single businessperson in Orange County with an ounce of wit or self-awareness. Case in point: A profile in the current issue of “surfing banker” John Lynch, executive VP of Secured Funding Corp. in Costa Mesa. The hook is — he’s a banker but he surfs every morning before work, and he says things like “Hey bro,” “We rock,” and “I never took a day of college.” Read more →
Forgive Us Our Debts
I got an email today with the subject line “Even Christians have financial problems,” advertising “debt counseling from a Christian perspective.” Where did the idea come from that Christians should be immune from financial problems? Jesus had to walk at night because he couldn’t afford a pair of shoes. Talk about a guy with financial problems . . . Read more →
Existentialism in the Cafeteria
HOLDINGFORD, MINN. — Millionaire dishwasher Kathy Welle seemed incredulous as she stared into the TV cameras and explained why sharing a $95.5 million Powerball jackpot with 15 fellow Holdingford schools cafeteria workers wasn’t reason enough to quit her $9-an-hour job. “And I don’t plan to quit my other job, driving a school bus for the district, either,” Welle said Tuesday. “What else would I do? What else would any of us do?” — “Powerball winners keep working in Holdingford schools,” Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune Read more →
I Don’t Care About Your Car
I don’t care what kind of car you drive, what kind of a deal you got on it, the gas mileage, how fast it goes . . . Here’s why: Read more →
The Latte Factor
Is $1 million really better than a good cup of coffee? Someone has trademarked the phrase “The Latte Factor,” referring to his claim that you could save the $3.50 a day you’re spending on little things like coffee, invest it, and wind up with millions of dollars. I don’t doubt that under a certain set of assumptions, that’s true — although under another set of assumptions, you could invest the money and lose it all, in which case you’ve got no lattes and no money). Read more →