by Bob Veres Dealing With US Debt If you want to watch something alarming, look at the U.S. Debt Clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/), which calculates, second-by-second, America’s rising debt (approaching $14 trillion), federal spending (nearly $3.5 trillion a year) and budget deficit (roughly $1.3 trillion).  Second-by-second the numbers increase, and you can also watch (more slowly) the [...]

The Monopoly board game originated during the Great Depression. At first its inventor, Charles Darrow, could not interest manufacturers. Parker Brothers turned the game down, citing “52 design errors.” But Darrow produced his own copies of the game, and Parker Brothers finally bought Monopoly. By 1935, the New York Times was reporting that “leading all other board games … is the season’s craze, ‘Monopoly,’ the game of real estate.”
Most of us are familiar with the object of Monopoly: the accumulation of property on which one places houses and hotels, and from which one receives revenue. Many of us have a favorite token. Perennially popular is the top hat, which symbolizes the sort of wealth to which Americans who work hard can aspire. The top hat is a token that has remained in the game, even while others have changed over the decades.
One’s willingness to play Monopoly depends on a few conditions—for instance, a predictable number of “Pay Income Tax” cards.

One of the biggest take-aways from the recent market meltdown, for many people, was the rediscovery of many kinds of fun that don’t cost money–a lot of the things that people did years ago before the advent of 3D movies, gourmet restaurants, traveling soccer teams and endless consumerism. “All men seek happiness. This is without [...]

NABE Outlook: Recession Is Over, but a Muted Recovery to Follow SUMMARY: “The Great Recession is over,” according to NABE’s latest survey. “The survey found that the vast majority of business economists believe that the recession has ended but that the economic recovery is likely to be more moderate than those typically experienced following steep [...]

The Treasury Department’s bank investments are paying dividends. But saying they have earned $6 billion for taxpayers, as Tim Geithner did, is a stretch. Tim Geithner may have jumped the gun by saying taxpayers have earned money on TARP. NEW YORK (Fortune) — The markets are on a roll, but it’s still a tad early [...]

HISTORICAL stock charts seem to show that it took more than 25 years for the market to recover from the 1929 crash — a dismal statistic that has been brought to investors’ attention many times in the current downturn. But a careful analysis of the record shows that the picture is more complex and, ultimately, [...]