Eight Inexpensive Family Outings
July 14, 2011 by Charlie Stedman · Leave a Comment
A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.
On Twitter, Robert asked “How about “Family outings that dont cost and arm and a leg” ?”
This is obviously a major goal for our family, too. We have three young children that have a need to explore the world, but many excursions outside of the house are expensive, particularly with five people in tow. Even a simple trip to a movie theater can easily set a family of five back $60 to $100. That’s painful!
Because of that, my wife and I have strived to come up with family outings that won’t cause our budget to explode. Here are some of our most-loved ideas.
State parks There’s an abundance of state parks within a fifty mile radius of our home. Even within a twenty-five mile radius, there are several such parks. We make an effort to visit all of them, often once a year. We’ll pack a picnic
A few things to remember about debt
July 14, 2011 by Charlie Stedman · Leave a Comment
THIS week, The Economist has quite a lot of material on the crisis in Europe, including a cover that deliberately evokes an earlier cover from another dangerous period. Both the Buttonwood column and the Economics focus compare current debt troubles to the early 1990s crisis in Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism (which ended with the ejection of several prominent members). They provide a reminder that history’s big, successful fiscal consolidations are almost always supported by a big jump in foreign demand, which is usually related to a decline in the indebted country’s currency. That’s bad news for Europe, of course, since euro-zone members can’t devalue to help facilitate fiscal consolidation. But it’s actually worse than that; single currency or no, big economies will struggle to rely on foreign demand while cutting their debts because every other economy will be hoping to do the exact same thing. When everyone is deleveraging, the export route to growth (or tolerably tame contraction) amid austerity is cut off.
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff identify three periods in recent history when the world found itself in this situation, in which indebtedness was high across all of the rich world. T
Believing In God
July 14, 2011 by Charlie Stedman · Leave a Comment
John 6:28-29 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Believing in God
-You Can Do Everything God says you can.
-He Can Change Everything and Everyone.
-Any Circumstance Can Change
-God Can Forgive You for Everything
-What God Says About You
John 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 8:42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.
Australian property prices ‘likely to see further drops’
July 13, 2011 by Charlie Stedman · Leave a Comment
Experts have said that those considering property investment in Australia will see prices continue to drop. Gus Medeiros, head of credit research and strategy at Deutsche Bank, wrote a report for the financial institution claiming that there is set to be a 30 per cent fall in average house values in the country. According to Bloomberg, house prices will come down in line with recent changes, which saw a 0.3 per cent drop in property values in the eight capital cities in Australia, while the number of homes available is also increasing. However, banks may have a hard time dealing with the decrease in house prices and their problems are set to be compounded by a nine per cent default rate, which could affect lending, Mr Medeiros also warned. RP Data recently reported that house prices across Australia are down 1.2 per cent year-on-year, having dropped 2.7 per cent in the first five months of 2011.
Financial Innovation and the Financial Crisis – paper on Dublin
July 12, 2011 by Charlie Stedman · Leave a Comment
Two years in an edition of Tax Justice Focus contained a lead article entitled Shadow Regulation and the Shadow Banking System: the role of the Dublin International Financial Services Centre. It was written by Jim Stewart, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Trinity College, Dublin and it looked at the role of a tax haven / secrecy jurisdiction in the financial crisis, and we added it enthusiastically to our Economic Crisis + Offshore webpage.
Now we have just added a major new article to that webpage, which is effectively a thorough update of, and large expansion of, Stewart’s article. Entitled Financial Innovation and the Financial Crisis, it was published a year ago at a conference in Aalborg.
It will be one of the most important documents on our webpage and a major contribution to the literature on this essential topic.
It is all interesting, but perhaps the most relevant part begins on page 8 with the sentence
Financial centres such as the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) formed a major part of the shadow banking sector.
and
“A further source of risk is poor or non-existent regulation.