Money | How to Fix Your Life in 2009 | WSJ

Some useful advice in here.

I'm starting my own project to make our money stretch further. Some simple steps:

• called the cable (TV/Internet) company and said I was looking at their competitors' offers and could they do better on price. Yep, they could. Knocked 20% off the price and made it retroactive for 2 months.
  
• told our insurance agent that with money tight we needed to shop rates (which I did) ... she found discounts and new rates for the same coverage that knocked 25% off our auto insurance ...
  
• took our POTS (plain old telephone service) landline services down to minimum ... no inside wiring maintenance, no long distance ... and knocked about $10/month off that bill ... not ready to give-up that landline yet but that may be sooner rather than later
• will also look at our cellphone bill (have a pretty good plan but may explore the pay-as-you-go services) and our DVD by mail plan (cheap entertainment that can, maybe, be even cheaper)

and more to come.

I don't love this new economic situation but maybe we'll all become smarter consumers as a result. A little silver lining in that cloud.

Tech | Cool Screensaver | Wired

You might like this cool screensaver.

Money | Stocks v Bonds | Bloomberg

Business | Weathering the Storm | Daily Breeze

From a local businesswoman running a small printing business in this economy:"Morales acknowledged the difficulties of running a business amid a recession.

"We feel strongly you have to market," she said. "Instead of huddling through the storm, you have to be out there on deck.""

Right-on. Get busy and move forward. It's not about hunkering down, it's about getting to it.

Money | Who Killed Wall Street? This Guy! | Wired

Hard to believe but seems credible. A brilliant mathematician developed a formula for risk assessment associated with debt pools. It greatly simplified risk analysis in the fixed income world and facilitated an explosion in collateralized debt obligations. And, in parallel with the CDO growth, credit default swaps also exploded. The market for CDS grew to $62 trillion. Yep, with a big T. For scale, the 2007 US GDP was $14 trillion.

Check out the article in Wired.

The formula also apparently over-simplified the analysis and caused ratings agencies to greatly underestimate the risk of pooled debt, especially in the mortgage market. When the economy weakened and mortgage defaults began to grow, the model fell apart. And so did the risk assessment of CDOs. And then Bear, Stearns ... and Lehman Brothers ... and etc etc.

For you conspiracy buffs out there, the mathematician behind this formula was born in China and has since returned there. Put that one in your alt-war pipe and smoke it!

Life | Jaded? | Conan

Check out this video ...