Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Recommended Articles

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for my weekly blog Carnival review. So here goes:

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Money, Matter and More Musings this week. My article titled "The Real Estate Market is About to Get Worse" was included in the Carnival.

FILAM Personal Finance has an article about how utility companies are now offering rebates for consumers who purchase energy efficient appliances. At least in Northern California this is certainly true. PG&E is also offering consumers the option to pay a variable rate on their electric usage depending on the time of day. For most folks that's not a great deal, but my in-laws used to own an electric vehicle, and saved a bundle by using this option and re-charging the car at night.

Limeade over at Fiscal Musings has a post about how he and his wife enjoyed an outing to McDonald's at a very low cost. He especially liked the fries. OK. The reason I am mentioning this article is that I am wondering if the cost of the dinner includes the cost for the Cardiologist visit. The last time I ordered fries at McDonald's was the time I read on the menu the nutritional value of the food I was eating. My large order of fries had 8 grams of trans fat in it. They should hand out bottles of Lipitor with those fries. It's a sad statement about our society that the cheapest and most easily available food is also the most harmful from a health perspective.

The Festival of Stocks was hosted by Trading To Go this week. My article To Time or Not to Time the market was selected Editor's Choice. Sweet. I must say that the Festival had some excellent articles this week. Check it out. Here are a couple of examples:

Ask the Advisor, ranks the 25 most influential investing blogs. For any of you guys that just stumbled on my humble blog but are not familiar with some of the titans of our PF blog community, check out this list and visit some of these excellent websites. Many of these blogs are also featured in my blogroll (check out the left column on this page).

The Agonist has a smart and detailed article about the sad state of the U.S. political system and the connection between "business political contributions", which I fondly refer to as bribes, and stock appreciation of the contributing companies. This is highly recommended reading. In the name of freedom of speech, companies are being allowed to buy influence and favors in Washington. From my perspective, freedom of speech is a basic human right that should be reserved for individuals. Corporations, which are fictitious legal entities should not enjoy this right, at least as far as political contributions go.

Adventures in Money Making takes an unpopular position, with which I tend to agree. Better a relatively small recession now than a much bigger and more painful recession later. He also thinks that we are already in recession.

Another Carnival that is up this week is the Stock Market Carnival published by The Investor's Journal. I haven't had a chance to read any of the articles and may add some recommendations later.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whatever is in the fries or what have you at McDonald's, they sure tasted good. I don't really see a health issue with it if one eats there pretty rarely. I'm also not going to be all that paranoid about every little thing that could be harmful. Not worth the effort.

Unknown said...

Limeade, don't take my comments in the wrong way. God knows I love McD's fired myself. However, ever since I found out what was in them, I don't have the urge to eat any of them.

Your attitude about doing things in moderation is a good strategy. You must agree though that it is a sad state of affairs when the cheapest food available on the market is also some of the worst from a nutritional perspective.

Anonymous said...

It's true, I'd rather cheaper foods be more nutritional than they are, but business will be business and they will make decisions based on the numbers. I also think that consumers as a whole should be more responsible for their own actions instead of placing the blame with corporations. No one is forcing anyone to eat at these fast food joints.

And don't worry about me taking things the wrong way. I'm not easily offended and I can appreciate a difference of opinion. Thanks for sharing yours.