I got a comment last week in response to my New Grad’s Advice saying that my advice was ok, but blatantly obvious. I don’t disagree that what I wrote was pretty much “common sense” however, stating that any advice is obvious is a naive view of the world. A few great examples of advice (financial and other) that seems obvious that just isn’t followed even by ’smart’ people: Don’t smoke it’s bad for your health and it is expensive. Seems obvious, yet the tobacco industry continues to make

Edinburgh -- Two former Edinburgh employees face multiple felony charges after, investigators say, they used taxpayer-funded town credit cards to purchase gas for their personal vehicles.

[ Reader Note: Allow me to introduce a guest writer: Keith Allman. Formerly in the quantitative analytics group at MBIA and the principal financial group at Citi, Keith now runs the training and consulting firm Enstruct . He literally wrote the book on modeling structured finance cash flows. Recently he wrote his second book and is now planning a third. With all the talk of increased financial regulation, Keith wrote a post about one corner of the structured finance world he hopes w

Given the huge job losses and the retailing brands going out of business, it's little surprise that commercial real estate landlords would be taking a hit. And how that damage seems to be escalating. So what will 2009 look like for them? From a story in the Wall Street Journal : The delinquency rate on about $700 billion in securitized loans backed by office buildings, hotels, stores and other investment property has more than doubled since September to 1.8% this month, according to data p

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Grant Circle, originally uploaded by jvonr. From a reader:Dear neighbors,On Monday I posted to the Brookland list that I had lost a wallet in or near the Brookland / CUA Metro Station. I was fairly frantic at the time, having lost not only my ID, cash, and my credit cards, but proof of insurance and other critical pieces