Citigroup Not Purchasing New Corporate Jet...

…after criticism from the Obama administration said that such jets aren't "the best use of money at this point"…

John Thain is getting Subpeonaed in NY about the billions in bonuses Merril Lynch paid out before Bank of america got its latest bailout...

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/597/story/499083.html

Cliff Diving in Wing Suites in Norway

This is extreme, crazy diving!

Obama's Nominee for Treasury Secretary Misfiled His Taxes Using TurboTax

Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, is Obama's choice for Treasury Secretary - which oversees the IRS. Both Republican and Democratic congressmen like his background but, he has been put in the hot seat because he messed up his taxes several years ago, and had to pay penalties. The interesting thing is that, even though he is a financial big shot, he did his taxes himself, using off-the-shelf TurboTax. Personally, I think messing up on your taxes and then overseeing the IRS can be a good thing, if it motivates him to push for simplifying taxes.

Never Work a Day in Your Life Again

Nice post about finding your dream job...

Sand Sculpture of Barack Obama in Puri, India

Cool sculpture...

Tribune Bankruptcy Restructuring: Company Wants To Stay Together

Last month, I wrote about how the Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Now, as the company starts to plan its reorganization, the complication is that the Tribune wants to retain all its assets, while keeping its unusual corporate structure (S-corp owned by an ESOP).

The Tribune wants to keep its media assets (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, WGN TV, etc.) because executives feel they are worth more together, than chopped up and sold at distressed prices. The Tribune does, however, still plan to sell the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field.

At the same time, the Tribune wants to stay an S-corp owned by its employees (ESOP). Unlike a regular C corporation, an S-corp allows all income to be passed through to the owners. Since the owner (ESOP) is organized as a tax-exempt qualified retirement plan, this allows the Tribune to avoid all taxes.

Retaining the ability to avoid income tax is viewed as an important part of any recovery.

Keeping the S-corp structure complicates restructuring their $13 billion debt load because Tribune creditors such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America can't be given equity in exchange for debt reductions.

An S-corp is limited to 100 owners - who must be individuals, and not other corporations. (The ESOP, representing thousands of employees, counts as one individual owner).

A possible solution is to offer the creditors some type of debt instrument that does not pay interest, but has a value pegged to the stock, so that the creditors would participate in any upside.

At least one bankruptcy expert, however, thinks that the lenders would be too risk averse to accept a security like this because the IRS will probably challenge it.

The one thing in the Tribune's favor is time to work out this situation because the creditors do not have right to demand interest payments (Due to this deal being done during the era of loose lending practices, and banks fighting over it).

All the Tribune needs is enough funds to continue operations. This is covered because their newspapers and TV stations should still generate $500 million dollars. They also got a $50 million letter of credit and a $300 million loan against receivables from Barclays.

Anthony McCune's Top 10 Tips for Starting A Business...

Based on his experiences as a business owner and consultant, Anthony McCune presents his top 10 tips for starting a successful business...

"That Will Be 50 Dollars!"

This morning, I took my cereal, then was going to walk upstairs to my office to work.

My son came into the kitchen on his scooter (it was -17 outside, so he is riding it inside) and told me that he was a taxi, and would take me as far as the foot of the stairs.

So, I grabbed the back of his shirt and walked with him as he rode on his scooter - slowly, so my cereal didn't spill.

At the foot of the stairs, I thanked him and started up.

He came running up behind me, with his palm outstretched:

"That will be $50 dollars!" "$50 please!"

At least he then took pretend money ;-)

He seems to overcharge a lot - at my parent's house last month, he played with my old McDonald's Fisher Price play set, and he charged me $50 for a happy meal! ;-)

My Third Book is Now Available On Amazon.com

My new book Sudoku Fun, Volume 2 is now available from Amazon.com

Maybe Starbucks Will Now Be Less of a Guilty Pleasure...

A large study now shows that drinking 3-5 cups of coffee a day in middle age reduces your chance of getting Alzheimer's by 60-65%.

Making Passive Income With Minimal Niche Sites

My passion is finding simple lazy ways to accomplish my goals.

For example, one of my dreams is to visualize myself collecting passive income from a lot of different static websites.

It's another form of diversification. It may be hard to hit a home run with a super popular site, but it should be easier to hit multiple "singles".

Lots of sites consistently earning $10 - $100 can add up.

As a first attempt, I put together four simple informational sites:

Make Money By Creating Websites and Selling Them

Developing Static Websites in Wordpress

Super Affiliate Success Tips

Discover a Free Method To Drive Traffic To Your Website

For the first site, I signed up with Weebly, which let me set up the site free, using their site building system.

For the other 3 sites, I modified the minimal text website design I used for my Stock Trading Riches website - which I created using Mozilla's free SeaMonkey suite.

I monetized these four sites with Adsense and a few affiliate offers. Then, I drove traffic to them through social bookmarking and article writing.

I ended up taking down the four sites because I decided to discontinue using Adsense as an income stream. The four sites were not making as much money as my Stock Trading Riches site - which sells my investing book.

So, I realized that most of my profits and satisfaction have come from selling my own expertise and products.

I don't consider the sites "wasted" because this is the beginning of a learning process and I'm sure I will go through more sites and iterations before I end up with a system I can run with.

For now, the end goal is still to have a "automated machine" system where I collect passive income from sites. But now I think the sites should be selling my own products to brand and build up my business.

How To Understand A Trillion Dollars Deficit

I like this Time article, especially the example with seconds. It really shows the magnitude difference between a million, billion, and trillion: 1 million seconds = 11.5 days 1 billion seconds = 32 years 1 trillion seconds = 32,000 years

My Trading System Outperformed the S&P 500 Over the Last 4 Years

From 2005-2008, my system outperformed the S&P 500.

My system returned 13%, 14%, 22%, -40%. That comes out to an average annual return of - 1.475% over the 4 years.

According to the Vanguard website, the S&P500 returned 4.91%, 15.79%, 5.49%, and -37%. That comes out to an average annual return of -5.2% over the last 4 years.

My system involves rebalancing each stock position on a yearly basis, according to my formula. It is detailed in my book "Stock Trading Riches" (available from Amazon.com).

You can read more about my trading system book on its website...

Billions of Dollars and Politicians

Here is an interesting email I got forwarded: How many zeros in a billion? This is too true to be funny. The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases. A.  A billion seconds ago it was 1959. B.  A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. C.  A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. D.  A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. E.  A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it. While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans.  It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division. Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number..  what does it mean? A.  Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528. B.  Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787. C.  Or... if you are a family of four...  your family gets $2,066,012. Washington, D. C  < HELLO! > Are all your calculators broken?? Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax CDL License Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Federal Income Tax Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax) IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) Liquor Tax Luxury Tax Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service charge taxes Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax (Truckers) Sales Taxes Recreational Vehicle Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Servi ce Fee Tax Telephone Federal, State a nd Local Surcharge Tax Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Tax Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in the world... and Mom stayed home to raise the kids .. What happened? Can you spell 'politicians!'

$30,000 Per Month in Affiliate Marketing

I came across a "hot" discussion on Digital Point's "Commission Junction" discussion board.

I found this discussion to be a very good, educational, and inspiring read, because a member with alias "Nabs" talks about how he earns $30,000 a month in affiliate marketing.

He starts by showing an image attachment of a Commission Junction screen showing an average of $30,000 per month. Nabs says that it took him a year and a half to reach that level, and he has maintained it for a year.

He then goes on to answer questions and give advice.

According to Nabs, it takes a lot of work to reach this level - more work than the average worker puts into his 9-5 job (so much for the theory that affiliate marketing is an easy way to get rich quick).

Basically, he first created a lot of high-quality blog and content sites in many niches. These sites are not monetized, and have climbed in the rankings.

Then, Nabs created over 100 niche review/store sites that have affiliate links. He sets these links to nofollow so the search engines do not penalize his sites.

He then links his content sites / blogs with the review sites, and relies mostly on organic search traffic for visitors.

His minimum earnings goal for each new review site he creates is $100 per year, but many of his sites exceed this.

Three Financial Suicides

I recently read about three suicides that were interesting because they had three things in common:

1. These guys were successful financially.

2. They suffered financial losses in the recent meltdown.

3. Instead of sleeping pills at night or carbon monoxide from a car in the garage, these guys killed themselves violently.

Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, who was a money manager with a French aristocratic background, saw his money fund lose a lot in the Madoff scandal. He killed himself in his New York office by slashing his arms and wrists with a box cutter, and letting himself bleed out into his garbage can.

Here in Chicago, Steven Good, chairman and CEO of the real estate firm Sheldon Good and Co., was found dead in his Jaguar, in a forest preserve, from a single gunshot to the head.

Finally, German billionaire Adolf Merckle threw himself in front of a train. He lost a lot of money from both the global financial crisis and betting wrongly on Volkswagen shares. His body was so mangled, they had to use DNA to identify him.

It is a tragedy that these three people were so wrapped up in success, and failed failure, that they would rather die than be with their families, enjoying the wealth they had left.

I'm no psychologist, but I think the fact that they killed themselves so violently shows that they had self-imposed a lot of shame and self-loathing on themselves.

Civet Coffee:Never Underestimate How Much You Can Scam Rich People With "Exotic" Products

Credit default swaps, Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme, and now Civet Coffee (I wish I could poop expensive coffee beans).

It shows that people are attracted to the "mysterious" and "exclusive" and are willing to spend a lot of money on "elite" things.

I say "Hogwash!" - focus on solid, plain, vanilla quality.

As Da Vinci said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Instead of credit default swaps, focus on stocks.

Instead of Wall Street "wizards" with "magical black boxes", focus on mutual funds or "white box" systems that openly disclose their rules (like my Stock Trading Riches system).

Instead of coffee made from beans pooped in the jungle by civets, get a large cup of Dunkin' Donuts regular coffee.

"See, Santa Also Likes Coke!"

On Sunday, I was at the store with my 3 and a half year old son, and he wanted Coke. He recognizes the brand instantly.

He also recognizes another brand - Santa.

Now I know why it was a stroke of marketing genius for Coke to use Santa at Christmas time.

When I hesitated about buying Coke, my son saw the side of a 12-pack and excitedly said, "See, even Santa likes Coke!"

Talk about your celebrity endorsement!

One Day New Year's Resolutions

Live your resolution, one day at a time.

Changes to Corporate Logos - Due to the Financial Crisis

Several company logos have been updated, to reflect the financial crisis...