» Posted by Martin Weil on February 26, 2006

If pushing "0" repeatedly does not get you to a live person when faced with the endless phone trees at most customer service call centers, here is the newly updated Get Human database - a handy cheat sheet for the sequences you need at more than a hundred major consumer businesses, from AAA to Wells Fargo. This new version includes a dozen or so US government agencies as a bonus.

» Posted by Martin Weil on February 19, 2006

1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2) If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?

According to an article in the NY Times (registration required) on a recent MIT study, your tolerance for investment risk may be predicted by your answers to these seemingly unrelated questions.

» Posted by Martin Weil on February 12, 2006

Two reasons people commonly believe that they make more money in residential real estate than stocks are that:

A) since one's home is not priced on a daily basis, homeowners are less attentive to the inevitable ups and downs that accompany any asset class and they are therefore more comfortable as long-term holders, and

B) leverage can work wonders on any asset return.

Well, reason A is about to get a run for its money.

Zillow - a brand new web-based service by the founder of Expedia - claims to provide current pricing on just about any home in the US.

Everyone who owns a home will want to check this out. Real estate and home ownership, not to mention privacy, may never be the same.

» Posted by Martin Weil on February 09, 2006

The consensus view for the past few years has been that the US economy, dollar and interest rates are increasingly vulnerable, largely due to our ballooning trade deficit with the Far East. The parallel to this line of thought is a US savings rate that is apparently at historic lows. Conventional wisdom holds that the US has been ignoring its basic needs for investment and has instead embarked upon an orgy of self-indulgent consumption.

But here comes Michael Mandel, writing in the current BusinessWeek online, making a very persuasive case that investment in the US may be dramatically under-counted.