Author: DOuG pRATt

How Much is Free Advice Worth?

I don’t follow personal finance gurus, like PBS favorite Suze Orman, and not because her sales pitch is directed mostly at women. The inspirational self-help tone, with its “pay yourself first” catchphrase advice, isn’t for me. Here’s an Orman podcast with another cutesy slogan.

The Freakonomics podcast has a related discussion. What do academic economists think about personal financial advice? After all, the spending decisions made by consumers, in the aggregate, are what drive 70% the economy.

Cartoon Fodder

A while ago I said Scott Adams and Robert Crumb didn’t have anything in common other than their respective problems with political correctness. Yesterday, that seemed to change a bit, with Adams introducing an autobiographical element to Dilbert.

Dilbert, October 22, 2022

I’ve been contemplating a post about “quiet quitting.” Don’t know yet if I’ll get around to writing it.

Let Them Eat Debt

Republicans continue their efforts to dissolve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They apparently see it as a Socialist/Communist institution. I assume because the bureau, which is under the self-funded Federal Reserve, was originally proposed by Elizabeth Warren.

Republican attorneys have attempted to dismantle the CFPB from the moment Congress created it in response to the 2008 financial crash. The agency protects consumers against exploitative fraud and deceit in home mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans, and retail banking.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/trumpiest-federal-appeals-court-kills-cfpb-fifth-circuit.html