It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe…
Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance. Here’s what caught my attention over the past week…
This week, the blogosphere was loaded with plenty of good advice for both the unemployed and the employed. If you’re currently looking for a new employer, JobMob has a collection of 150 actual resume mistakes that you need to avoid. For example:
1. Languages: “Speak English and Spinach.”
2. References: “Bill, Tom, Eric. But I don’t know their phone numbers.”
3. Salary requirements: “The higher the better.”
4. Objective: “I want to play a major part in watching a company advance.”
5. Skills: “Written communication = 3 years; verbal communication = 5 years.”
6. “Planned new corporate facility at $3 million over budget.”
7. “I am great with the pubic.”
8. “My duties included cleaning the restrooms and seating the customers.”
9. “Consistently tanked as top sales producer for new accounts.”
10. “Marital status: often. Children: various.”
I know. The bad news is these people live among us. The good news is, well … this is our competition.
Blogs I’ve Been Following This Week
Money Talks News – Are Tattoos At Work Okay? Somewhat ironically, the most interesting point I learned from this article was that there are actually two things that employers hate more than tattoos: body piercings and bad breath. Who knew? Anyway, I’m now waiting with bated breath (minty fresh, of course) for the next article in this series! “Body Odor and the Open Cubicle — How Ripe Is Too Ripe?”
Wisebread – Stupid Things to Put In Your Cover Letter. If you’re currently sending out resumes, Julie Rains shares lots of bad ideas to avoid when writing cover letters to prospective employers. For example, smart applicants never make excuses in correspondence for their chronic halitosis. Instead, they adroitly remind the hiring manager that bad breath is better than no breath at all.
Control Your Cash – Is Your Time Worth Nothing? Says Greg: “If you want to do volunteer work, give Catholic Charities or your local animal shelter a call. But don’t donate the time you spend doing what you do professionally.” But that’s exactly what a lot of salaried employees end up doing when they work longer than a standard 8-hour day.
Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance – A Strategy to Boost Your Job Search Contacts & Cope With Unemployment. In this pithy post, my good friend Barb shares tips for keeping your spirits up while looking for a job. And no, going to the mall and getting a tattoo and a nose ring wasn’t on her list.
Money Beagle – 6 Ways to Eliminate Food Waste. Thankfully, #2 was not the eponymous answer I obviously expected. Moving right along:
And Here’s Some Other Posts You Might Enjoy…
Hope to Prosper – He Who Dies With the Most Toys Is Dead.
Get Out of Debt Guy – How to Get Out of Debt. The Honest and Unvarnished Truth.
Financial Highway – 6 Ways to Save on Back to School Basics
Fiscal Fizzle – 5 Ways to Never Fight About Money.
Darwin’s Money - Is Storing Cord Blood at Birth Worth the Cost?
The Penny Hoarder – Bad at Spelling? It Could Make You a Millionaire.
The Way-Back Machine: Past Posts Of Mine You May Have Missed
From March 2009:
10 Signs You Could Be Headed for Debtor’s Prison – Looking back at this post, which I wrote over two years ago, I find it mildly amusing that one of two countries that supposedly still has debtor’s prisons is Greece — a nation that just so happens to be on the verge of default.
Credits and Debits
Debit: I see Britain’s National Health Service is now rationing “non-essential” operations for its citizens including: hip replacements, knee surgeries, cataract surgeries and even the placement of grommets in children’s ears to improve their hearing. Be careful what you wish for.
Debit: Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, the House of Representatives passed a debt-ceiling bill on Friday that was quickly rejected by the Senate.
Debit: Senate Democrats were concerned about the inclusion of a mechanism in the bill to get a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
Debit: The Washington establishment that got us into this mess continues to confuse “cuts” with “future reductions in spending increases” — which is anything but a “cut.”
Debit: Let’s say I earn $50,000 annually but spent $60,000 last year and am on track to spend that same amount annually over the next five years. If I ran my household finances like Washington ran theirs, I’d simply pledge to spend only $58,000 each year and then take credit for a $10,000 spending “cut” over five years.
Debit: If you ask Ron Paul, unless the size of our government is sharpy scaled back now, default is inevitable whether the debt ceiling is raised or not. As Paul correctly observes, that’s because inflation will eventually do the dirty work.
Credit: In other news, I see a group of scientists claim they have proven that one cannot time travel back to the past. I don’t believe it.
Debit: Let’s say I earn $50,000 annually but spent $60,000 last year and am on track to spend that same amount annually over the next five years. If I ran my household finances like Washington ran theirs, I’d simply pledge to spend only $58,000 each year and then take credit for a $10,000 spending “cut” over five years.
Credit: (Nope. That logic didn’t make sense the second time around either.)
Debit: Speaking of altered states of reality, an Indiana cop driving a trailer with a drug abuse awareness message plastered on it was arrested earlier this week for … driving under the influence. I know.
Credit: According to local station WAVE, the citizen who called 911 had this to say about the arrested officer: “He’s not setting a good example for kids that see this.” Really? Thanks for the insight, Captain Obvious.
By the Numbers
The National Debt, by the numbers, from NPR, and the Atlantic via Yahoo Finance:
1836 The last time the National Debt was paid off, under President Andrew Jackson. Jackson believed the National Debt was a national curse.
$58 million Debt the United States owed when Andrew Jackson took office in 1830.
$14 trillion The current value of the National Debt, rounded to the nearest trillion.
$5.7 trillion Debt that the government currently owes itself — otherwise known as “intragovernmental holdings.”
$4.4 trillion Debt currently owed to foreign investors.
19.4 Percentage of the national debt that is currently held by Asian interests, including governments and corporations.
$800 million The debt owed to pension funds.
$500 million Debt owed to state and local governments.
$114 trillion Total US debt after including all unfunded liabilities such as Medicare, and Social Security.
The Question of the Week
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Other Useless News
From Google Analytics, here are the top 10 states for the month of July in terms of pages looked at for every visit to Len Penzo dot Com:
1. Rhode Island (2.80 pages/visit)
2. Maine (2.54)
3. North Dakota (2.43)
4. Arkansas (2.34)
5. Iowa (2.32)
6. Alabama (2.21)
7. Louisiana (2.20)
8. Idaho (2.18)
9. Wyoming (2.16)
10. Georgia (2.15)
And if your state isn’t on the list, by all means, feel free to kick back, relax, and check out the archives and read a little more here at Len Penzo dot Com!
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1. Click on that “Like” button in the sidebar to your right and become a fan of Len Penzo dot Com on Facebook!
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Letters, I Get Letters
Every week I feature the most interesting question or comment – assuming I get one, that is. And folks who are lucky enough to have the only question in the mailbag get their letter highlighted here whether it’s interesting or not!
This week’s letter comes from Linda: “I’ve been going through your archives this week and I just want you to know that I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said. Not one thing!”
The Honeybee used to tell me that too, Linda. Then we got married.
Carnival News
This week I had articles featured at the following carnivals:
Nothing submitted this week — I was busy helping the House of Representatives with the debt ceiling bill.
I’m Len Penzo and I approved this message.
via Email 
Ron Paul is of course exactly wrong. Inflation is not at all the same as a default (and in fact some inflation would be very very helpful). look at it from a credit standpoint: Argentina defaulted and is still shut out of world credit markets. The US had nasty inflation from 79-81, but was able to run up record deficits in the immediate aftermath.
When people in power (Ron Paul) use rhetoric to conflate two very different concepts, they hurt the public knowledge and get us into deeper trouble. (Presidents Obama and Bush are also very guilty of this)
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, m. If the government continues to print money and devalue the dollar until it is essentially worthless, then that is a de facto default. If you don’t believe me, ask any creditor who will end up getting paid back by the United States with those worthless dollars — or, more appropriate, ask those who have saved up a six or seven figure nest egg that won’t be able to buy a cup of coffee with all that money. Yes, creditors are technically getting “paid back.” Unfortunately, the payment will be in worthless paper.
I’m not sure I follow your point about “record deficits” in the 80s. Record deficits didn’t just poof out of nowhere in the early 80s; they began with the wholesale application of Keynesian monetary policies (i.e., abetted by the Fed) that started with LBJ in the late 60s and essentially continued to rise every year thereafter until 1994. Those policies allowed high inflation to take root during the 70s — and that cycle wasn’t broken until Paul Volcker finally made the country take its medicine by tightening monetary policy (by raising interest rates) under Ronald Reagan — who immediately lowered marginal tax rates. That was the cocktail that finally broke the back of inflation.
My point about record deficits was that the US was not shut out of credit markets, unlike Argentina, which was following an actual default.
As an aside, I’ve always thought of Reagan as being more Keyensian than LBJ, but I haven’t studied LBJ’s term enough to be well informed. I’ll give you my reasoning anyway. I think of LBJ as introducing social safety nets, which are an expansion of government size and responsibility, but not Keyensian in that they aren’t mean to increase short term economic activity. Reagan had two very Keynesian attributes: 1) he cut taxes and 2) gigantic deficit spending to fund the cold war. Though we might ask how that compares to Vietnam spending under LBJ.
Thanks for the clarification, m. Great point. I probably should be more careful how I throw the term “Keynesian” around. You’re absolutely right, LBJ wasn’t spending money to stimulate the economy — he was trying to eliminate poverty by throwing lots of gov’t cash down a rabbit hole. Still he really started the ball a-rollin’ with respect to those deficits.
I guess cutting taxes as Reagan did is technically considered a Keyensian attribute since he did it in a recession — although a true Keyensian would raise taxes in good times too (which was something Reagan wouldn’t do). Before the economy could fully recover, he bent to pressure from Tip O’Neil and did raise taxes in the early 80s to try and address the massive deficits the country was racking up; as part of a compromise he agreed to raise taxes immediately in exchange for future cuts in gov’t spending ($3 in spending cuts for $1 in raised taxes), but he got snookered. The spending cuts never came.
While I’m talking about Reagan, I should also note that while he did increase deficit spending, as a percentage of GDP, the budget deficits were essentially the same when he left office as it was when he entered (2.6% vs. 3.0%) thanks to the massive economic expansion that occurred during his time in office.
(As you can tell, I am a big fan of Ronald Reagan.)
Hey Len, glad Georgia sneaked into your top ten list!
I won’t take complete credit….(well, maybe I will!)
Don’t be modest — I bet you deserve most of the credit, Dr. Dean!
Len, It is now confirmed, I have esp!! As I get no trackbacks, I visit the blogs I like!! This is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve visited and been excited to see a link to one of my articles.:)
As usual, your insights are great reads!
Thanks again, Barb
I loved your post, Barb! Hope the move went well!
Len
Thanks for the mention and link in your article. Much appreciated. I’m so glad your link to me allowed me to me find your site. I’ve really enjoyed your stuff.
Keep up the good work.
Steve
My pleasure, Steve. Thanks for stopping by!
Len,
Not only did Andrew Jackson get rid of the deficit, he shut down the central bank (predecessor to the Fed). This guy was both a genius and patriot. No wonder the banking elites hated him so much. We could sure use someone with his courage in office right now.
Bret
After the House vote today, it’s obvious there are very few men like that in that legislative body.
hope this helps you. I had tonsil stones and awful bad breath. My friend told me to check Oraltech Labs advice as it got rid of his bad breath and his post nasal drip. I’ve been following Oraltech Labs advice for about 4 months now and I feel much better, also at work people are not avoiding me anymore so it seems to have cured my bad breath as well, so good luck!
Glad to hear you solved your halitosis. Now about those tonsil stones; what are those?
Len,
Why is it so hard for people to understand the simple concept (repeated twice above) that reducing the growth of spending is not the same as reducing spending. Oh well…we get to vote again in November 2012. We’ve got to get it right sooner or later. by the way, get ready for QE3. Ron Paul is right on the (soon to be worthless) money.