Will Italy Bring Down the Eurozone?

Forget Greece. The biggest question mark in the never-ending eurozone debacle is now Italy.

European markets have been getting slammed over fears that Italy may be the next domino to fall. But why is Italy — whose debt problems have until now been on the back-burner — suddenly feeling the heat? First, eurozone finance ministers have been humming and hawing about whether they’re going to throw more money in the rescue pot for flailing economies like Italy. That’s making investors in eurozone debt worry that no one will be there to pick up the slack when these strung-out economies finally flop. Yields on Italy’s 10-year bonds have been hitting just below 7%. Above 7% , bond investors typically start to fall off, which makes it even harder and more expensive for Italy to borrow and keep its wheels spinning. As was the case in Greece and Portugal, hitting the 7% mark could set Italy on the path to default.

The eurozone crew also can’t figure out what to do about Greece, and that’s making things look worse for Italy. Eurozone bosses Germany and France were hoping to rope banks into Greece’s pending second bailout.


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Is America facing a Japanese future?

The word “Japan” has become synonymous with economic malaise. Any time an economist wants to describe how bad things could get for an industrialized economy, he or she inevitably says something like the place “could end up like Japan.” And there is good reason why Japan has become a four-letter word in the world of economics. Ever since a gargantuan stock-and-property price bubble deflated in the early 1990s, Japan has never returned to its pre-crisis glory days. The economy slips in and out of recession. Japanese companies seem dazed and confused, and are losing out to more aggressive rivals from South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere. The welfare of the population has stagnated. Meanwhile, Japan’s policymakers and political leaders do a lot of blabbering and very little reforming. They often appear out-of-touch with the real problems of the economy or unwilling to fix the ones they do recognize. Japan’s mess is that dreaded “L”-shaped recovery, in which an economy collapses, and then just goes flat, year after year, never quite recovering from its fall.

With the recovery in the U.S. so feeble nearly three years after the evaporation of Lehman Brothers, we have to wonder: Is America facing the same future as Japan? Here’s what


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Garage Sale Tips for Finding Hidden Gems

A close friend, Tonia, has been trying to get me interested in garage sales for a couple of years now.  She swears that it is a ton of fun to spend her early Saturday mornings browsing through the sales around town.  I personally don’t want anything enough to wake up at 6am on a weekend to go after it, but her garage sale plans were detailed enough that I knew I should share.  Here are Tonia’s tips for finding exactly what you are looking for at garage sales.


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Economy Appears to Have Improved in June, Slightly

And you thought the economy was headed for a double dip.

On Friday, the Institute for Supply Management reported that its gauge of manufacturing activity rose in June to 55.3. That was slightly higher than economists expected. Stocks shot up on the news, capping off a week where the Dow Jones industrial average is up about 5%. A similar measure that tracks manufacturing in just Chicago was up as well. The question: Was this number really good or is this just another sign that our expectations for this recovery have gotten too low?

A year ago that reading on the ISM would have been either ignored or met with disappointment. What’s more, 50 is essentially the break even point on the index. Below 50 and you are in contraction. Above 50 and the manufacturing sector is adding jobs. 55 is not that much higher than the breaking point. It’s not a great number. What’s more, we have known for a while that manufacturing was the one sector that was weathering the economy better than others. And it is also the sector that was probably the most affected by Japan’s tsunami related slowdown. So if anything was going to bounce back manufacturing was it.


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“Creepy” Example of How Online Advertisers Exploit Your Internet Browsing History

By now you’ve probably heard that online advertisers can track your internet history and how websites can use this information to display relevant advertisements (banner and text ads) that might appeal specifically to you.

As a matter of fact, I use a number of content linked ads on this website through my affiliation with the Google Adsense program as explained in my Trees Full of Money privacy policy. In case you didn’t know, every time a reader clicks on one of these advertisements I receive a small referral fee from Google (and you guys thought I did all of this for free!).

FYI- If you don’t like the idea of Google providing relevant ads to you based on your previous internet history, you can “opt out” here.

I never appreciated the full extent to which advertisers had access to my information (and yours) until an online experience I had the other day.

Since I’m a huge golf fan, I was researching the popularity of one of the up and coming golf stars of today “Rory McIlroy”. As part of this research I wanted to see what internet domain names were still available to buy (.com, .org, .net, .biz, etc.). As expected virt


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