I am one of those wackos that likes being in the same room as my family. When I decide to write an article for a blog or surf the net, I have to isolate myself in my den. I finally decided to stop being cheap and buy myself a laptop.

I went to the Dell site and put together a laptop. This was going to be a desktop replacement so one of my my criteria was that the laptop should handle some of my games. I ended up putting together an Inspiron E1705. I upgraded the processor to the 2Ghz Intel dual core, the memory to the max of 2 Gigs of RAM and the video card to the 256 meg video card. I also made the unfortunate decision of putting Windows Vista on the laptop.

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More financial institutions are adopting Web 2.0 according to this article by Melanie Rodier.  Web 2.0 is the catchall phrase for the new way to build web sites, which includes both using responsive Ajax java tech for the HTML and incorporating a community collaboration philosophy into the web site design.  If you aren’t up to speed on Web 2.0 you can read a primer I wrote here.

As I allude to in my What is web 2.0? post, the meaning of Web 2.0 varies depending on who uses it.  In the context of this article, it’s about collaboration and information delivery–building a community of like minded individuals to share ideas (trading strategies) and news.

I find it interesting that these concepts are now hitting mainstream.  Those of us that have been using the Internet for a long time have had collaboration.  In it’s early ARPANET days (before spam and porn took over), the Internet was almost exclusively a collaboration tool. You used interactive newsgroups, posting questions and answers to people with similar interests, or having real time chats over IRC with people all over the world.  It was originally all about collaboration.

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In Matt’s Ron Paul Endorsement, he subtly mentioned that we are printing money. After a conversation with one of my non-finance friends, it occurred to me that most people don’t realize that we keep printing money.  This friend said that he hadn’t heard about us printing money–surely that would have made the news.

In his Tough Times A’ Coming post, Matt pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office says our federal budget is unsustainable.  I think this is a real recipe for disaster, most people don’t understand how we “print” money and we are in terrible shape with our budget.   So, I decided that I should write a post on how the US government prints money and causes inflation.

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I just ran across MicroPlace and thought wow, that’s a great concept.  You give them money and member institutions lend it out to emerging market entrepreneurs. You get to see pictures of the people in third-world countries who receive the loans. It’s an eBay Company so it has the air of legitimacy, although I have some doubts after delving deeper into their business model.

MicroPlace is similar to Prosper (which Matt wrote about here and here); Prosper is a general lending program available to everyone in the United States.  These people have many reasons to borrow money: house financing, credit card repayment, boob jobs, etc. After making a loan, you can expect a 6 - 20% return on your money.

With MicroPlace you are investing in entrepreneurs in emerging market countries.  Interesting idea. Looking at a list of the countries on MicroPlace, I found Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Soviet Georgia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan and many others. You can drill down and see the pictures and profiles of the entrepreneurs. (Don’t worry, I’m sure the guy from Ecuador isn’t actually in a jail cell.)

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Recently, I have been trying to catch up on goings on in our industry and I ran across the concept of a Unified Managed Account.  It’s an interesting concept really, however, I see it as a marketing gimmick. If this one slipped under your radar don’t be alarmed.  It’s a small ($78 billion) but rapidly growing segment of the management market.

I started hearing about UMA’s about 5 years ago and the buzz keeps growing. Basically, a UMA is a SMA or Wrap program with more convenience. The idea is to allow multiple managers with multiple disciplines access to a single account. It’s not so much a new alternative investment, as it is a wrapper for existing investments.

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If you look at my older posts, you’ll see I’m pretty big on security. Methods of attack are changing and with the exception of hacking the Pentagon it’s getting much more difficult to penetrate big corporate security.

Many large financial firms have been victims of security breaches; included in this illustrious list are … TD Ameritrade, J.P. Morgan, Fidelity Investments, Ameriprise — even credit agencies are susceptible. If you want to get really paranoid check this some of these identity theft stories.

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Like anyone who follows our industry, I have noticed all the articles on the decline of the US dollar against the Euro and Canadian dollar.  A quick search on Google news shows mostly bad news but is this really the case?

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Like most people, I habitually whine about taxes. In my case it’s because I have been “randomly” audited for nine years in a row. (not feeling so random) For this reason, I think I have special rights to whine.

My main problem with the tax code is its complexity. I can remember many years ago when Ross Perot had his little speech where he put his hand upon the tax code which was nearly as tall as he was. It’s just too complex.

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So I was walking through Wal-Mart the other day and saw the big stack of Dell computers. I had completely forgotten about Dell offering their computers through Wal-Mart. I have a few thoughts on this I’d like to share.

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Every once in a while I will hear this term. Whoever says it is generally talking about the panacea of integration. There has been a lot of progress in this area over the years and the growth is generally coming from Broker/Dealers.

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