Personal Finance and Investing

I am borrowing the phrase from Betty White’s upcoming book for a reason. Is anyone watching the news? Reading the paper or internet news?

Maybe you don’t need to… perhaps you are already experiencing the ills that our great country is facing.

Is it really about a democratic or republican’s individual parties view and opinion? Could it possibly be collective, yet poor choices of decisions from both parties? Is either one perfect? Obviously not, or we would not be in this frightening mess that so many hardworking Americans are now facing.

Maybe it is the human ego that is getting in the way. Why we

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Marian Snow’s book had a lot of promise. First, it discusses equity harvesting and how to get the maximum amount of equity out of your home without being taxed on it. Second, it discusses how to use that money to make more money. Sounds great on the surface, but this book failed to deliver and ended up being a major disappointment. The subtitle: How to Safely Leverage the Equity Trapped in Your Home and Transform It Into a Constant Flow of Wealth and Security seems a bit macabre now, in the wake of the housing crisis and one wonders how many people are regretting that they ever picked this book up.

Let’s start with first things first. The a

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Bahamas Plane Crash

NASSAU, Bahamas – Rescuers in boats saved six people, including two children and a pregnant woman, who were found clinging to the wreckage of a small plane that crash landed Monday in waters off the Bahamas.

The twin-engine Piper Aztec went down about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Grand Bahama Island after one of its engines failed, said Jamie Rose of the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association.

The passengers were holding on to the floating tail section of the plane when Rose arrived in response to their distress call.

“They were still pretty shell shocked,” Rose said. “

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As promised, here’s the lowdown on how our external private equity investments are doing at the CPP Investment Board (see prior post “CPPIB U.S.A. general partner Q1 2010 performance numbers” Aug 19-10).

The overview (December quarter in brackets, in current currency exchange rates):

Paid in Capital: $16.333 billion ($16.649B)
Reported Value: $11.498 billion ($11.419B)
Distributions Received: $7.410 billion ($7.353B)
Reported Value plus Distributions: $18.905 billion ($18.772B)
Capital Calls still to fund: $12.776 billion ($13.042B)
Total Committed: $29.108 billion ($29.691B)

That looks to be a 16% increase in the net asset value of CPPIB’s PE investments over the life of the program. But the

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