Very Skeery Stuff

Simplicity in Kansas has a great blog and one of its recent posts discusses this infamous housing bubble - a topic so big that Ben Jones has dedicated his entire blog to the topic, over at HousingBubbleBlog.com. (The bubble is deflating if not outright bursting, by the way.)

US Debt is monitored over at the US Debt Clock. As of September 9, 2006, at 5:16:33 pm GMT, the debt was $8,533,794,901,315.96 according to the clock - and it grows $1.75 billion a DAY.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Economic Analysis keeps track of savings. Savings have been at a negative since 2005 -- and prior to that, they hadn't been over 3% of disposable personal income since 2000. During this decade, at our best, the country was only saving 3 pennies out of every dollar.

Is all this skeery stuff news? No. MIT was calling the American economy a "Ponzi scheme" almost ten years ago - you can read the essay by F. Kreisel at MIT's site.

[Thanks to MBHunter for pointing out that the debt is growing by billions, not trillions, a day. I've edited this post accordingly. RK]

More Free Movies Online

Everyday, more and more movies are being downloaded for free viewing ... and there are some great ones out there. Considered to be in the public domain, there is no copyright violation for sharing them online.

PublicDomainTorrents.Com offers up John Wayne in McClintock and seven of the Sherlock Holmes classics.

emol.com has just added My Man Godfrey with William Powell and Carole Lombard; Happy Go Lovely with David Niven and Cesar Romero; and Our Town with William Holden in the title role of the movie classic based upon Wilder's Pulitzer-Prize winning play.

OpenFlix has a film noir section with some of the great ones: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers with Barbara Stanwick, Van Heflin, and Kirk Douglas; Orson Welles' The Stranger; Whistle Stop with George Raft and Ava Gardner; and DOA with Edmund O'Brien. The site has other sections as well: musicals, action, adventure. Lots to choose from.

The Nest Egg Index & 12 Tips On Saving

Stockbrokerage firm AG Edwards has released its second Nest Egg Index. In it, they rank what they consider to be the 500 top-saving communities nationally.

Ranking is based upon 12 factors, retirement plans and home ownership being two of them. The report reveals what parts of the country are doing well -- and not so well -- in building financial "Nest Eggs", according to the company.

934 communities are included this year, with the top five states being: New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, Maryland, and Massachusetts, and the top five cities: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut; San Jose, California; Torrington, Connecticut; and Minneapolis-St.Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota.

In tandem with this, AGEdwards has compiled a list of 12 Tips on Savings, details on the site and headings shown below:

Start early.
Get over the planning hump.
Prioritize your long-term nest egg needs.
Pay yourself first.
Participate in employer-sponsored savings and retirement plans.
Diversify.
Control and reduce your debt.
Compare what you spend with what you want.
Monitor your savings plans and progress.
Review your income tax withholding.
Team up.
Expect the unexpected.

You can check your community online at their site as well as the criteria used for the study.