According to some recent news, wine has outperformed the stock market over the last decade – to the tune of an 11% average annual return.  Additionally, the market has matured greatly over the last few years and it has its own index, the Liv-Ex 100.  Unfortunately, despite the claims of the Liv-Ex, it is heavily biased towards French wine (in Jan ’09 – Bordeaux – Red = 91.33%; Bordeaux – White = 1.04%; Burgundy = 3.49%; Champagne = 3.32%; Rhone = 0.19%; and Italy = 0.63%) and does not deal with en primeur prices.  Therefore, it only includes the most expensive and widely held wines (plus, the focus on France means that it deals mainly with established wineries that have established followings of dealers and collectors).  Finally, to access the data, you have to pay and it is not cheap … lowest level of membership for management of a cellar is £49.95 per year.

Then again, investing in liquid assets (not just wine, but also whisky) is not as easy as investing in many other forms.  It has some drawbacks: Read more »

Lands cleared to make way for houses that were not (and may never be) developed. (DigitalGlobe, Sanborn, GeoEye, U.S. Geological Survey; 2008 Google Imagery)

Is the next version of white flight (or black flight – a more recent occurrence) going to be the middle-classes out of the suburbs?

This is not a new fad … it was covered last year in the March 2008 issue of The Atlantic … but the longer that the current economic crisis continues, the more pressing the question of the future of the thousands of (mainly recently) planned suburbs have. Just last week, the continued drop in house prices was noted … for example, in Phoenix, prices are down 50.8% off the peak in June 2006!  With this continued drop, what is going to happen to all of those houses?

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“The American dream to them is a nightmare, and the land of opportunity is but a cruel joke,” said Fox, also of Northeastern, who has been dubbed the “dean of death” for his analysis of mass murders. “The economic pie is shrinking to the point where it looks more like a Pop Tart and some feel all they’re getting is the crumbs. There’s a combination of feeling despair and hopelessness at the same time as a certain degree of anger and blame.”

… well, maybe not …

“Because homicides are fairly rare, it is hard to see patterns even when ones exist,” said Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the University of Albany. “It’s like reading tea leaves. I don’t make much of it. I don’t think you can say anything definitively one way or another.”

from Some Link Economy With Spate Of Killings @ washingtonpost.com

Yet, from some of the later points made in the article, it is clear that there is a causal link between the collapse of the economy, et al with the mass murders … that traumatic events trigger mass murderers and that in today’s economy there are more ‘catastrophes’ than in recent history.  Read more »

There are plenty of very rich people still around – nearly 800 billionaires, according to the latest list from Forbes – and some of them continue to spend ostentatiously. But, increasingly, the rich don’t want to be on these lists, because “New Faux Poor”, or NFP, as it is affectionately known, is the must-have social badge of the credit crunch season.

via Wealth Bulletin: Rise of the “New Faux Poor”.

Sometimes, the things that you find published on the internet are just unbelieveable!  Unfortunately, it appears that this report is true.  The British super-rich are no longer bling happy.

The other thing that this report mentions is that classic English style is better suited to times of economic difficulty, but that is not the only effect that the recession is having on fashions … particularly men’s fashion.

Well, GM can lose $84.7 million a day!

During 2008, GM lost $30.9 billion (and they lost $9.6 billion in the last quarter).  But, I guess the biggest question is how do you lose that much money that fast?

Or, should we be more worried that last year was not the worst year on the books for GM?  They lost nearly $40bn in 2007 and could collapse into bankruptcy quickly! Read more »

Would you pay $103,000 for this shack?

The more that I read about the housing crisis, it seems that it has two very clear sides.  First, are the sub-prime mortgages that were given to people like Marvene Halterman living in that little blue shack.  On the other side of the equation are people like Francine Hardaway, who despite being in a position to made a reasonable purchase were swayed (for some reason or another) into a purchase that they should not have made on terms which should have been avoided.  But, what do these two types of people have in common? Read more »

I completely agree with Obama’s opinion in his Washington Post op-ed yesterday. What we need from the politician in Washington is some action and not the old-fashioned nit-picking! So what if 1% of the stimulus package does not provide the best value for money, is it not worth it for the other 99%? Think about your personal life, how many times have you had to spend money quickly because of an emergency? How many times did you do it perfectly?

Right now, what the USA (and the world) needs is the emergency purchase because we don’t have the time to wait for the perfect solution!

This last Sunday, I added up the attendance at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford and noticed that we had experienced a large increase in attendance, as compared to last January. So, can it be because of the failing economy that we are having more people come through the door? Well, according to statistics from the US, it seems that the economy is helping to boost people’s use of museums and libraries. Read more »

From The Big Money …

Even the biggest events in sports have been tackled by the sliding economy. But, it does have a chance to become one of the most watched TV events in history because so many extra people will be staying home to watch TV (since it is a lot cheaper than many other forms of entertainment)!

In light of my previous post on the economic difficulties academia is currently facing and this study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, it is clear that there is one step that Obama should take to stimulate the economy. Fix the educational system from start to finish! Read more »