Carnival of the Capitalists for August 13, 2007

Welcome to this week's Carnival of the Capitalists. I should have known when I signed up to host on the 13th to plan for the unexpected. Who knew it would be the Blue Screen of Death? And then the dreaded sound of scraping from the hard drive. Followed by air conditioner problems; never good in the middle of August in Arizona. And the first day of school is today (I guess every cloud DOES have a silver lining!).

Over 50 submissions this week, too! I guess everyone is blogging on summer vacation this year. And since you have extra time on your hands, I'm giving everyone link love this week. I also have a list of the top picks (in my personal opinion - no offense to anyone who isn't a top pick; I'm just as capricious as the host who didn't top pick my submission last week!) Please note that CotC only allows one post per author and one post per blog.

Top Picks for the Time-Challenged

Sagar Satapathy presents All You Need is Love and a Good Financial Plan: 17 Finance Tips from the Beatles posted at Credit Card Lowdown. I'm not a big Beatles fan, but he gets high marks for creativity!

Charles Green posits that We've All Caught the Detroit Disease. Money quote: "We’ve learned well from Detroit—the wrong lessons." Ouch!

Benjamin Kepple presents Moneyball posted at Ben Kepple, in which he discusses quandary of the value of the yuan (and the problems both the Chinese and American governments face in dealing with the issue).

Bob Vineyard explains some interesting facts about health care spending. Interesting in that pending disaster sort of way...

James Hamilton of Econbrowser discusses last week's interventions by central banks in What is a liquidity event?. So that's what the Fed is doing...

Michael K. Dawson presents Leave Buy and Hold to the Billionaires posted at Breaking the Shackles of the 9 to 5 | by The Time & Money Group. Money quote of the week: "One of the most expensive lessons that I have ever learned is that it is much better to sell a stock and buy it back higher than to suffer through a draw down."

Rob presents Rupert Murdoch Would Be a Fruitcake To Make the WSJ Free posted at Businesspundit. I liked Rob's analysis very much. Then I read Jon Strande's smackdown rebuttal, which brought up some interesting ideas of how to make it work.

"Last Friday when I found myself agreeing with Jim Cramer, I felt very uncomfortable for obvious reasons." Babak presents Financial Liquidity Injection: Better Late Than Never posted at Trader's Narrative.

"YouTubes database of iPhone-related videos reached for more than 15,000. The most popular of them was viewed 4 million times." Wow. Michael Ferrerya presents From iPhone to YouTube - The Viral Marketing Method.

Christine Kane presents What's Easy. What's Not. posted at Christine Kane's Blog. Okay, so this isn't exactly standard CotC fare, but it's so beautifully written I had to include it in the faves.

Careers

Wilson Ng presents the perfect post for Monday the 13th: Going to the Top too fast posted at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife. Alas, he's probably right.

Economics

Aundi presents Economics of Burning Man posted at Queercents. Note: language is not G rated on this post.

Jay Deragon presents Get S.E.T. for Change, in which he discusses the convergence of Sociology, Economics and Technology.

Adam presents The Knowledge Economy Hypothesis posted at Sophistpundit. I feel like I should get college credits for finishing that one, but very well written.

David Tufte discusses 'Why Is Macroeconomics So Hard - "Balanced" Journalism"' at voluntaryXchange. Money quote: "Is it any wonder than a nation full of leisurely people who can afford to pay to have someone to redo their closets to hold more stuff have unfounded angst about the economy?"

CA presents Manufacturing moving back to the US? - Part 1 : Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog - IQI Strategic Management Inc. posted at Atlantic Canada's Small Business Blog. As Wolfgang used to say on Laugh In: "Very interesting..."

Entrepreneurship

Edith Yeung lists 13 Things a Successful Entrepreneur Must Know & Take Action On posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act.. I liked the Just Do This at the end!

Wayne Hurlbert presents Connections: Bloggers plus dots equal business : Blog Business World posted at Blog Business World. There do seem to be a lot of new businesses coming out of blogging relationships these days.

Christopher Anderson presents Planning an Business Trip. Good advice for maximizing deductions!

Crystal Cohen presents Leveling the Playing Fields.

Finance

Rachel Langston says OSAs are MVPs over at My Money Thinks. OSAs are Online Savings Accounts.

Andy presents How to Determine Financial Success posted at moneywalks. Two words: net worth!

DR presents 5 Steps to Achieving the 24-hour Work Week (Which Beats The 4-Hour Work Week) posted at The Dough Roller. No Mondays...hmm...Step 5 is important for everyone these days...

Matthew Paulson presents How to Make a Guaranteed 14.57% Rate of Return on Your Money. posted at FinanceIsPersonal.com. Another spoonful of castor oil, but it's good advice.

FMF presents Disney Money Saving Tips: Avoid Crowds, Be Flexible, Shop Around posted at Free Money Finance. Non-financial tip: bring a baby!

Martin Bosworth presents "Faith-based investing" and total economic collapse posted at Scholars and Rogues. It's not that kind of "faith-based".

Silicon Valley Blogger presents How Are You Building Your Net Worth? posted at The Digerati Life. Two words: pie charts!

Shannon Christman presents Why Getting a Degree Isn’t Always a Sound Financial Decision posted at Saving Advice Blog. Good questions and solid analysis.

George presents Buybacks vs. Dividends posted at Fat Pitch Financials, which presents the results of a reader poll.

Management

Carmen Van Kerckhove presents How to respond to a racist joke posted at Race in the Workplace - how race and racism influence our working lives. Very well written piece. I wish all training of this type were this cogent.

Alvaro Fernandez presents Training the Aging Workforce posted at Brain Fitness Blog. It's never too early to set your baby boomer exit strategy!

Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership Blog discusses Engagement: Seven Ways to Increase It. I can provide apocryphal evidence for this: "If you have a bad boss, you will have a terrible workplace. If you have a great boss you can have a great workplace in the most awful and dysfunctional of companies."

Leon Gettler presents Interview with Boyden World Corporation president Christopher J Clarke posted at Sox First. I'm not sold on the concept of "short term CFOs".

Louise Manning presents Are You A Good Facilitator? posted at The Human Imprint. Nice distinction between leadership and facilitation!

Bridgette Boudreaux presents The Money Is In The Service posted at Your Time 2 Soar. A birthday cake for a copier?

Sales and Marketing

David Kam discusses ADcraft, marketing in the World of Warcraft. Any group of 9 million people is a market too ripe to ignore.

The Markets

Matthew Ash says The Long Term is Still As Bright As Ever, and he has a chart to prove it. He also says the short and intermediate don't look so rosy.

Warren Wong admonishes you to Stop Checking That Stock at INTJ Personal Development. If you're not going to act, why look?

nickel presents The Dow Jones Industrial Average: Then and Now posted at fivecentnickel.com. I think my grandfather had a few shares of Distilling and Cattle Feeding.

Miscellany

Jimmy Liberty presents Thom Hartmann?s Faulty Attack On Capitalism? Part I posted at Jimmy Liberty's Blog, wherein he discusses current events from the 1700's. And I agree with him.

Vihar Sheth presents Sustainable Sports posted at green | rising, and includes a list of the Top Ten Vegetarian-Friendly Ballparks.

Dan Melson presents San Diego Real Estate Market Prognosis August 2007 posted at Searchlight Crusade. He points out that San Diego has been on the leading edge of real estate trends, both good and bad, so you may want to check this out.

Mark at SportsBiz - The Business of Sports Illuminated discusses GM's severance of it's 23 year relationship with the U.S. Olympic Committee.

What to do with $80 Million worth of stock certificates sent to you by mistake? Shivering Timbers presents Stock Certificates posted at Dispatches from the Frozen North.

FitBuff presents Free Water, What a Novel Idea! | FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog posted at FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog. Well, not exactly free...


And there you have it! Next week's edition will be at Revenue River. You can visit him before then if you like. Check out his Penn and Teller post! Or you can stay here and look at more irreverently productive stuff. You can start with this list of defining posts, or anything in the sidebar.

Drat! I just noticed that next week's host was also last week's host. What do you think the probability of me getting a "top" listing next week is?