DailyFinance.comhttp://www.dailyfinance.comDailyFinance.comhttp://o.aolcdn.com/os/df/2013/img/2-dailyfinance_logo_m.pngDailyFinance.comhttp://www.dailyfinance.comen-usCopyright 2013 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Secretary of Scribble: Is Jack Lew About to Doodle on Your Dollars?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/09/jack-lew-signature-funny-secretary-treasury-dollars/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/09/jack-lew-signature-funny-secretary-treasury-dollars/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/09/jack-lew-signature-funny-secretary-treasury-dollars/#commentsFiled under: , ,

signature
Because President Barack Obama plans to name Jack Lew as his pick to replace Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, your money might soon start looking a little goofy.

Call it doodle-nomics: If confirmed to head the Treasury, Lew, currently the White House chief of staff, would lend his squiggly signature to the bottom right quadrant of all newly printed greenbacks. His peculiar penmanship came to light in a September 2011 memo when he was the director of the Office of Management and Budget. New York magazine's Kevin Roose compares it to "a Slinky that has lost its spring."

Around that time, forensic handwriting analyst Sheila Lowe told The Daily Mail that a signature is the "cover on the book" that demonstrates how a person presents himself publicly. The parabolic peaks and valleys of Lew's letters may reveal a type of disguise.

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"The soft roundedness of the letters show he can adapt quickly and make rapid changes," Lowe said of Lew. "But he's also self-protective. He doesn't want people to see his private side."

On the economic front, at least, Lew appears at first blush to have little to hide. When he headed the budget office for President Bill Clinton, he and his boss left the nation with a $237 billion budget surplus.

But it's a different ballgame now. The loop-de-loops appear to be a surrealistic representation of the U.S. economy circa 2008. He will be charged with spurring Congress to raise the government's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, so perhaps the jumbled John Hancock is only fitting.

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]]>Barack ObamaBill Clintondollar billsfunny signaturehandwritingJack LewJack Lew signatureJohn HancockKevin RooseLocalOffice of Management and BudgetSecretary of the TreasurysignatureTim GeithnerTimothy GeithnerU.S.U.S. currencyRoss Kenneth UrkenWed, 09 Jan 2013 13:52:00 EST3-D Printers at CES: Can MakerBot Sell a DIY Revolution?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/08/3-d-printers-ces-makerbot-Replicator-diy-revolution/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/08/3-d-printers-ces-makerbot-Replicator-diy-revolution/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/08/3-d-printers-ces-makerbot-Replicator-diy-revolution/#commentsFiled under: ,

3D Printing
Tuesday was MakerBot's big day at CES -- the day it unveiled its Replicator 2X 3-D printer, the machine designed to put the means of manufacturing right in your living room.

You can already buy a Replicator for $2,199 a pop at the company's first-ever retail store (pricing for the next-generation model is still under wraps). The Manhattan outpost, which opened in November, is a sure sign that 3-D printing is inching ever closer to the mainstream. But with prices ranging from $500 to more than $2,000 for the hardware, and $50 a kilo for the plastic filament cartridge (enough to "print" about 50 coffee mugs), will it ever get there?

3D Printing

How 3-D Printing Works

A 3-D printer is essentially a way to make many copies of a single plastic item without expensive molds and injection machines. All you need is a 3-D design on your computer -- either one of your own, or of the 25,000 free downloads available on MakerBot's thingaverse website.

To print an object, whether it's the aforementioned coffee mug or a new case for your iPhone, the printer takes a spool of plastic filament, melts it through a nozzle, and spits out the object layer by layer until, lo and behold, your mug is complete. A relatively simple coffee mug takes about an hour and a half to print.

There's obvious appeal for design geeks and small businesses, who right now make up the majority of buyers. The market volume for these systems is around 40,000 this year and is projected to be something like 200,000 next year, according to Professor Richard Hague, a British expert in additive manufacturing at the University of Nottingham. Investors are already taking notice: public companies that make these contraptions like Stratasys (SSYS) and 3D Systems (DDD) are poised for big growth in the new year.
Back massager created by Tom Nardone
Internet entrepreneur Tom Nardone of Birmingham, Mich., is an example of an early-adopter type who got his Makerbot Replicator in May for $2,008 to use in a side business making everyday items like back scratchers and shoe lifts. "I wanted to be on the leading edge," he said.

The process is not without its glitches. "It is definitely not easy to use, nor quite hassle free," he said. "It takes a long time to print something, and often the printing goes wrong."

To add insult to injury for the common consumer, the 3-D printer may not even net much in the way of savings, according to Phil Reeves, the managing director at Econolyst, a 3D printing and additive manufacturing consultancy in Derby, U.K.

In Reeves's experiment using the $1,400 MakerBot Replicator 1, the cost of making a small item is still relatively high. Taking into account the cost of the raw material, electricity and machine depreciation, a typical four-inch figurine would cost about $10 -- more than buying it in a store, to say nothing of the time and effort involved. (If you want to figure out how much your dream item would cost, you can upload a CAD file here, and check the price.)

3D Printer

But at the end of the day, it's not simply about the economics.

"[3D] printing is significantly more expensive than buying a molded part," Reeves said, "but that ignores the emotional, educational and cultural benefits of printing it at home .... There is a certain value and cachet associated with the immediacy."

MakerBot CEO Bre PettisJenny Lawton, MakerBot's chief of strategy and the head of the company's store, points out that the comparative advantage of 3-D printing is the unique quality of the product": "You can make things that you can't get anywhere else."

Yours, and Yours Alone

That type of customization may be the true advantage of having a 3-D printer.

"People are already incredibly concerned with customization," noted Olaf Diegel, a professor of mechatronics at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. "When you buy an iPod, the first thing you do is get a flashy silicon sleeve, throw a Hello Kitty label on it -- anything you can to make it your own."

3-D printers allow the common consumer to take that personalization to the next level. For instance, you can customize the ergonomics, so your iPod can fit perfectly in your hand or your headphones snugly in your ears.

For his part, Reeves believes that 3D printing will one day change the patterns of our consumer society -- but only when the technology becomes cheaper and easier to use.

In the meantime, our friends at Engadget said it best: "The Replicator is about novelty and the mere cool factor of having a product that can print out just about anything you can imagine. By those standards, this thing is downright amazing ... Casual consumers should wait for a future version. For tinkerers and hobbyists, however, it's $2,000 well-spent."

See the Replicator in action here.







3D Printing Is The Wave Of The Future


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]]>3-d printer3d printer3d printing3D Systems CorpCESces 2013consumer electronics showEconolystMakerBotmakerbot replicatormanufacturingMassey UniversitypersonalizationPhil ReevesReplicator 2XSci/TechStratasys IncthingaverseRoss Kenneth UrkenTue, 08 Jan 2013 17:12:00 ESTUnclaimed Property: Is Missing Money Looking for You?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/08/unclaimed-property-is-missing-money-looking-for-you/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/08/unclaimed-property-is-missing-money-looking-for-you/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/08/unclaimed-property-is-missing-money-looking-for-you/#commentsOne morning in November, Daniel DeMeuse magically awoke $28,000 richer. The 54-year-old unemployed studio artist from Sturgeon Bay, Wis., had been left money in a dear friend's estate 10 years earlier, but because of the slow probate of the will, he'd never learned of the bequest.

That is, not until the funds had gone to the Office of the State Treasurer, who informed him of his windfall.

DeMeuse, who plans to use the money to help care for his elderly mother, is one of many people on the receiving end of such unexpected luck. Money may be out there looking for you this year, too: You just have to know where to find it.

Follow the (Missing) Money

Whether from a deceased relative who left an unclear will or a long-forgotten 401(k) account, a lot of money is owed to Americans out there: Some $33 billion in total unclaimed property and cash, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

Because state legislatures have become increasingly vigilant about returning this limbo money to its rightful owners, many of those folks are in for a bright new year of unexpected windfalls. It happens so often with life insurance policies that the National Conference of Insurance Legislators created the Unclaimed Life Insurance Benefits Act to require intensified beneficiary-location efforts. According to the American Bar Association, at least three insurers -- MetLife (MET), Prudential Financial (PRU) and the John Hancock segment of Manulife Financial (MFC) -- have been spurred to seek out beneficiaries by a task force headed by Florida's insurance commissioner and another effort in New York.

Unclaimed property can also take the form of inactive checking and savings accounts, abandoned safety deposit boxes, uncashed checks, and forgotten investments. This misplaced money is usually the result of simple negligence -- poor record keeping or accounts that people lost track of after a move.

"We have a very mobile society," said Carolyn Atkinson, deputy treasurer for Unclaimed Property at NAUPA. "People buy stock or they pass away, and their relatives didn't know what they owned. Our society's mobility is a two-edged sword. People issue a change of address and other things fall through the cracks."



It can happen to anyone. "Today" show host Matt Lauer, who started his broadcast career in West Virginia, learned in October that he had a small bank account in the state that he'd forgotten. Crooner Jason Mraz, too, was owed a check from the West Virginia treasurer for a concert he played there in 2010 for which he failed to recoup all the money due him; the state discovered his name last April on a list of people owed unclaimed property.

Some people have had money in the high six-figures find them. "They had bought stock 40 years ago, and now they're in their late retirement years," Atkinson said. "It's human nature -- we just don't always keep those things in mind."

How To Track Down Your Money

Start by going to to Missingmoney.com, a NAUPA-endorsed combined database of state treasuries and unclaimed property records. It's possible to search all states and provinces listed at once, or just a particular state where you or a relative lived.

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Some 40 states have data on Missingmoney.com, but if you suspect you're owed money in a state that hasn't shared its data, it's best to visit the website of that state's treasury or whichever governmental agency handles unclaimed property there. (In Indiana, for example, it's the Attorney General's Office.) A full list of contacts can be found here, or visit Unclaimed.org for more information.

I decided to try it myself in my native New Jersey. Though I personally didn't have any missing money, 11 of my relatives -- including my mother! -- are due funds in the state. Here's hoping that I can start off the new year with at least a small finder's fee from them.



Unclaimed Money chart

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]]>American Bar AssociationJason MrazJohn HancockLife Insurancelife insurance beneficiariesLost, mislaid, and abandoned propertyManulife Financial CorpMatt LauerMetLifeNational Association of Unclaimed Property AdministratorsNAUPAunclaimed fundsunclaimed moneyunclaimed propertyRoss Kenneth UrkenTue, 08 Jan 2013 06:00:00 ESTForget the Zipcar Avis Deal: Rent Cheaper with Peer-to-Peer Car Sharinghttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/05/cheap-car-rental-peer-to-peer-relayrides-zipcar-avis/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/05/cheap-car-rental-peer-to-peer-relayrides-zipcar-avis/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/05/cheap-car-rental-peer-to-peer-relayrides-zipcar-avis/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Avis ZipcarAvis Budget Group's (CAR) purchase of major car-sharing player Zipcar this week for $500 million validates the popularity and potential of the car-sharing industry.

But though Zipcar controls 75 percent of the $400 million and growing car-sharing market in the U.S., there may be a smarter way for you to get a temporary set of wheels on the cheap: peer-to-peer car sharing.

It's a fundamentally different business than the type operated by a firm like Zipcar, which maintains fleets of vehicles for those in need of a temporary road whip. Peer-to-peer car sharing programs don't provide cars at all -- just connections between car owners and people who want to rent one.

So before you rent a minivan for a holiday in the country, or a truck to do a run to Costco with friends, consider using a company such as RelayRides, which has participants in 1,200 U.S. cities; Getaround in San Francisco and the Bay area; or Jolly Wheels, which operates in New York, Arizona, Florida and several other states.

For the renters, peer-to-peer wins because it's cheaper, and their insurance is covered by the peer-to-peer companies, (unlike the car owners, who have to pony up for extra insurance for their vehicles if they're going to make money renting them out).

Peer-to-peer participants can get cars for as low as $15 to $30 a day. By contrast, Zipcar participants in New York City, for example, must pay a one-time $25 application fee and a $60 annual membership fee on top of the $9-an-hour or $83-a-day rental rate.

RelayRides CEO Andre Haddad, who says his average customer pays $50 a day for a vehicle, views peer-to-peer car sharing as the automotive equivalent of AirBnB, and fulfilling a similar purpose to eBay, his former employer.

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"It's a marketplace to connect people who have something with people who don't," he said. "And people in this economy are not buying cars or not buying second cars, which depreciate, lose value, sit in your driveway or garage."

His virtual platform and others like it give those "have-nots" a way to harness the millions of cars sitting idle across the country without making big investments in vehicles they might need only occasionally.

How ready is nation for peer-to-peer rentals? RelayRides' move to expand beyond its early San Francisco and Boston markets only began in March 2012, and, as was previously noted, it has cars available in 1,200 cities today.

Zipcar, by contrast, finally turned a profit in in the third quarter of 2011, a decade after the company's inception. That's because managing a fleet, renting parking lot space and negotiating the corporate infrastructure makes for a low margins business.

Peer-to-peer companies, which take a 40% cut of the action car owners, serve merely as conduits with low overhead. That allows the rates to drop, with owners setting their own prices according to guidelines from companies based on year, make, model, and location.

Because the cars are widely sourced, people have access to snazzy models like a BMW Z4, high-capacity stuff-movers like the Hyundai Santa Fe, or basic transportation like a Honda Civic.

"We have brands if you want to have style and not just to go from point A to point B," Haddad said, "But because we're a platform business, it's easy for renters looking to save money."


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]]>AirbnbAndre HaddadAvisAvis Budget GroupAvis buys ZipcarGetaroundPeer-to-peerRelayRidesSan FranciscoZipcarRoss Kenneth UrkenSat, 05 Jan 2013 07:00:00 ESTTax Bracket Calculator Brings Perspective to the Fiscal Cliffhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/27/tax-bracket-calculator-brings-perspective-to-the-fiscal-cliff/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/27/tax-bracket-calculator-brings-perspective-to-the-fiscal-cliff/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/27/tax-bracket-calculator-brings-perspective-to-the-fiscal-cliff/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Your Tax BracketTax brackets are moving targets, shifting as the years go by in the eternal political tug-of-war. That's the story of the fiscal cliff, with Democrats generally championing tax hikes for the rich and Republicans favoring decreased governmental aid to the less fortunate.

With Pres. Barack Obama returning from his holiday in Hawaii to try to resolve the fiscal cliff conflict, we thought it was worth sharing this interactive chart created by Ritchie King at Quartz. You can type in your taxable income and see your tax rate in any year, going all the way back to 1913.

tax rate chart

Although many are arguing that tax rates are too high, a historical glance at effective income tax rates -- defined as what you pay in federal taxes divided by your taxable income -- indicates that current percentages for top income earners are significantly lower than in decades gone by. During the 1950s and '60s, for example, the top income tax rate was over 90 percent.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has proposed a bill raising the marginal tax rate for those earning $1 million or more to 39.6% from 35%. Obama has proposed that same increase, but for everyone earning $400,000 or more. As the chart demonstrates, if you earned $1 million in taxable income this year, the effective tax rate would be 32.7%. In 1956, by contrast, it would have been 70.7%.

That hindsight -- plus a little push from Warren Buffett -- may give even the wealthiest opponents of tax hikes a little added perspective while we wait for the current tug-of-war to end.

Related articles:

7 Cliffs We Like Better Than the Fiscal Cliff
Fiscal Cliff Protesters Take Aim at the Cayman Islands
Simple Ways to Cut Your Budget Before the Fiscal Cliff

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]]>effective tax ratefiscal cliffmarginal tax ratequartztax bracket calculatortax calculatortax ratesRoss Kenneth UrkenThu, 27 Dec 2012 12:00:00 ESTWedding Rings for Men: More Bling, Fewer Buckshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/27/wedding-rings-for-men-more-bling-fewer-bucks/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/27/wedding-rings-for-men-more-bling-fewer-bucks/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/27/wedding-rings-for-men-more-bling-fewer-bucks/#commentsFiled under: ,

Budget-wise wedding rings for menTis the season...for wedding engagements. More than a third of engagements take place between Thanksgiving and New Year's, according to WeddingWire -- so many, in fact, that it's come to be known as "engagement season."

Which means that wedding planning kicks off in earnest in the new year -- followed closely by sticker shock at the price of gold and platinum wedding bands. As the cost of precious metals continues to rise, it comes as no surprise that more and more grooms are forgoing those traditional choices and opting for more adventuresome -- and less costly -- materials, such as tungsten carbide and palladium.

Grooms spent an average of $491 for their wedding bands in 2011, almost a 23 percent drop from the $637 average in 2009, according to wedding-planning website The Knot. That's in part because fewer are buying gold: 39 percent of grooms purchased white gold bands in 2009, versus 34 percent in 2011.

Ruth Batson, CEO of the American Gem Society, chalks up the popularity of alternative materials to style as well as economics. "Alternative materials like titanium, ceramic, tungsten are top trends right now, because of the hardness factor and also for ease of care. While cost may be a factor for some, overall design and how the ring looks and holds up tend to be a priority."

When I got married in September, I sprang for a 14-karat gold band. But if I'd known about all the choices, I might have made a different decision. Click through the gallery below for the best ways to save with alternative materials. (For price comparisons, we controlled for ring type: 6-mm Triton brand rings at Kay Jewelers.)

Gallery: Economical Alternatives for Men to a Gold Wedding Band

TitaniumTungsten CarbideGem Ceramic RingsPalladiumWhite Gold



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]]>14-karat goldengagement seasongem ceramicLifestylepalladiumplatinumtitaniumtungsten carbidewedding bandswedding bands for menwedding planningwedding ringswedding rings for menwhite goldRoss Kenneth UrkenThu, 27 Dec 2012 07:00:00 ESTBuilding a Better Bill: To Curb Counterfeiting, Paper Goes High-Techhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/26/building-a-better-bill-to-curb-counterfeiting-paper-goes-high/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/26/building-a-better-bill-to-curb-counterfeiting-paper-goes-high/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/26/building-a-better-bill-to-curb-counterfeiting-paper-goes-high/#commentsFiled under: ,

VorticomWith several high-profile counterfeiting cases in the U.S. this year -- and with crooks having access to increasingly sophisticated printing and copying technology -- governments are pushing hard to make paper currency more secure through technology.

A first peek at what the currency of the future looks like comes from Morocco, which this week is rolling out notes made from a high-tech composite called Durasafe. Made by Vancouver-based Fortress Paper Ltd. (FTP: TSX) -- which also produces paper for the Swiss franc and the euro -- the technology behind Durasafe is designed to foil even the canniest counterfeiters.

Morocco's new 25-dihram note is a sandwich of two thin sheets of cotton banknote paper surrounding a layer of polymer (the blue in the diagram below). Each piece of the three-layer composite is die-cut separately at asymmetrical intervals. The holes create tiny "windows" that offer a glimpse of interior security features, such as a magenta/green color-shift thread and a watermark of King Mohammed VI. The technology will also launch next year in two undisclosed countries, one in Africa and the other in Eastern Europe.

.

Printing at home

The United States, too, is about to turn its currency's security up a notch. Fortress's president, Chad Wasilenkoff, estimates that there are 1 million counterfeit U.S. bills in circulation, and the quality of fakes gets better all the time. In 2008, Crane & Co., which prints U.S. banknotes, started using a nano thread in $100 bills that only becomes visible when held to the light. The $5 bill also uses color-shifting ink and an embedded watermark to heighten security.

Crane has some other cool tricks in the works. Doug Crane, vice president of business development and government relations, says the company is working on microscopic lenses and "motion technology," in which an image on the paper appears to move depending on how a bill is tilted.

In fact, a new $100 bill to be issued in 2013 will feature a 6-by-2mm ribbon woven into the bill on which an abundance of little lenses will be incorporated. The pixels will reflect light differently as a bill is viewed from different angles, and images of the Liberty Bell will appear to move across the bill and morph into the number 100.


"You can't create advanced optical materials using an inkjet printer," Crane said. "For a counterfeiter to come up with a way to produce a material like that, it's darn near impossible or very difficult."

Making counterfeiting just that type of a prohibitive and expensive hassle is the goal of amped-up security features. "Nothing is counterfeit-proof," Wasilenkoff observed. "It can all be replicated with enough time, energy and effort." If it's too hard to fake the new bills, then crooks "will counterfeit an easier banknote," he said. And at the rate paper technology is advancing, those easier options will be harder and harder to find.

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]]>Adobe SystemsAlcoaRoss Kenneth UrkenWed, 26 Dec 2012 07:00:00 ESTCruising Fiscal Cliff Protestors Take Aim at the Cayman Islandshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/21/cruising-fiscal-cliff-protestors-cayman-islands/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/21/cruising-fiscal-cliff-protestors-cayman-islands/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/21/cruising-fiscal-cliff-protestors-cayman-islands/#commentsFiled under:

Cayman IslandsA recent luxury cruise to the Cayman Islands gave one group of activists a chance to engage in a bit of guerrilla theater. In what's believed to be the first protest of its kind in the Caymans, social justice group Code Pink demonstrated against the British territory's use as a tax haven. Their rallying cry: $150 billion a year could be recovered from these havens to end the U.S. budget deficit and avoid the "fiscal cliff."

Thousands of U.S. corporations hide taxable dollars in the Cayman Islands -- as many as 80,000, says Code Pink -- making the Caribbean tourist destination the second most popular tax shelter behind Switzerland. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, 83 of the top 100 publicly traded companies in the U.S. shelter income. Added to that, Caribbean banking centers -- including the Caymans -- held close to $2 trillion in U.S. debt as of 2011.

Code Pink's protest came during an annual fundraiser for The Nation magazine on a Carnival cruise ship. When the itinerary put the travelers on the Caymans, Code Pink decided to take action. Some 100 American protesters marched to the Ugland House -- an address that an estimated 18,000 corporations use to shelter their money -- and sang a parody of Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" with the chorus, "Tax evaders, time to bring the money home."



"The local police didn't quite know what to do," said Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. "They were pretty much shocked. They had never experienced this before -- certainly not from people coming from a cruise."

Benjamin, an economist who used to work for the United Nations, and Jodie Evans, an environmental activist who also ran California Gov. Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign, founded Code Pink as an anti-war group 10 years ago. Then, they were pushing for the reallocation of Department of Defense spending, but their movement has taken a broader scope.

"Part of our mission is to redirect money from the Pentagon to what we call life-affirming activities," Benjamin told DailyFinance, noting that Code Pink wants government money spent more intelligently on health care, education and green jobs.

But Code Pink's current focus is the negotiations over the fiscal cliff. The group fears that the talks toward solving the U.S. budget deficit might result it an additional burden for less-affluent Americans. This week Benjamin attended an AFL-CIO rally in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

"We're supportive of the groups right now that are saying, 'Don't cut our social safety net. Don't balance the budget on the backs of the poor,' " Benjamin said.

Offshore banking in particular came under added scrutiny during Mitt Romney's recent presidential campaign. The 2012 Republican nominee's exotic financial portfolio includes $30 million in Bain Funds in the Cayman Islands. The territory, of course, long has been a favorite of hedge-funders and private equity managers looking to attract foreign investors while dodging U.S. taxes. That's to say nothing of Romney's Swiss bank account.

Code Pink believes that if the U.S. took stronger measures to close tax loopholes that allowed such safe havens, America could solve its deficit crisis. Recouping this $150 billion lost to offshore tax loopholes would prevent the $109 billion in spending cuts set for 2013 if Congress cannot avoid the fiscal cliff, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

There's a little twist to the whole Cayman Islands narrative, though.

After the trip, Code Pink leaders discovered that Carnival, the operator of the excursion's cruise ship, is one of the largest corporate tax evaders.

"Unwittingly we had a prime target right onboard," Benjamin said. "Had we known, we could have protested on the boat."

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]]>carnival cruise linescayman islandscode pinkfiscal clifftax havenstax sheltersRoss Kenneth UrkenFri, 21 Dec 2012 09:20:00 ESTHoneymoon Funds: Getting Cash Without Being Crasshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/11/honeymoon-funds-getting-cash-without-being-crass/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/11/honeymoon-funds-getting-cash-without-being-crass/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/11/honeymoon-funds-getting-cash-without-being-crass/#comments Honeymoon kiss

With the expense of weddings and the still weak economy, more and more couples are taking advantage of the crowd-funding trend to bankroll their honeymoons. In fact, last year, 12% of couples created a honeymoon registry, according to the 2011 Registry Study from TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com.

I should know. My wife and I just returned from our honeymoon in sunny Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, thanks to the contributions our friends and family made to our HoneyFund.com registry. (That's us sharing a smooch in Rio's Santa Teresa neighborhood after some delicious caipirinhas).

We're thankful for the financial harnessing power of the Internet, because it would have been hard for us to have afforded the trip by ourselves. And we're not alone: The average cost of a honeymoon was $4,466 in 2010.

And while about a third of couples scaled back their plans because of the economy, few abandoned them all together. More than 80% of marrying couples -- about 1.4 million -- took a honeymoon in 2010, feeding an estimated $6 billion to $7 billion industry.

Forget the Decorative China, We'll Take a Trip to China

Plenty of crowd-funding sites exist to help honeymooners on their way, including HoneyFund, GoGetFunding and GiftSimple. There's no signup fee and, as with a traditional registry, the couple earmarks the contributions they want: ten $150 gifts to cover airfare, say, or two $100 massages at the hotel spa when they arrive. Our original plan was to go to Hawaii, so we requested four $75 tabs for swimming with dolphins and five $200 tabs for our hotel room.

We asked our guests to select the honeymoon activity online, then mail us a check. (Like most honeymoon sites, HoneyFund doesn't require givers to make the purchase through its interface.) If we wanted the money right away, we could have opted for a direct deposit into our joint bank account, but this way we avoided the 2.9% PayPal fee for direct gift transfer.

Sponsored Links

Let's face it, many young couples would prefer to get cash as a wedding gift, but asking for a hundred (or a couple hundred) dollars can seem crass. The honeymoon registry, by contrast, allows people to see the the experience value of their contributions, according to Daniel Post Senning, spokesperson for the Emily Post Institute and the great-great-grandson of the etiquette doyenne.

"It can be a little awkward if [the honeymoon registry] is just to receive cash and it's just in $50 increments," Senning said. "That's unfeeling and a little cold. But done well, people can purchase a particular meal or experience without it being about the dollar amount."

And that way, the couple is also more likely to get what they want. Jessica Lachs, the founder of GiftSimple, explained that earmarking a specific use for the money tends to inspire people to give more. "People like to feel like their gift is a meaningful contribution to a particular item instead of a drop in the bucket."

Inevitably, there are detractors, as a quick troll of TheKnot's message boards attests. "Having a HMR is not okay," user "edielaura" wrote on an etiquette forum. "It's rude to ask people to pay for your vacation." "Habs2Hart" agreed: "HM registries are very rude. It's basically the same as registering for cash, which is a big no-no."

Senning says that while the honeymoon registry doesn't have the same history as the standard gift registry, it's more tactful than tacky: "By no means it it inappropriate or gauche to do."

Instead of a mere thank-you note, couples are more likely to send their honeymoon underwriters postcards or photos from the big event -- scuba diving, having a spa day, indulging in a fancy dinner.

Chen Klein, a 29-year-old web programmer in Seattle, got married this past August and used GoGetFunding.com to finance her weeklong honeymoon at the Hilton's Iru Fushi Resort & Spa in the Maldives.


Courtesy Chen Klein

The couple spent $3,000, of which they crowdsourced $2,590. At the wedding reception, they gave a special shout-out to guests who had contributed $20 or more.

Klein says it was easier to enjoy the crystal blue waters and white sand beaches with their bank accounts less deflated. And the extra cash cushion allowed them to indulge themselves a bit more than they would have otherwise.

"We splashed out a little extra on the room service," Klein said.


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]]>crowdfundinggift registryhoneymoon fundhoneymoonslife stagesLifestyleMaldivesRio de JaneiroTheKnotweddingsRoss Kenneth UrkenTue, 11 Dec 2012 07:00:00 ESTWhat Kate Middleton's Pregnancy Is Reminding Us About Raising Kidshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/10/kate-middleton-pregnancy-cost-of-raising-children/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/10/kate-middleton-pregnancy-cost-of-raising-children/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/10/kate-middleton-pregnancy-cost-of-raising-children/#commentsFiled under: ,

Kate Middleton pregnant
The announcement of Kate Middleton's pregnancy last week was joyous for the Windsor family and royal-watchers alike. But all the fuss around the story hides an uncomfortable truth: For many of us whose family jewels aren't the Crown Jewels, having an heir is getting unaffordably expensive, and in large numbers, folks feeling the pinch are simply putting it off.

In the New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat explained that the waning economy in the U.S. has factored in a drop in procreation stateside.

"American fertility plunged with the stock market in 2008, and it hasn't recovered," he wrote. "American fertility plummeted during the Great Depression, and more recent downturns have produced modest dips as well."

People who saw their net-worths slashed in the housing bust or who have struggled during lengthy periods of unemployment are generally not champing at the bit in their quest to have children.

The Pew Research Center released data late last month that U.S. birthrates were the lowest ever recorded in 2011 -- just 63 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The reasons are clear: The cost of bringing up children has become exorbitant -- even before you consider the rising costs of college tuition. The Department of Agriculture, which has a calculator for estimating the expense of child-rearing, says the cost of parenthood averages $234,900 for one child. According to the calculations, as DailyFinance has reported, a Midwestern family with an annual household income in the $57,400 to $99,390 range, and a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, will spend $578,050 on both by the time the first one reaches college.

Compared with 1960, the 2011 costs associated with raising a child bumped up to 8 percent from 4 percent for health care and from 2 percent to 18 percent for child-care with more dual-income families requiring babysitters.

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Of course, there is no set calculus for the price tag on a child, and Nadia Taha at the New York Times estimated that it would cost her nearly $2 million to raise a child. That's to say nothing of the costs associated raising a child with special needs: An autistic son, for example, will cost his parents an estimated $3.2 million over his lifetime.

These hefty expenses represent another example of the middle class squeeze: The top echelon can handle the financial demands, the lowest gets some government assistance, but those in the middle will either try to scrape by to afford kids or not have them at all.

And the ramifications of the latter choice are potentially grave for the country: A new generation means fresh innovation, entrepreneurial flair, a labor force and taxpayers.

We're not that worried about how Will and Kate will manage it: It's slightly easier to handle child-rearing when you have a royal governess on staff, and when your child's great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, has holdings worth roughly $11.2 billion.

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]]>baby bustBirthRateChild Carechild cost calculatorcost of childcost of childrencost of collegeCrown jewelsDepartment of AgricultureElizabeth IIGreat DepressionHouse of WindsorKate Middletonkate middleton pregnantPew Research Centerraising childrenRoss DouthatRoss Kenneth UrkenMon, 10 Dec 2012 10:10:00 ESTIRS Internet Scams: If the Tax Man Emails You Out of the Blue, It's Fraud. Always.http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/16/irs-internet-scams-tax-man-doesnt-email/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/16/irs-internet-scams-tax-man-doesnt-email/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/16/irs-internet-scams-tax-man-doesnt-email/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

IRS Internet Email ScamsAs buddy-buddy as you might be with the IRS, don't expect to get an email from the government's tax agency any time soon. And if you do -- as our editor did recently -- you can rest assured that it's a scam.

Here's the note our editor got in her inbox:

From: IRS
Reply-To: "noreply@girs.com"
Subject: Tax Notification
Our Ref. S/11434/12
Your Ref. 18B/765/12

NOTICE OF TAX RETURN FOR YEAR 2011

Dear Taxpayer, I am sending this email to announce: After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax return of: $253.04

To receive your return, you need to register for an e-Services account: Click here to register If you already have an e-Services account:

Click here to login For more info on government services go to www.irs.gov


It's tempting to take the bait. After all, who wouldn't want an extra $253.04?

But when DailyFinance followed up with the IRS, which is known for confusing documents, the agency made itself crystal clear: "The IRS does not initiate contacts with taxpayers through email," spokesman Anthony Burke said. "Our contacts go out to taxpayers through the U.S. mail. If we're sending you a notice of some sort, if there's a tax petition suit, you're going to get mail from us."

As with any email phishing scam, the danger is that if you follow the link, you could end up with a malware infection, such as a Trojan horse that logs your keystrokes and allows a hacker to gain access to your bank accounts. Or, if you supply the website with personal information when it asks, you're laying yourself open to identity theft and larceny without the need for the hackers to go further.

In this case, the sending domain -- GIRS.com -- might at first glance be mistaken for an IRS site, but the URL actually sent recipients to a phishing page hosted in Saudi Arabia, according to Chester Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at digital security firm Sophos.

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When we visited the now-disabled site, it did in fact look convincingly like an IRS website. The URL even contained the letters "IRS.gov" -- along with a long string of numbers that only a tech-savvy user might have recognized as problematic. (Astute readers of the email might also have picked up on the British spelling of the word "authorise" in the disclaimer, a tip-off that the author perhaps didn't learn English in the U.S.)

These days, Wisniewski noted, the majority of phishing and malware scams originate in the former Soviet Union, but in some ways, it's getting harder to tell. "They're hiring people to write professional English," he said. "The 419 guys are still writing broken African English. Small businesses in China trying to sell me large quantities of cheap goods and LED light bulbs -- there's lots of broken English. But the Russians behind banking fraud seem to be bringing more well-trained English [speakers]."

The result: What had been one of the biggest red flags of an Internet scam -- poor English -- is no longer one you can count on spotting.

The lesson is, if you're the least bit suspicious, don't take the bait. "I wouldn't give the IRS my email," Wisniewski said. "If your 'Spidey-sense' is tingling, just delete."

Jo-Stewart Rattray, the director of information systems security firm ISACA, advises going one step further.

"Pick up the phone and verify with the organization directly," she said. "Generally this is not the way that the IRS or banks choose to communicate with their taxpayers or customers ... The rule of thumb is, if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is."

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]]>419 scamAmerican and British English spelling differencesAnthony BurkeGIRS.comidentity theftinternal revenue serviceinternet fraudirsirs scamsirs tax questionsmalwareonline scamsphishingSophostax deductionstax scamsTrojan horsetyposvirusRoss Kenneth UrkenFri, 16 Nov 2012 06:00:00 ESTChanging Your Name: Do It Right or Pay the Pricehttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/15/changing-your-name-do-it-right-or-pay-the-price/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/15/changing-your-name-do-it-right-or-pay-the-price/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/15/changing-your-name-do-it-right-or-pay-the-price/#commentsFiled under:

Planning a wedding and a name change for the bride

When my now-wife and I were planning our wedding, the last thing on our minds was how, exactly, she would change her name to officially become Mrs. Urken. There were more pressing matters to worry about, like planning the ceremony, solidifying the logistics of our reception, and staying within our budget (that's me with Tiffany in the photo above at our September nuptials).

But, as we soon learned, when and how she handled changing her name could have a significant impact on our future finances, including buying a house and ensuring a speedy tax refund.

What's in a Name

About 80% of the 2.2 million women who get married each year choose to change their names -- and that means ordering a new driver's license and passport, updating bank accounts and changing countless official documents from employee and payroll identification forms to insurance policies and mortgages (see this comprehensive name-change list from wedding site TheKnot).

Dealing with all the bureaucracy can be a colossal hassle.

Jake Wolff was reminded of that when his law school buddy Josh Gelb, who was engaged to be married, complained about how much time the process was costing his fiancee. Wolff thought back to his own wife's frustration with all the official hurdles she had to clear. "Out of the blue she said, 'I wish I could pay someone to do this,' " Wolff recalled. "A light went off in my head."

That light turned out to be HitchSwitch, which Wolff and Gelb launched in 2009 to streamline the name-change process. Their template -- and others like it from MissNowMrs.com, for example-- promises to take the hassle out of name change for a fee. Fill out a brief questionnaire, and for $40, HitchSwitch will send you a packet of official forms with the required information filled out and envelopes addressed to the correct administrative offices. (The only document they can't take care of is a driver's license, which must be obtained in person.)

How Getting it Wrong Can Cost You

Time is money, of course, but there are also long-term financial advantages to nailing all the details when it comes to a name change. For example, here are a few things that can fall through the cracks:

Real estate transactions: It's not unusual for newlyweds to buy a house together. That's what Aimee Grove and her husband did after they got married in April 2004. But Grove, a marketing executive in the San Francisco Bay area, didn't change her name until March 2012, in anticipation of her son's starting kindergarten.

When the couple recently refinanced their mortgage, they ran into delays, since her new name wasn't on the old documents. "There were a few complexities in the paperwork, since my name had changed since the first mortgage and the name on the trust and deed," Grove said. This involved more administrative work and in-person trips to the bank.

Rewards programs: Megan Mayo Ryan, the tourism manager at the Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau, got married in September. She started the name change process some three weeks after her wedding and has almost finished now, a month and a half later. But something almost slipped through the cracks: her frequent flyer numbers and loyalty programs.

While changing her identity, she could have unwittingly made herself ineligible for her miles or points by assuming a new name. Or, every time she tried to book a flight, she'd have to phone customer service to explain why the name on her frequent flyer account didn't match the reservation. To solve the problem, Ryan wrote a formal letter to various travel and accommodations services to get her name updated, which typically took about two weeks.

Employment documents: Name change is important for payroll purposes, so employers can properly issue paychecks. "I've been at my company for eight years and am established with my network under my maiden name," Mayo Ryan said. But she uses her married name at work to make sure her paycheck is on the social security record attached to her new official name.

Taxes: If you are hyphenating your last name (as my wife is) or taking your spouse's last name, you need to change your name with the Social Security Administration for I.R.S. purposes. If you fail to do this, the I.R.S. may not be able to match your new name with your social security number and could delay your tax refund.

My wife -- an actress who will be keeping her maiden name for the stage, as much as Urken lends itself to star quality -- is now eager to make her personal name change. Tiffany is particularly fond of tax refunds and wouldn't countenance a delay. In order to keep the peace in our first year of marriage -- and to ensure tax refund day happens as a happy occasion -- we will be using an expedited service for her transformation into Mrs. Urken.

More from DailyFinance:

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]]>changing your namegetting marriedLifestylemaiden namemarried namename changename changingRoss Kenneth UrkenThu, 15 Nov 2012 07:00:00 ESTHurricane Sandy Victims: Disaster Relief Programs You May Not Know Abouthttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/13/hurricane-sandy-victims-disaster-relief-programs/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/13/hurricane-sandy-victims-disaster-relief-programs/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/13/hurricane-sandy-victims-disaster-relief-programs/#commentsFiled under: ,



After a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy, victims are understandably desperate to receive relief funds, but they're often ill-informed about the best way to get them. Survivors too often look to insurance first and -- if those funds are insufficient--FEMA second...and last.

But there are a number of alternative tools homeowners can add to their disaster recovery arsenals. So if you've suffered from Sandy and need to offset the costs of clean-up and repairs, your strategy should begin with getting knowledgeable about which grant and loan programs will work for you.

We're here to help. These are the best avenues for the victims of disasters to get the financing to start getting their lives back to normal:

Gallery: Alternatives To Disaster Relief: Hurricane Sandy And Beyond

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)Small Business Association (SBA)Federal Housing Administration's 203(h) ProgramFederal Housing Administration's 203(k) ProgramMortgage Relief


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]]>Fannie MaeFederal Emergency Management AgencyFederal Housing AdministrationFinanceFreddie Machelphurricane reliefhurricane sandyHurricanesinsurancenatural disaster coveragenatural disaster stock marketNatural Disasters - News Topicrelief fundsSurvivorsvictimsRoss Kenneth UrkenTue, 13 Nov 2012 06:00:00 ESTAlphaClone: Assemble Your Fantasy Hedge Fund Team ... And Winhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/08/alphaclone-fantasy-hedge-fund-team-investing/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/08/alphaclone-fantasy-hedge-fund-team-investing/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/08/alphaclone-fantasy-hedge-fund-team-investing/#commentsFiled under: , ,

American flag is hung on the exterior of the New York Stock ExchangeIt's difficult for an ordinary person to gain access to the world of high-performing hedge funds.

Your average retail investor has neither the minimum level of wealth to invest that those hedge fund managers require, nor can she afford to pay their exorbitant fees. In a way, getting into that part of the investing world is like playing in the NFL: A tiny elite can do it and make millions while the rest of us can only watch and dream.

Well, just as we mere mortals can coach our way to gridiron victory through fantasy football teams, now hedge funds have a "fantasy team" option too, and it's one that can help you score some nice returns.

Send in the Clones

Maz Jadallah, founder of AlphaClone, created his company in 2008 to help make that fantasy a reality. His firm is a pioneer in the art of tracking the publicly disclosed holdings of top hedge funds, and showing retail investors how to use those public filings to their advantage. Moreover, it gives you a peek into the strategies of top money managers. In essence, AlphaClone helps you assemble your personal dream team of investing pros.

Jadallah, a self-described "data geek and avid investor," had long searched for a way to bolster his own lackluster investing skills.

Like many of us, he grew frustrated with mutual funds and unresponsive wealth management advisors. Wealth management firms offered him boilerplate portfolios and no downside protection; money managers typically met with clients once a year, neglected their profiles, and left them to wallow in mediocre returns.

Jadallah wanted to have higher-quality options to choose from, and on Wall Street, those are the hedge fund managers: Like star quarterbacks or wide receivers, they're the investing world's MVPs.

But how to get them on his team? "I stumbled upon the fact that these guys have to disclose their positions each quarter," Jadallah said. So there was his "draft": Fund managers' 13F filings -- each one filled with valuable, but not fully secret, data. In essence, he was parsing out the methods to their investing madness. He was inside the huddle, as it were.

Jadallah built a research platform that extended back to 2000 to clone or back-test different strategies from each hedge fund manager.

"What happens in one of Warren Buffet's largest five new positions?" he said. "Or if we combine managers: What happens if you invest in the top 15 stocks among these tiger cub firms, or the top value investors?"

Gerald Martin, a professor of finance at American University's Kogod School of Business, has spent time investigating cloning strategies in hedge fund investing.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Martin said. "From an academic standing ... it makes sense, because why not have the best investors out there working for you. Why not have Warren Buffet as your investment manager? ... By copy-catting, you're getting the best investment manager there is."

"In the extreme, it's nothing more than indexing," he said. "Except you're indexing on managers, not industries -- managers that have made choices."

The Frustrations Of Wealth Management

At first, Jadallah conceived of his firm as a research business, but it was tough to make money from his reports.

"I had a great horse, but I was in the wrong horse race," Jadallah said. "Selling research is tough when you're selling a really new way to essentially pick managers." When you're offering a new way to invest, "People want to see the proof in the pudding," he said

That realization sent him into the asset management business, which was more scalable and showed potential customers he was invested in his own model.

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"We're eating our own dog food," he said. "And we're putting up monthly performance, doing it in an environment that's different for active investors. I'm delighted to say we're really killing it."

His AlphaClone Alternative Alpha ETF selects the top equity holdings of the top hedge fund managers, and clones them in a liquid, low-cost vehicle. Since its launch, the ALFA ETF has returned 18.87% vs. 14.32% for the S&P 500. That puts it in the top quartile of performers.

Tad Buchanan, a principal at Buchanan Investments who is also an AlphaClone client and equity investor, noted the advantages.

"The issue for the average guy, the retail investor, who has capital to invest and perhaps not enough capital -- hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars -- that AlphaClone gives one exposure to," he said

Going Big for Less

Of course, the common man already had the ability to ride the coattails of the most successful funds. It was just a more costly endeavor.

Retail investors could go through a middle-man vehicle called a fund of funds (FOF). A hedge fund typically takes 2% of assets per year plus 20% of your profits as a fee. A fund of funds charges an additional 1% on your assets and 10% on the profits -- meaning you start by parting with 3% of your assets and 30% of your profits.

AlphaClone cuts out the middle man and increases your profits accordingly. In fact, the gross expense ratio for the ALFA ETF is just 0.95% And if you hold onto your investment in the ETF for a year or more, you have the tax advantage of long-term capital gains treatment.

Further, where funds of funds often have restrictions about when investors can take their money off the table, AlphaClone is liquid.

AlphaClone also has an interactive dynamic hedge that softens the blow when your portfolio starts heading lower.

"It's not as nimble as an equity manager or a portfolio manager," Buchanan said, "but [it gives investors] access to a hedge without the big fees and the lock-ups, there's no catch. You're picking teams and cloning your portfolios."

It may not be a 100% certain way to profit -- no investment is -- but drafting the stars onto your own team sure beats passively watching your assets lose.

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]]>ALFAALFA ETFAlphaClonebeat the marketbest money managersFinanceHedge fundsindex fundsMaz Jadallahretail investingWarren BuffettRoss Kenneth UrkenThu, 08 Nov 2012 13:55:00 ESTGoogle Wallet's Newest Innovation: A Plastic Mobile Wallet Credit Cardhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/08/google-wallets-newest-innovation-a-plastic-card/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/08/google-wallets-newest-innovation-a-plastic-card/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/08/google-wallets-newest-innovation-a-plastic-card/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Google WalletIn what seems like a strange step backward in the mobile payment space, Google Wallet is close to launching a physical plastic card, according to Mobile Payments Today.

So much for all the oracles predicting the imminent fall of cash and plastic.

The card would link to accounts stored within the Google Wallet app and could be used for transactions at retail locations where contactless near-field communication payments (aka "tap and go") aren't available. As we noted recently, the slow adoption of wide-spread NFC infrastructure has indeed been a major contributor to the mobile wallet's immobility.

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Of course, the advantage over a single standard credit card would be the ability to access multiple credit cards via your Google plastic. Discover, which provides the payment infrastructure for Google Wallet at physical stores, also has a hand in creating the Google card, according to photos leaked by the Android Police.

Osama Bedier, the head of Google Wallet, announced last week that Google Wallet will roll out a new version at some point in November; it's possible that the plastic could appear in tandem with that scheduled launch.

The true question is whether this is a brilliant strategy for getting wary users to sign on with Google Wallet or an acknowledgement that when it comes to mobile payment technology, it's tough to pry the plastic out of shoppers' hands.

Visit TechCrunch for more on the Google Wallet card.

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]]>contactless paymentcredit cardsFinanceGooglegoogle walletgoogle wallet cardmobile payment technologymobile paymentsmobile walletnear field communicationNFCnfc paymentsOsama BedierRoss Kenneth UrkenThu, 08 Nov 2012 06:00:00 ESTWould Democracy Work Better If You Could Buy More Votes? One Economist Says Yeshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/07/election-vote-buying-democracy-weyl/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/07/election-vote-buying-democracy-weyl/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/07/election-vote-buying-democracy-weyl/#commentsFiled under:

Would voting work if we had to pay?

Voters elected President Barack Obama to a second term Tuesday, with impressive turnouts across the country, an outcome that left ardent Romney supporters wondering what more, if anything, they could have done to swing the result their way. And while millions of citizens stayed home, perhaps apathetically believing that their vote wouldn't matter, many others on both sides of the question so vehemently wanted to see their candidate win that they'd have voted multiple times if they could.

So why not let them?

That's the theory proposed by economist Glen Weyl, a professor at the University of Chicago, who has proposed a plan that would allow people to put their money where their mouths are by paying to vote as many times as they'd like.

Weyl's system would require a voter to pay an increasing amount for each vote cast; the cost of each vote would be the square of the total number of votes. If your first vote costs $1, two votes would be $4 and three votes $9. Want to swing a small local election all by yourself? In this scenario, 100 votes would cost you $10,000, a pittance for men with names like Koch, Trump, or Buffet.

The crux of this proposal is that, as "Freakonomics" author Steven D. Levitt points out, "people end up voting in proportion to how much they care about the election outcome. The system captures not just which candidate you prefer, but how strong your preferences are." This, Levitt notes, turns out to create a Pareto efficiency, an optimal situation in which no one in society can be made better off without making someone else worse off. In other words, it's the best situation overall for people as a group.

Of course, what makes sense in the abstract might not work in the voting booth.

"There are many things I still would need to understand to be comfortable advocating this system in any practical setting," Weyl explained. "That being said, I am not developing it as a purely academic proposal, and if my preliminary investigations are confirmed in my continued research, I would very much advocate it being used in many practical settings."

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The applications could be as wide-reaching as voting within corporate decision-making and broader elections or referenda. The money is distributed back to the participants in Weyl's system, with the contributions used for the benefit of the group. In the case of a corporation, Weyl said, the money would flow into the corporate accounts, and be allocated as dividends according to the number of shares individuals own. For elections, the funds would flow into the government's coffers, which could be used for social spending or tax reduction.

"My personal preference would be to see it used to reduce the inequality that would, in the first place, allow the rich to buy more votes," Weyl said.

Human nature being what it is, a few snags could hold up smooth execution of this system once implemented.

"I think voters might do a very poor job, at least initially, estimating how many votes they should buy because they would have a bad sense for the chance of a tied election," Weyl said. "This could lead different voters with similar preferences to buy very different numbers of votes, which would undermine the system."

To combat that, Weyl is also working on an applet that could help voters determine how many votes it makes sense for them to buy. Of course, no computer program can truly get inside people's heads and set a value on an individual's electoral motivation. But there is substantial light that can be shed.

"People's optimal votes are proportional to two things," Weyl said. "A) How much they care -- or in economist-speak, the maximum amount they would be willing to pay to switch the election outcome for sure, and B) the chance that they will be pivotal -- that buying an additional vote will switch the election."

In Weyl's app concept, people would be able to plug in A, and to compute B. If A and B were then multiplied together, the resulting number would help people figure out how many votes to buy.

The obvious potential criticism of such a system rests in the fact that the rich would have more influence over the outcomes of elections -- but given the current state of campaign financing, dark money and super PACs, don't they already?

We're a long way away from swapping our current one-person-one-vote democracy for a buy-your-vote system, but who's to say that Weyl's idea isn't a more elegant solution than the electoral college?

Maybe it's time to resurrect and rehabilitate an old saying from more politically dicey eras: "Vote early and vote often."

(Note: This article was first published on Nov. 6, and updated on Nov. 7 to reflect the outcome of the 2012 presidential race.)

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]]>Economicselection 2012election outcomeFreakonomicsGlen WeylLocalObama winsPareto efficiencyPay for votesPaying for a votepoliticsSteven LevittSuper PACsthe cost of votingtheoryU.S.vote buyingvote moneyRoss Kenneth UrkenWed, 07 Nov 2012 11:37:00 ESTWill Peer-To-Peer Payments Rescue the Mobile Wallet from Fad Status?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/05/mobile-wallet-peer-to-peer-payments-popmoney-venmo-dwolla/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/05/mobile-wallet-peer-to-peer-payments-popmoney-venmo-dwolla/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/05/mobile-wallet-peer-to-peer-payments-popmoney-venmo-dwolla/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Popmoney
For all the hype about the rise of mobile payment technology -- use-your-smartphone-to-pay systems -- the reality is that it has been slow to catch on. As many critics have pointed out, there's no real "pain point" for consumers that this clever new technology alleviates. And with many popular smartphones lacking the hardware to make it work, not to mention an inadequate retail infrastructure, there's good reason mobile payment isn't taking over the world just yet.

But there is one place where it's starting to gain real traction: peer-to-peer exchanges.

Perhaps you've seen the commercials for Popmoney, a service that allows a customer to send money using the recipient's phone number or email address. Currently available through 1,700 financial institutions, as well as to any individual user who downloads its app, it has a lot of people jazzed by their ability to pay the babysitter or settle their portion of the dinner check with a tap on their smartphone.

Such "casual transactions" make up a significant part of the market: U.S. consumers transferred a whopping $21.6 billion via peer-to-peer payments in 2011, according to Javelin Strategy & Research, versus only $400 million for point-of-sale mobile transactions at retailers. That's a fact not lost on the mobile industry.

"We're razor-focused on social payments," said Tom Roberts, the senior vice president of marketing at CashEdge, a division of Fiserv that runs Popmoney. "We expect that a solution like ours will become embedded just like you're carrying cash that you're paying someone today."

Popmoney, and similar peer-to-peer exchange platforms like Venmo and Dwolla, are gaining steam because they do relieve a burden on consumers: Instead of having to find an ATM or dig out your checkbook, you can simply hit the person's phone number and transmit the money from your smartphone.

The basic mechanics work like this: Download the app and fill out a profile that syncs your bank account to your phone and can identify you by email or phone number. The person you are exchanging money with -- for example, a roommate you owe half the rent to -- must also have an account the links his iPhone number or Gmail address to his bank account. But after both parties are members of the P2P exchange, it's a simple matter to click the "Send Money" tab, identify your bank account, enter the recipient's phone number or email address, and send the money whizzing out to him instantly.

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This efficiency is especially appealing to tech-savvy twenty-somethings who may be allergic to pen and paper, checkbooks and envelopes. These types of transactions are especially convenient for roommates or people sharing the costs of a gift. In fact, formal house transactions like rent make up 67% of Popmoney transactions, followed by casual expenses like dinner and entertainment at 25%, and group costs for such events as a wedding gift at 10%.

The transactions are free for the recipient and cost 95 cents to the sender, as opposed to the 2.9% that PayPal charges. Among its competitors, PopMoney has been around the longest and has the biggest share of the market, but Dwolla and Venmo are also catching on. In a sign of the times, Braintree, the fastest growing platform for online and mobile commerce, recently acquired Venmo, largely on the strength of its peer-to-peer capabilities.

Of course, the mobile wallet can't survive on payments to dogwalkers and SAT tutors alone, since the amount of money exchanged among individuals pales in comparison to commercial transactions.

But the more comfortable consumers get with the idea of exchanging money through their phones, the greater the likelihood that the retail industry will feel compelled to start adopting the technology at the point of sale. At least that's the theory.

"This is still some years into the future, but will gain real traction within the next three years," said Ramsés Gallego, an international vice president of ISACA and security strategist at Dell. "[Mobile] devices are bringing convergence from many disciplines. Payment is no different, and a time will come when few people will use cash and the credit card will be the device itself."


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]]>BraintreeCashEdgeDwollaFinanceGmailmobile transactionmobile walletPayPalpeer to peerPopmoneysmartphoneVenmoRoss Kenneth UrkenMon, 05 Nov 2012 12:23:00 ESTSandy Highlights Wealth Inequality, Forces the Rich to Drink the Good Stuffhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/01/sandy-highlights-wealth-inequality-forces-the-rich-to-drink-the/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/01/sandy-highlights-wealth-inequality-forces-the-rich-to-drink-the/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/01/sandy-highlights-wealth-inequality-forces-the-rich-to-drink-the/#commentsFiled under:

Destroyed homes from hurricane Sandy

Death, destruction and Mother Nature can prove the ultimate equalizers of those on the high and low ends of the socio-economic totem pole, as Hurricane Sandy so definitively showed. No matter where they stood before the storm, its victims afterward had many of the same needs: food, shelter and flushable toilets.

Some "necessities," though, are of a more sophisticated nature.

"I had to go to the wine cellar and find a good bottle of wine and drink it before it goes bad," Murry Stegelmann, a founder of investment-management firm Kilimanjaro Advisors LLC, wrote in an email quoted by Bloomberg News after he lost power at his Darien, Conn., abode on Monday evening.

He ended up choosing a 2005 Chateau Margaux, which retails for about a thousand bucks. After all -- and for shame! -- there's no government program to install back-up generators in private wine cellars.

Meanwhile, a number of jokes circulating on Facebook suggested that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney had offered to help those whose second or third homes had been damaged by the storm.

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Certainly, there's much room for mockery of the hardships the wealthy have had to endure since the storm hit -- way too much humidity in the humidors where they store their Cohibas, the tragedy of water damage to their fine art collections, and poor Mr. Stegelmann, compelled to drink his grand-a-bottle vintages. But the storm that slid like a knife through the East Coast also cut through to a deeper truth, underscoring the wide economic disparities in Manhattan and beyond, according to David Rohde at Reuters in his article "The Hideous Inequality Exposed by Hurricane Sandy."

"Those with a car could flee," Rohde wrote. "Those with wealth could move into a hotel. Those with steady jobs could decline to come into work. But the city's cooks, doormen, maintenance men, taxi drivers and maids left their loved ones at home."
Rohde cites Census data quoted in The New York Times, which shows that the median income for the poorest fifth of New York City's population was $8,844, down $463 from 2010, while the richest fifth had a median income of $223,285 -- and had risen $1,919 since 2010. That overall wealth disparity, the Times article notes, rivals the gaps between rich and poor in sub-Saharan Africa.

One massive storm, yes. But it made landfall in two very different worlds. Something to think about as you uncork another bottle of whatever you're drinking.


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]]>David S. RohdeEast CoastFacebookfirst world problemshurricane sandyIncome GapManhattanMitt RomneyMother NatureNew York Citypoorpower outagestorm damagethe richwealth gapwealthyRoss Kenneth UrkenThu, 01 Nov 2012 10:25:00 ESTAlcoholic Spirits: Halloween Puts the Boos! in Booze Saleshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/31/alcohol-sales-halloween-adult-party/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/31/alcohol-sales-halloween-adult-party/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/31/alcohol-sales-halloween-adult-party/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Alcohol is a top seller on HalloweenTurns out, the holiday of "boos" and spooky spirits is also one of the most popular for booze and tasty spirits: The period around Halloween is the second only to the Super Bowl for alcohol sales in the U.S., according to Arthur Shapiro, head of A|M Shapiro & Associates LLC, a strategic marketing company that specializes in the alcohol industry.

"People used to joke about Jose, Jack, and Johnnie as the perfect Halloween guests," he said. "People ask, 'What the hell is this all about?' Halloween has become a time when you change your persona in a fun and exciting way ... and that goes hand in hand with partying and getting sh*t-faced."

Clearly, the holiday isn't just about candy and trick-or-treating anymore.

"Halloween has become somewhat more adult-oriented in recent years as the alcohol industry uses this holiday as a major promotional season," according to Mintel Market Research.

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As a result, the alcohol industry has been focusing heavily on promoting its products during October. Diageo, maker of Captain Morgan rum, used Halloween 2009 as the basis for a major marketing initiative, according to Adweek.

"Captain Morgan was a cartoon costume figure, and [the Captain and] Halloween always went well together because of the nature of the character," Shapiro said.

Retailers and distributors now take full advantage of this first major opportunity of autumn for revelry.

"Things have been pretty dry since Labor Day," Shapiro said. "At liquor stores, if you could capture that sheer degree of the retail space on Halloween ... you could sustain momentum through to Thanksgiving. It would be all all right."

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]]>adult halloweenadult halloween costumesAdweekalcoholalcohol salesbeverage salesCaptain MorganDiageodrinkingEntertainmentHalloweenhalloween partySuper BowlThanksgivingRoss Kenneth UrkenWed, 31 Oct 2012 14:14:00 ESTCandy Corn's Growth: How It's Survived As Chocolate Meltshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/30/candy-corns-growth-chocolate-melts-Halloween/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/30/candy-corns-growth-chocolate-melts-Halloween/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/30/candy-corns-growth-chocolate-melts-Halloween/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Candy Corn is top Halloween candy

The most tempting, succulent confection of the season might be candy corn. The tri-colored pyramids epitomize autumn and Halloween, and 35 million pounds -- or about 9 billion pieces -- of candy corn will be produced this year, says the National Confectioners Association. Not too shabby for the confection started in the 1880s by George Renninger, a humble employee of the Wunderlee Candy Company.

But while much of the Halloween candy market has suffered the bitter onslaught of the recession, candy corn has found a sweet spot.

Decorating with Candy CornIts colors, conjuring the harvest, have become a major, nostalgic selling point for the fondant and marshmallow candies.

"Interestingly, the company didn't intentionally develop the market for utilizing Brach's candy corn for fall decorating or for use in arts & crafts," said Suzanne George, a spokeswoman at the Ferrara Pan Candy Company, which owns Brach's, the candy corn market leader. "It just happened on its own, likely due to the product's crisp, bright orange and yellow colors that appeal in the fall season. When you Google 'decorating with candy corn,' you'll see wildly imaginative uses of the product in vases, wreaths, around candles, et cetera."

And caveat Googler: The candy corn frenzy even extends into lingerie design.

The Fall Of The House Of Chocolate

People's discretionary spending patterns have spoken: Though consumers spent $2.3 billion on Halloween candy alone in 2011, Halloween chocolate remains one of the underperforming segments in the seasonal chocolate category, according to Mintel Market Research. FDMx 2011 sales are expected to be down 9.1%, and this will mark the fourth consecutive year of sales decreases. The chocolate drip will continue through 2016, according to Mintel.

The reasons are clear: Chocolate has a higher price-point than candies that can be bought in bulk, according to Mintel. 2008's recession rotted the segment's sales, and consumers aimed for more economical, non-chocolate candies to give out to trick-or-treaters. Anti-obesity initiatives have also stigmatized rich chocolate candies. Some 21% of parents who typically buy chocolate during holidays are buying healthier snacks for trick-or-treaters. (Call it "anti-flab economics" for a health-conscious country).

While Halloween chocolate sales reached $106 million in 2007, they dropped to $85 million in 2011, according to FDMx. This year's figures are forecast at a measly $82 million.

Child labor and CocoaThe Cocoa Scandal

The high cost of chocolate may be incentive for consumers to expand beyond their typical fare, with Mintel predicting the non-chocolate confectionery category to grow 26% from 2010 to 2015.

Chocolate, indeed, is taking the brunt of the Halloween savings trend: Consumers are scaling back the amount they spend on candy, but not on costumes, according to the National Retail Federation's 2010 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey.

And Hershey's (HSY) loss is candy corn's gain. Mars Inc. dropped the most with a 16% decline from 2010 to 2011, according to FDMx. The Hershey Company accounted for half of the sector's sales but dropped 11.3% in sales over the same period.

According to the NRF 2010 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, 30.1% of consumers said that the state of the U.S. economy would influence their Halloween plans. Some 86.8% of respondents indicated that they would spend less overall, with 45.1% saying they planned on buying less candy.

Beyond the mere expense of chocolate, there's the ethical hazard -- 35% of the world's cocoa derives from African's Ivory Coast, where over 100,000 children are exploited for labor, according to the State Department. The precarious geopolitical entanglements for big chocolate providers like Hershey's adds a thick layer of disincentives for consumers to buy their products.

Halloween has the highest number of chocolate packages sold among holiday consumers, followed by Christmas, Easter and Valentine's Day. But with folks trying to cut back on spending -- and on chocolate -- the changing consumer patterns may be a boon for candy corn.

Seasonal Encapsulation

"Because younger consumers are less tradition-bound to chocolate as a gift or as the only type of candy to mark a holiday, seasonally packaged non-chocolate candy sales may see an increase in the coming years," the Mintel report states. "These buyers are likely to pass this mindset on to their children, which could further erode chocolate's sales position with regard to various holiday seasons."

Halloween evokes candy, and younger consumers -- particularly those in hip urban centers -- are not as attached to brand-name chocolate as they are to the sweet that symbolizes the Halloween season.

The nostalgia attached to candy corn may be its biggest asset.

Brach's has even initiated a "Fall Flavors" chocolate-covered candy corn to try to ride the autumnal spirit straight into Thanksgiving. And then there are the gourmet iterations of the candy, such as Blackberry Cobbler Candy Corn from Zachary Confection Inc., considered No. 2 in the candy corn category.

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]]>Brach'scandyCandy cornFerrara Pan Candy CoFinancehalloweenHersheyThe Hershey CompanyRoss Kenneth UrkenTue, 30 Oct 2012 14:56:00 EST