When will it end? Credit card debt just hit a record high, jumping $60 billion to almost a trillion dollars, $986.5 billion, in the three months ending December 2022. That goes along with interest rates increasing on that debt, sucking the savings rate people accomplished during the pandemic down to 3.4% from 33%. That goes […]

In 2014, Amazon got itself a new recruiting tool that used artificial intelligence (AI) to recruit employees. “Everyone wanted this holy grail,” an Amazon spokesperson said and Reuters reported. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire […]

They tried to think of everything. With dummied up bank records, tax records, employer and landlord references complete with phone numbers of friends, they created a history that showed them to be stable and responsible. But they forgot one thing: social media. Some 70 percent of employers use social media to screen applicants. Social media […]

If they take $11 billion out of the economy, the effects will be less than pretty. They did and it isn’t pretty. As of November 18, 120,000 tech workers had been laid off in 2022. And the layoffs continue along with hiring freezes. Marc Weil, who has worked in tech since 2010, and one of […]

They took a market served by check-cashing and payday loan stores and offered credit to their customers. Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) began as a way to reach an underserved or ill-served $3.9 trillion credit market seen as a giant money-making opportunity. Making money hasn’t been part of the planned equation though. So far so […]

A boss I had once gave away his lies with a gulp in his throat immediately before and after the lie exited his mouth. Once I heard the gulp, I dismissed any and everything that had followed or preceded it. Our last landlord, the one we had 40-plus years ago, gave herself away with the […]

“Deadbeat! Just wait until I put you on the deadbeat list that I’m going to show everybody! My law firm and I will hound you forever! I’m going to have you arrested, too! Did you get that court order I sent you? Just wait, deadbeat!” There might have been a time when it was legal […]

You can’t do just one thing. You can’t have crippling inflation, expect it to have no effect on the economy, expect consumers to keep consuming as they had been, and expect businesses to keep rolling in profits. Now it shows. People spend more when they have more money and access to credit. People save more […]

Warren Buffet said, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” In 2008, with other people’s fear in abundance, he bought $5 billion in “perpetual preferred shares in Goldman Sachs” that paid him 10 percent interest and had the option to buy additional Goldman Sachs shares. Goldman had the option […]

Retail sales beat inflation for the fourth straight month the Commerce Department reported in April. The gleeful report is wishing thinking at best, misleads at worse and misinforms at worst. Sure retail sales are higher than last year, but why they are makes for a worrisome picture. For example, Walmart reported that customers favor lower-cost […]