Investors beware the siren’s song For the Star Tribune

When it makes sense to cancel the credit card. For the Star Tribune

Investing ‘risk budgeting’ a topic for tricky times. For Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Creating a budget? Answers can be found in history. For the Star Tribune

The S&P 500 over the past year

A tough couple of weeks in the market.

There is a good chance that Europe’s problems won’t drag down the U.S. For the Marketplace Morning Report.

Some thoughts for individual investors during this time of turmoil. For Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

I have a “dangerous mind.” I enjoyed this interview a lot.

Jeremy Grantham is a legendary investment strategist and a wonderful interview. I learned a lot talking to him. For Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Some thoughts on financial innovation. For Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Lets stop supporting housing so much. For Marketplace Morning Report.

The steep price of being healthy. For MPR news.

Bank bailouts and taxes. For MPR news.

Stocks still have a place in a portfolio despite volatile times. For the Star Tribune.

In praise of taxable accounts. For the Star Tribune.

Friendship Heights Community Center

On May 13 I flew to Washington D.C. to give a book talk at the Friendship Heights Community Center. It’s the community center that my Mom uses a lot. It was a very enjoyable evening. A good sized crowd, mostly in the their 70s and 80s, and mostly widows. They asked good questions.

Enough with the journalism! At least that’s what Nate Miller, a wire service reporter for the Chicago-Sun Times said to himself after 7 years on the job. He has reinvented himself as “Mr. Thrift”, a friendly neighborhood junk man in Chicago’s Uptown section.  

“I was like a lot of eager young journalists fresh out of a master’s program who just get stuck, you know,” he says. “But I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. My dad owns a fabric shop downtown. There just came a point where I wanted to own a store. It’s in my blood, man.”

And on a rainy weekday, Miller stands outside Mr. Thrift near Broadway and Sheridan — a storefront the size of a wealthy woman’s walk-in closet.

Miller is in his element, jabbering with locals as a steady drizzle “washes” the $2 rack of used shirts on the sidewalk. After a short while, the unshaven shopkeeper is smiling wide as a thin, elderly man forks over 100 bucks for a 3-speed beach cruiser with an antique bell.

“Now that’s a good sale,” Miller says, standing next to a stack of toasters, a row of electric fans and a pile of bric-a-brac.

The New York Times Sunday business section had a nice quote on frugality. It was in a storyabout Teve Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli company that is now the world’s largest generic drug maker. The quote is from William S. Marth, who run Teva North America. “We’re kibbutzniks,” says Mr. Marth, 55, an Irish Catholic who grew up in Chicago and not on a citrus grove in the Negav. “Frugality doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing as much or more with less.”

The Sunday NYT business section also had a fascinating profile of one of the nation’s largest investors in green technologies: David Gelbaum. He’s also active environmental philanthropist.

Mr. Gelbaum has invested $500 million in clean-tech companies since 2002 through his Quercus Trust, amassing a portfolio of some 40 businesses involved in nearly every aspect of the emerging green economy, be it renewable energy, the smart electric grid, sustainable agriculture, electric cars or biological remediation of oil spills. He has poured almost as much into environmental causes.

Last, there was a book review of  Bill McKibben’s  new book, EAARTH: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. It’s on order.