Welcome to the Carnival of the Capitalists!

I am proud to be hosting this week's Carnival of the Capitalists weblog. I hope you find everything interesting, I know I did! If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Please scroll down, something happened with my table alignment for the post, so it is down below a bit. Thanks!

Retire at 30	Work Redefined	Working towards a common redefinition of work that more accurately allows comparison of one task to another and therefore highlights opportunity costs more readily.
Daily Dose of Opimism	Robots & Employment in a Service Economy	The Honda ASIMO robot has an impressive list of capabilities, and is already employed as a tour guide in Japanese museums. How much longer before a $40k robot is available to the public, and what will happen to employment when it is?
Harshly Mellow	Mirror as business weapon?	Why do so many folks think that pretty much any behavior can be excused by saying that it's "just business"?
Financial Methods	Five Secrets of Job Growth	A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis offers five keys to job growth including an educated work force, low union membership rates, low wage levels, and a warm climate.
The Japan Stock Blog	Mark Hulbert on EWJ’s Sudden Increase in Popularity & Why Contrarians Will Get it Wrong
Big Picture, Small Office	Wholesale Change	Focusing on the fourth marketing P ‘places’ the Small Office in a quandary. Does it spin off its owned-distribution network or use it as leverage over its other customers?
Solitaire Trader	How to Watch CNBC
The Browster Blog	Basic Search as a "lower layer" device?	Comparing how today's search companies may be modeling themselves, functionally, after networking companies...with some emulating Layer 2-3 pipeline devices and some emulating Layer 7 application devices. Does this model work when none of these search companies seems to be actually *selling* products?
Photon Courier	The Power of Metaphor and Analogy	How verbal imagery affects decision making, with examples from the stock market and the battlefield.
Canadian Capitalist	Tax Cut Promises	Canadians will go to the polls to elect a new government in January. The leading parties are promising to cut taxes: one party plans to cut income taxes and another promises to cut the much hated federal sales tax. The post examines which tax cut plan is better.
Kicking Over My Traces	Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Grew	End of year goals for the next year's online revenue growth.
Roth & Company Tax Update	S CORPORATIONS: WHAT'S A FAMILY?	S corporations have traditionally been thought of as having very small owner groups. No more. Recent law changes make us wonder whether some states might qualify for an S election.
Blog Business World	Visitor Logs: Helping your Viewers	Visitor referrer logs are valuable records to examine, from time to time. Of course, the definition of time to time can vary considerably. For many bloggers, the visitor log examination can take place almost every minute of the day.
Financial Options	The Week Ahead - December 3, 2005	The Pending Home Sales index is one of the newest indicators and potentially one of the most interesting this week. Many pundits are insisting there is a "bubble" in residential real estate prices and even Alan Greenspan has spoken of a bit of froth in the market. Home equity has been the fuel for this economic expansion in much the way that tech stocks were the fuel for the last one. The Fed doesn't seem as thoroughly bent on deflating housing values, but they certainly are intent on moderating growth in the sector. The Pending Home Sales index is a new indicator based on numbers of homes contracted for sale with the sale not yet closed (aka "in escrow"). Theoretically this index should lead the Existing Home Sales Index by 1 to 2 months, so this should give us a glimpse of what's coming in January and February.
Sophistpundit	What "real work", you ask?	An essay on W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm's "Myths of Rich and Poor"
Coyote Blog	Why Its OK if GM Dies	How wealth is destroyed by keeping poorly performing companies aritificially alive
The Common Room	Economics	You can make money without a good understanding of economics. But you can't make money if what you have is a *bad* understanding.
The Coyote Within	Coyote and The Warring Neighbors	Coyote helps his neighbors deal with two people who are working hard to keep their quarrel alive.
The Skeptical Optimist	Pie chart of who owns the National Debt	Here's a pie chart of who owns the USA's National Debt, including foreigners. I'm having trouble figuring out what's so scary about it.
Cumulative Model	Save Gas:Avoid Brakes	Fuel and time saving driving.
Lip-sticking	Jane Spotlights Innovation	Innovation - it's crucial to us all. Here are some innovative folks who should inspire the rest of us to get out there and shine...
The Big Picture	Don’t Believe the Hype: A Very Mixed Retail Picture	There are few things that make us more annoyed than bad data, lazy thinking or poor analysis. This weekend, the National Retail Federation hit for the inept cycle with their breathless reporting of holiday sales. The NRF erroneously trumpeted that the Thanksgiving weekend sales were “blockbuster,” having “surged 22% from a year ago to about $27.9 billion.” Further, they claimed 145 Million Shoppers hit stores and the web, up from 133 Million in ’04.
Capital Chronicle	They say I slept with 7 Miss Worlds	Fantastic expectations of a prolonged equity market rally into early 2006 could well come to serious grief.
Econbrowser	Facing the latest economic data	Here are a few thoughts about some of the economic news that's been coming in over the last few weeks.
Business & Technology Reinvention	Are You Listening?	One day, or one event, or one decision, or one person can change everything. Here are 4 ways to listen for the change in your organization.
Atlantic Review	Genocide: U.S. calls for more sanctions against Sudan, but Germany sees business opportunities	Capitalism is fine, but doing business with mass murderers is not. The post is about German governments doing business in Sudan and a chamber of commerce who characterizes the genocide in Darfur as "political disturbances."
Searchlight Crusade	The Three Day Right of Recission
View From a Height	Awash in Cash	What does all that cash piling up as retained earnings mean?
C. Frederick Wehba II Blog	Large Portfolios Benefit from Technology, Experts
Abnormal Returns	Frenetic hunt for alpha	The hunt for alpha is becoming ever more frenzied. Hedge funds are at the center of this movement. The challenge is generating alpha without taking on extraneous beta risk.
ProfessorBainbridge.com	Usury	Examines the Roman Catholic Church's nuanced teachings on lending and interest
Consumerism Commentary	Bank of America's Keep The Change	Flexo takes a look at Bank of America's (fairly) new Keep The Change program. Is it worth it? Who stands to win?
Gill Blog	Carnival of Hurricane Relief	Hurricane season is officially over.
voluntaryXchange	The Most Unexpected Voiding of An Implicit Contract	The Grateful Dead have had an implicit contract with fans for 40 years allowing recording and trading of concert performances.
InsureBlog	The “A” in HSA	Folks with HSA plans are really starting to see their dollars grow.
Political Calculations	Calculating Return on Invested Capital	Political Calculations offers a new tool for finding out what kind of return businesses are getting on their capital investments and puts it to use to look at Starbucks.
The Entrepreneurial Mind	The Big Chill of SOX Hits Even Small Businesses	Sarbanes-Oxley is creeping like kudzu and will soon cover even small private companies.
The Internet Stock Blog	Yahoo Squeezed by Craigslist and MySpace in Online Classifieds (EBAY,
Hit Coffee	Short Timer Syndrome	Learning to appreciate your job can save your job.
Fire Someone Today	Why I pay more to park at the airport	It is the little things that cost you customers; I switched parking lots at the airport to avoid an annoying form, even though I have to pay more.
Wordlab	Rapper 50 Cent	There hasn't been quite as manly a commercial opportunity since 1919.
Free Money Finance	Where the Pros Stash Their Own Dough	Want to know where investment experts put their own money? This series from Free Money Finance tells you!
Et Tu Bloge	Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy.	I was watching George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh last night on PBS. I thought: "What great music! That famine really gave some awesome musicians a chance to get together and throw their hearts into quite a gig." But, did they really provide any long-term solution to that famine or have the Bangladesh Concert progeny done the same for famine and disasters in general?
Freedom's Fidelity	Deconcstructing Emissions	A post related to environmental economics. Which countries are following Kyoto and cutting emissions and by how much as well as how capitalism should be credited for creating the modern environmentalist movement. I've included some data on how eastern bloc countries emissions have drastically fallen as a result of the collapse of communism.
Pacesetter Mortgage Blog	Will Americans Spend the Wealth Created by the Housing Bubble Boom?	20 Year Mortgage Veteran warns of spending new found wealth from housing boom.
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity	Expect Housing Sale Price Drops As Rates Rise	As interest rates rise, don't be surprised when a $300,000 house sells for $270,000. A $300k mortgage at 5.5% has the same monthly payment as a $270k mortgage at 6.5%.
Et Tu Bloge	Ignorance Is Dangerous	A recent e-mail from a man who says that my writings have changed his mind notes that this has not been all to the good. He says he was perfectly happy as a liberal but now he is frustrated when he hears the kind of nonsense that he used to accept without having to think about it.
Triple Pundit	Goldman Sachs Speaks out on Value of Ecosystem Services	Triple Punditmentions an interesting development at Goldman Sachs - The recognition of "ecosystem services". This is of special value in that it starts a thought process that promotes the quantification of what the planet provides, free of charge, on a daily basis. It's not funny math, and smart companies and leaders are starting to see it that way.
Boston Gal's Open Wallet	Pursue your dream career? Only if you can afford it	Jane Dough explains why "Pursuing Your Passion" in your career is generally not a good idea. Often your passion does not pay well. Instead pursue a career with a steady paycheck and great benefits and work on your "passion" after hours.
Below The Beltway	Wal-Mart And The War Against The Poor	Do a Google search for "anti Walmart" and you get your choice of about 6,880,000 links. The search term "walmart hurts america" returns 537,000 results. Clearly, there are plenty of folks out there who don't like Wal-Mart. It hurts small business, they claim. It reduces wages, they assert. It contributes to suburban sprawl, claim others. As Sebastian Mallaby points out in today's Washington Post, however, Wal-Mart has been a positive force in the economy and those who attempt to use the political arena to slow its expansion are, in reality, hurting the poor.
Multiple Mentality	We Won	MM's Sethual Chocolate reports that Sony has failed in their attempt to curb piracy using illegal spyware.
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity	Auto Insurance 25 Year Milestone Analysis Revised	In this article I revise my original analysis of the auto insurance premium rate drop one can expect when turning 25.
The Real Returns	S&P 500 Earnings Estimates For 2006	Looking at the earnings estimate of the S&P 500 index for next year and considering 15 times the earnings as the fair value, the index is not priced terribly undervalued or overvalued.

Comments

[David Porter]

Travis,

Nice Job with the Carnival!

David Porter
President/CEO
Pacesetter Mortgage Company, Inc.

[hgstern]

 
Adam: Nice job...Thanx for hosting this week!