My weekly commentary followed by my weekend news and blog links round-up.
I couldn’t resist sharing another one of these YouTube / Downfall videos to end a very busy week for me away from the blog.
On Tuesday we saw how even Hitler missed the bull market [1].
To make matters worse, we now learn he’s tried blogging for money [2], and we all know that’s no way to fund a Reich.
I don’t really know why I find these videos so funny. I suppose it’s the contrast between the terribleness of Hitler’s actions and the subtitles – a forbidden thrill?
If you’ve not seen the proper Downfall it’s well worth watching. It’s a very brave film that admits the awful truth that the people whose actions led to the deaths of untold millions in World War 2 were that – people, not abstract monsters or devils incarnate.
To tie that comment into financial terms, those like the admittedly brilliant Jim Rogers who say we should have let all the banks go bust last year should consider how the Nazis rose on the back of the financial ruin and chaos in Germany . Was it worth risking that again?
Desperate people will follow awful leaders if they give them home in desperate times. If it happened before it could happen again.
On with this week’s articles.
Some interesting personal finance blog posts
- Oblivious Investor’s new book Investing Made Simple [3]
is now for sale on Amazon (US site).
- Get Rich Slowly has a good list [4] of personal finance eBooks.
- MoneyNing stresses that you should focus on [5] income for retirement. A man after my own heart!
- Bad Money Advice points out that lots of obvious aspects of the recession have been passed off as profound lessons. [6]
- Tim at the Psy-Fi blog has posted some shortcuts to extra articles on behavioural finance [7] for those who read his fabulous guest article on Monevator on profiting from folly [8] this week.
- MoneyEnergy explains why students should start [9] investing.
- Matt Jabs wrote an article for Five Cent Nickel pointing out that as time equals money, you should stop wasting it [10].
The pick of the weekend newspapers and sites
- John Authers writing in the Financial Times [11] asks if the stock market rally is a bubble.
- As I’ve written before, with everyone including Merryn Somerset Webb in today’s FT [12] boasting they sat out the rally, it doesn’t sound like a bubble to me.
- That’s not to say there aren’t obvious pitfalls ahead, as the Motley Fool points out [13].
- The Independent makes a case for [14] investing in a gold mining fund.
- The Telegraph has ten tips on surviving [15] a tax investigation.
- It also has news that the long-awaited UK pension system overhaul (which will make having one automatic for most people) will now be slowly rolled in [16] starting 2012, rather than arriving fully complete.
Subscribe to Monevator [17]to get this roundup every Saturday morning (usually!)