My weekly roundup of the week’s posts and links.
With the first sunny spell here in the UK since, oh, 2008, I don’t expect many of my British readers to tune into this installment of Weekend Reading until Monday morning.
If you’re reading this at your desk after a great 48 hours (or even your Easter holidays), my commiserations. Hey: you’ll always have the sunburn!
Anyway, there’s no doubt many of us are spoiled with our modern burdens, whereby a hard day at the office means slumping in a meeting with a bunch of clueless bosses, eating digestive biscuits and being simultaneously annoyed at not being able to speak, yet dreading being held accountable in a system where we have no control (or was that just me? 😉 ).
My article of the week brought this home very strongly.
A descendant of a U.S. immigrant, Ruben Navarro writes that America won’t be able to tackle the issue of its ten million illegal immigrants until it admits [1] why they’re there:
Why does the United States have so much illegal immigration?
I know the answer. It’s my fault. It’s because of me, and tens of millions of other Americans just like me. We create the demand for illegal immigrant labor not because of anything we do but because of all the things that we will not do – at any wage.
The article makes you think about this strange time and place we’ve been born into. Many people reading this post live like the kings of just a few hundred years ago. Indeed, I’ve written before how we can all learn from recent immigrants [2], whose ambition and zest for opportunity can be inspiring.
That’s not to say you should bend over and take it from your current employer. Whether you want to quit work or just more financial freedom, you should check out Jacob’s guest post on early retirement [3], which I ran earlier this week.
I also posted on bond default probabilities [4] and the Natwest Black card [5].
Some of the week’s best blog posts
- Spend based on who you really are – Get Rich Slowly [6]
- Unpredictably rational – The Psy-fi blog [7]
- Correlation is not causation – The Amateur Financier [8]
- Cash as a pain killer – Five Cent Nickel [9]
- Maximiser or a satisficer? – Consumerism Commentary [10] (by Aaron [11])
- Premium gasoline is like male enhancement drugs – Len Penzo [12]
- Doing anything you can to survive – Financial Samurai [13]
- Asset allocation for retirement portfolios – Oblivious Investor [14]
- How to generate wealth during retirement – Wealth Pilgrim [15]
From the big newspapers and magazines
- Japan: Sleepwalking towards disaster – The Economist [16]
- The end of the era of free stuff – The Economist [17]
- The toxic tale of rising longevity – Reuters [18]
- Debt debacle is not going to go away – FT [19]
- Bolton fund misses its £650 million target – FT [20]
- A longer-term view on green assets – FT [21]
- Sparkle returns to diamond market – FT [22]
- Savers urged to use new £10,200 ISA limit now – FT [23]
- Is platinum the new gold? – The Telegraph [24]
- Eastern European markets emerge – The Independent [25]
- Investors blind to property fund perils – The Independent [26]
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