While I’m not always a huge fan of Ben Stein, he does come up with some interesting insights every now and again, and he does have some clever and funny things to say about them. For Fortune Magazine, he recently offered these 4 lessons that he learned from the recession:

Economic forecasting is difficult.
Financial market forecasting is more troublesome than economic forecasting.
The financial sector in this country has lied a great deal.
The government cannot predict the economy or financial markets.

These are, of course, very good lessons to learn. It is important to realize that neither the government, nor the financial “experts”, …read more

We already have P2P lending, in which you can go online and directly lend money to your peers. But what about P2P payments? Fiserv, a company that offers online billing services to banks, is getting ready to launch just such a feature. Here is what Fiserv has to say about the service in a press release:
Using an e-mail address or mobile phone number, consumers will be able to send money to anyone they know, whether it is to repay a friend for concert tickets or dinner, contribute to a fundraiser, pay team dues, pay allowances or even pay the babysitter.  …read more

Image via WikipediaIt’s a fact of life that information overload is not easy to escape. Whether you enjoy playing the license plate game or reading the New York Times on your way to work (Do they sill print a paper?), there is a lot to read, take in and retain out there in this cruel world. Luckily, with the help of many great Web 2.0 tools out there, it’s becoming a bit simpler. I’d like to point you in the direction of a few that I have used to simplify my life.
Google Reader (or any other web …read more