Money in the Bank

The College of Management is pleased to present the Wachovia Lectures Series each year, with the generous support of Wachovia Bank. Six business leaders are invited to speak to the college and Triangle area community during each academic year, three in the fall and three in the spring semesters. All lectures begin at 4:30 p.m. and are presented in the Nelson Auditorium, 3400 Nelson Hall.

My least favorite bill to pay is my credit card bill. I got my first credit card when I was 17 years old, and I am still paying it off. Don’t get me wrong, I accept my responsibilities for being an idiot teenager, running up a bill, and having to pay it off. What has frustrated me for years though is the interest rate. I have not used a credit card since I was twenty years old, and in spite of years of paying my bill on time I still owe over 4,000 dollars. Why? Because for every one hundred dollars I pay 96 dollars go to interest. Ridiculous right? I thought so too.

In the US, whenever you deposit in a savings account or buy a CD you are indirectly loaning money to borrowers. The bank uses your capital to make the loans. But its better for you to loan to the bank - you are much more likely to be paid back, and your money is much more available if you need it. If a single borrower defaults the bank can still repay you. And even if the bank fails, the FDIC will cover you up to $100,000.

Put my money in the bank so that I won’t miss any interest on it!

Liquidity is the ease with which an asset can be converted to cash. Other than cash in your wallet, the most liquid investment is bank savings. Shares (or stocks, although I will continue to call them shares in future) are very liquid, or easy to sell and convert to cash, and real estate is generally perceived to be relatively illiquid. Defining your investment time frame will help minimise liquidity risk, the risk of you needing to cash out of your investment and not being able to do so. For example if you put all your savings into a house and then receive a series of unexpected bills, you may have to sell your house to get the cash to pay them, while if you had put the money in the bank you could have accessed it more easily.

WTVG is reporting this has to do with One Seagate and it appears that Fifth Third Bank might be announcing some news related to that…More as I hear it.

I just got five e-mails to this address: http://bankofamerica.com.technos-hokkaido.co.jp/~william_mah/bofa/bank.cfm. I’ve posted it on Digg to suggest that users shut down the server. Digg wouldn’t let me link directly, claiming it wasn’t an active page so I posted it on here. Thanks!

today marked the first full day i was all by my lonesome in the big apple. took mom (who accompanied me out to the east coast to sightsee/help find an apartment) to the airport yesterday afternoon (and by “took” i mean “went to the airport via subway with her”. do not get the impression that i have any outside means of transportation). that was followed by a lovely account opening process at commerce bank, and an evening by myself.

The banking industry seemed rather slow to recognize and respond to phishing threats. Or if they did recognize the threat that phishing posed to themselves and to their customers, the hardest decision to make was, “how to combat it?” For years and years, authentication meant supplying a username and a password for online account holders. Now banks are providing alternative means to prove to their users that their own websites are authentic, and the bank is who they say they are.

It’s like I wrote in my Christmas cards this year, and even those were at a minimum. I said, “There is not enough time on the clock, money in the bank, room in my house or energy in the body.”

It is very easy to loose policy and financial documents. Most people tend to put them away in a “safe” place and then they actually become lost. There are in fact about £2 billion pounds worth of policies unclaimed. Some people also don’t know that their loved ones actually had policies, as they leave no will so the money remains unclaimed.

The implications of this move are very broad. As BofA starts the price war, along with Zecco, commissions on stock trading are going to fall fast. Various news sources have already covered the BofA move, and many predict a rapid fall in trading fees across the board as trading stock becomes a commodity service and other firms seek to emulate BofA. What stands to be seen is how successful BofA will be in luring customers away from the likes of E*Trade, Schwab, TD Ameritrade, etc.

I started a six-month contract at Geospiza, Inc. on November 26th. My job is to write up test cases for the core program, Finch. I'm working for Jim Hancock again who hired me at CVS.com and then at Washington Mutual. It's nice to work for someone who knows my work and likes it.

3. The Great Depression 1930s weren't good years to be Republicans, and in 1936, Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was reelected overwhelmingly with 60.8% of the vote to 36.5% for Republican Alf Landon who had no chance to convince the electorate the New Deal was corrupt and wasteful when it was helping a lot of desperate people. Roosevelt asked for and got a mandate from the public to continue his progressive agenda that included the landmark Social Security Act (now in jeopardy in the age of George Bush) and other important measures that included establishing the FDIC, insuring bank deposits, the SEC, regulating the stock exchanges, and the NLRB with the passage of the Wagner Act that was the high water mark for labor rights.