Carl from Chicago

Business executive interested in history, economics, taxation and energy policy.

An Interview Entrepreneur

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I was walking near work recently when I saw this guy with a sandwich board (it was a few weeks ago because he isn’t dressed like an Eskimo) and a sign reading “I will buy an interview” and his own web site www.buyaninterview.com. At the web site you can see that it is the same person in the photos – his name is Javier Pujals. From a review of his resume he has a varied business background, acting as a project manager, business analyst, and having set up his own firm at one point. He also says he has five kids, which probably accounts for his zeal and ability to face ridicule by standing on the street corner like this.

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Treasuries vs. Certificates of Deposit

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Here is a brief article about purchasing CD’s through a brokerage vs. recent rates on Treasury securities.   Read more if you are interested.

PURCHASING CD’S THROUGH YOUR BROKERAGE ACCOUNT

Recently I wrote a post about how CD’s can be purchased through your brokerage account (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, etc…) and how easy that it is to do so.

Recently I built a “ladder” by taking the amount that I wanted to invest and breaking it into 4 equal groups and buying CD’s as follows:

one year interest rate 2.75%
two year interest rate 3.95%
three year interest rate 3.9%
four year interest rate 4.1%

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A Thought Experiment

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In past (work) lives I traveled across the USA and worked in many different cities. I think by the time I was done I had worked in 30+ states at one time or another. When I worked in Minneapolis, for instance, I was struck by the fact that when traffic was clear, most cars would travel near the speed limit, or maybe 5 or so mph faster. This pattern repeated itself in most other cities where I was forced to get a rental car and drive to the client on a regular basis.

In Chicago, on the other hand, on the few times when traffic is not congested, the average speed on an interstate highway like the Kennedy or Dan Ryan or Eisenhower is WAY up in the 80’s. Even in a construction zone (like today on I88), if you drive near the posted speed limit, you are like a rock in the stream.

One of the clearest ways to test this proposition is to leave the Chicago loop on one of the few times it is not congested (say, Sunday morning) and take I290 (Eisenhower) West, towards the suburbs. I290 “starts” from the loop so when you get on it is WIDE open… and then as the exits move on traffic gets worse until you reach gridlock (on most days, not on a Sunday).

This photo shows the wide open traffic from the view of my high powered almost a decade-old Nissan Altima. You can see that I am in the middle lane.

The EXPERIMENT would be – how f*cking fast would you have to go in order to stay in the left lane until it ends (at Austin, when I290 inexplicably loses a lane) and NOT get passed, assuming it was mostly wide open in front of you. On a typical day you’d have to go at least 100 miles / hour because people are absolutely FLYING down that road. It is even crazier on the Dan Ryan once you get south of the Loop.   I know that I am not crazy enough to do it.

I don’t know what it is about Chicago drivers but they seem possessed to drive as fast as they can in the brief moments that they can see daylight and clear pavement.

Cross posted at LITGM

I Need You Like I Need an…

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a**hole_elbow

There is a fascinating yet repellent movie called “The Rules of Attraction” that I end up getting sucked into every time I see it on TV.   The movie features an entire cast playing against type including Fred Savage shooting heroin into his foot (now he is part of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”, so we were probably seeing the REAL Fred, after all).

One part of the movie features the “hero” or a better word is “protagonist” of the film when he visits a local, unhinged drug dealer to whom he owes money.   The protagonist tells the dealer that he “needs” him, because he can help move the drugs on campus at a big markup.   With this line, the dealer says…

“I Need You Like I Need an A**hole on my Elbow” (you can probably guess this is the still from the movie).

And why is this on Chicago Boyz?   Because THIS is an accurate summary of what Obama is going to do to the left wing blog-erati that helped get him elected.   He does not NEED them anymore, and he is going to prove it.   Many of the left-wing folks are jabbering about the fact that Obama is keeping Gates as defense secretary and appointing a Wall Street lifer as secretary of the Treasury, and seeming to be bi-partisan rather than lashing out at people like Lieberman who seemed to side with the Republicans.

Obama is smart enough (hopefully) to know that those people are useful on the way up, but listening to them now is political suicide.   The country is wide in the middle, and shallow on the ends, and where are these people going to go, anyways?

Obama also has the advantage that he isn’t a white male Democrat, not from a union or other known power base.   Those people, like Edwards and Kerry, have to keep “proving” how liberal they are from time to time, like a litmus test.   For obvious reasons, Obama doesn’t have to “prove” anything to anyone about how liberal he is.

So, in the immortal words of the drug dealer in “The Rules of Attraction”, he needs them like he needs an…