US Finance World

I picked a heck of a time to give up caffeine again.

I tried this a few years back for Lent, and the headaches were just insane. Ive stayed on top of it better this time (thank goodness for advil), but Im not so sure I can make it.

Ive noticed the past few months that my as-needed coffee had turned into just my daily routine. And I wasnt getting going at work until I had my coffee. It used to be that I used coffee as a special boost, and I want to get back to that vs. the daily crutch it had become.

But jeezIm 5 days without caffeine and dont feel super hot. Day 3 was the worst headache day, but Ive been lethargic, unmotivated, and all-around blah now for 5 days. I was hoping today might be the day I turned the corner but so far nothing.

My entire family is a mess right now. My wife is recovering from surgery, my grandmother is dying, my Mom isnt doing well at all, my Dad is scheduled for surgery this week.Sigh, its just a mess right now.

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The Deputy PMs idea to hand out free shares in Lloyds and RBS is daft.

One of the joys (and sorrows) of being a government minister is that you have a whole team of people whose job it is to think for you.

Often, these ‘policy wonks’ are young, highly intelligent special advisers, political activists or civil servants. They spend their time looking to impress their masters –and wow the public — with big ideas that can be implemented at relatively low cost.

To get an idea of how these policy wonks work, all you have to do is watch the outstanding BBC comedies Yes, Minister, Yes, Prime Minister and, more recently, The Thick of It.

Since forming a coalition government with the Conservatives in May 2010, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg MP has been under the cosh.

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In the New York City offices of PetFlow.com, three Pets.com sock puppets sit prominently on a shelf. “A reminder,” says PetFlow cofounder Alex Zhardanovsky, “of what not to do.” Nearly a dozen years after the original Pets.com rolled over and died, Zhardanovsky’s company has gamely followed in its wake, running a similar business with the benefit of hindsight.

Pets.com, of course, was one of the most high-profile bust-ups of the late 1990s tech bubble, hawking pet toys and accessories as its puppet became a symbol of dot-com excess. The business model flamed out so badly that executives at PetFlow.com say they’ve been blessed with little competition so far. “It scared everyone,” says cofounder Joe Speiser, “like fallout from radiation.” But failure has an undeservedly dismal reputation, says Philip Coelho, a professor of economics at Ball State University, since entrepreneurs can learn by exploring why some ideas fail.

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On a crisp autumn day in Richmond, Va., the view from 25 stories up was absolutely horrifying. Jeff Sigmon, a 51-year-old commercial-property manager, was about to rappel down the side of the city’s second-tallest skyscraper, and he was having second thoughts. After all, the would-be Spider-Man had just a few minutes of training, and he could barely breathe in his tight-fitting harness. It didn’t help that the man ahead of him had just popped over the edge in a pirate costume, complete with a long, shiny sword. Sigmon paused at the precipice and posed a rather pertinent question to himself: “What are you doing? This is insane.”

It was too late to turn back. Sigmon was caught up in the nation’s most peculiar, if widely accepted, charitable exercise — the athletic fund-raising event. Every year tens of millions of Americans ask friends to sponsor them in events ranging from 3-mile “fun runs” to 100-mile bike treks.

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One lender is offering fabulous rates, but youll need to move quickly to get hold of them!

Santander has started an interesting new initiative when launching attractive new mortgages, specifying explicitly that the deals will only be available for seven days.

Just last week it unveiled two fixed rate deals, exclusively available through brokers – a five-year fixed rate deal at 4.99%, fee-free, up to 85% loan-to-value, and a two-year fixed rate at just 2.89%, with a £995 fee, for borrowers with a 40% deposit.

The reasoning behind it is pretty simple. While the lender is keen to maintain, and perhaps even increase its market share of the UK mortgage market – in 2010 it took an 18% share – it doesn’t want to overstretch itself. So by limiting the time that a certain mortgage is available to borrowers, it limits just how much lending it is likely to do on that mortgage, meaning it doesn’t get swamped.

The pulling of mortgages was a big issue a couple of years ago. Brilliant

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