Kiplinger:
"If you are sitting on a lot of cash… or your firm, nonprofit or agency is… Note this CD product touting federal insurance coverage up to $50 million: CDARS, or Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service. Members in a network of over 2000 banks take a slice of your deposit… no more than $100,000 each. Promontory Interfinancial Network charges banks a fee to join and on transactions. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says deposits are likely covered. But the program, which began in 2003, hasn't yet been tested by a bank failure." This was in an Aug. 8, 2008 edition. CoB can attest to the fact that I had wondered if depositing sums of no more than $100,000 in multiple banks would be covered by the FDIC insurance. Whether this would count, in each case, as being that "up to $100,000 insured" allowance. You always wonder when you look back and see yourself speculating out loud about something like this, if it went from your mouth to someone else's ear and was then eventually implemented by someone overhearing it in conversation elsewhere. Or if it was a case of parallel evolution of an idea. You can never be sure. The important thing is - this is a way for rich folk to stay rich, even in the face of bank runs and failures.
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Also from Kiplinger:
"Women are wearing longer skirts, so we must be in a recession… right? At least that's one theory, which holds that skirt lengths and markets move in tandem. Hemlines rose in the Roaring '20s, when times were good, then fell in the Depression. Miniskirts were the rage in the '60s boom years. Now… bohemian-style long skirts popular in the late '70s are coming back. That period was also known for high oil prices, sagging stocks and inflation. Sound familiar? Of course, many dismiss the notion. And today, women have more options in fashion. They're apt to wear pants… at all lengths… as worry over skirt lengths. What counts is what's spent on women's clothes, which make up two-thirds of the $160 billion adult market. If women don't keep buying, the economy suffers."This springtime article has a caveat:
"Back in the '50s, there was a phenomenon called the hemline indicator that linked skirt lengths to the stock market. High hems supposedly signified high times and low ones the opposite. That analogy has long since been disproved, and hemlines have moved up and down the leg for many years, with no apparent link to Wall Street."But
this article's title:
"This summer's look, share plunge hems - If only the City boys had taken one eye off the stock markets and cast it over the catwalk, they might have seen what was coming" brings new life to the myth of hemline causality in June. Also mentioned is the rise of a "more demure look" with economic downturn. Or, to quote:
"The more demure look comes in vogue in times of economic restraint."Some fashion writer (and stylist) went on to say,
"If you think about it, the link between hemlines and the economy makes total sense. In leaner times, people don't feel so confident about flashing their cash around and dressing in a showy way, and so they tend to opt for a more demure, understated look that reveals less flesh. Just about the only women who are still baring all at the moment are the super-rich Russians, but their economy is still booming and the credit crunch isn't really an issue for them." Is there any proof of this BEFORE the roaring 1920's, any kind of fashion trend linked to economics highs and lows... What? Necklines? Are there any economic/fashion historians out there who have completed an intelligently designed (not "intelligent design" or offhand comment) study that shows more than an assumption of correlation?
*angry sigh*