Deny until you cannot anymore.

Governor Blagojevich is refusing to resign and insists that he did nothing wrong. We should err on the side of him being innocent until proven guilty, but it's tough to do in this case. When I hear him say that he did nothing wrong, it reminds me of the many times that other public figures have vehemently denied wrongdoing and later confess. Usually, the more stacked the evidence is against someone, the more strongly they object. It's become a kneejerk reaction for me to quickly find guilt in someone when they plea innocence.

I can understand someone lying to avoid punishment. What I don't understand is when people who commit crimes of such proportions rationalize their judgment in backwards ways. When someone commits a small crime such as stealing food, it can be rationalized because they were hungry. Although it may have been wrong to steal, we can sympathize with the hungry person's theft. It makes sense. However, there's a whole other type of person who commits a crime and justifys it with the loosest of standards. They'll use circular logic or flawed reasoning. I think the governor falls into this category.

As strange as it sound, he may actually evade conviction.

The Economist

I asked for a subscription to The Economist for Christmas this past year. During my first job when I worked in Chicago, I remembered reading some really interesting articles in it. I originally thought that it was some sort of professional trade magazine and that the average person would be lost. I thought I'd share my insights for anyone who's thinking about picking up an issue.

First of all, the magazine title may be a little misleading. It's not ENTIRELY about economics. Many of the articles in it are about politics/government, world affairs, public policy, and science/engineering in addition to economics. So, if you're someone that wants to stay well informed about what's generally going on in the world, it's an excellent source. Most people say, "Why would I want to pay for a subscription to a magazine/journal/newspaper when I have the internet?" True, the internet can be a good source for news (and just about anything else depending upon how scrupulous you are), but a lot of it gets watered down by pop culture and is very Western-centric. What kind of dress some celebrity wore to a awards ceremony will get more coverage than an African country's government being overthrown in a military coup. That's fine. I get it. The internet sites are only showing what people will find entertaining.

For anyone who wants to expand their horizons and learn about what's going on in the world, I'd highly recommend picking up at least one issue. The world does not end at our borders.

Don't they get it?

My wife and I recently purchased a Samsung PN50A550 television. The purchase made me think about store retailers vs. online retailers in general. When I looked at the particular model in a local Circuit City, it was priced at about $1440. This was after a 30% discount. Add 10% Cook county sales tax and it would be about $1580. On top of that, they didn't have any left in the manufacturer's box so if you wanted to buy it, you had to take the one on the shelf. If there was a problem with the unit, you would have to take it up with the manufacturer because the store was going out of business. Needless to say, I had hesitations. Nevertheless, I liked what I saw and it was in the $1500 price range that my wife and I were shooting for.

I held off and went home to check out the online prices. I found the same model at amazon.com for about $1490. No sales tax, no shipping costs. If there were any problems with the unit it could be returned up through January 31 with the shipping completely paid for. It looked like the amazon.com deal was better in every way over Circuit City. Poor Circuit City had to pay for the sales staff, inventory, the building, and other general upkeep costs in order to entice me to buy from them. So, I freely enjoyed the benefit of their showroom and setup, but the benefit of amazon.com's price. Doesn't Circuit City (or any brick and mortar store) know this is happening? What are they doing to combat it? I looked into the price a bit and found out that amazon.com had been selling the unit at this price for several months. Circuit City had to go through a bankruptcy liquidation sale in order to lower their price 30% to come close to being competitive.

I can understand the Circuit City price being a little higher due to costs, but their pre-discounted price wasn't even in the ballpark. Consumers are being more educated and the internet is not going away anytime soon. It will be interesting to see how the competition develops.

Down time

I haven't posted in a while. November and December are those two busy months during which free time is used up preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Vacation time is over and it's back to reality. I'm usually pretty good about staying current on what's going on but I let a lot of that slide during the last month or so. It was only until I happened to hear by chance on the radio that Rod Blagojevich had appointed someone to Obama's vacant senate seat. One word to describe the governor's character would be "brazen" and the recent appointment doesn't do anything to rebuke that.

Overall, the down time was good. No worrying about the economy, work, stressing about applying for business school... The last month was all about football, food, and family.