] Repossessed BMWs. Foreclosed McMansions. Pawned Rolexes.
]
] Such is the stuff of personal bankruptcy when a go-go
] lifestyle built on consumer excess runs up against
] financial reality.
]
] Or is it? Could it be that those tarnished icons of
] dead-end decadence are just as much an overhyped myth as
] the hordes of teenage day-traders back in 1999 who
] supposedly beat Wall Street's best brokers without ever
] leaving the comfort of their bedrooms?
]
] The biggest predictor that a person will end up bankrupt
] turns out not to be a bad Prada habit or a taste for
] sub-zero refrigerators. It's having children, according
] to the mother-and-daughter authors of "The Two-Income
] Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going
] Broke."

A very interesting article, to say the least. I have to agree with the authors that the behavior of parents in an effort to provide for their children is what has gotten many in trouble. At least, from personal experiences that I've seen. Worrying about getting into "the best" school district, no matter what the cost of the mortgage or rent payments is listed as the biggest culprit.

I had a conversation very much along these lines with a coworker before she had her first child - she and her husband were looking at school districts and deciding whether to remodel or move houses. This is before the child is even born! My logic was that school wouldn't start for at least 6 years and by that point "the best" school would be some other new suburban area. I think a lot has to do with the fact that the newest schools get the best toys, rather than keeping all of the districts at a similar level.

Americans are NOT going broke over lattes!

] A "South Park" episode, of all things, has yielded some
] investing insight. Its underpants gnomes have built a
] business based on "Phase One: Collect underpants. Phase
] Three: Profit." Look around your portfolio and you might
] discover some similar firms missing that critical
] element: Phase Two.

Fool.com:

Nope -- now the heat is coming from other media company executives and Beltway lobbyists. They are dismayed that Clear Channel is doing what many might have thought impossible. In an era when Republicans control the government and big business generally gets what it wants, Clear Channel is making deregulation look bad.

Man, the sad thing is that I don't know whether to call this a good thing or a bad thing. It's good that the other media industries are still being regulated from owning too large of a percentage of the market. However, is sucks that throughout America there is hardly any good radio left. You can certainly tell the Clear Channel stations, though, since they all have the same playlist. It doesn't seem to have changed in the past 4 years...

Clear Channel's big, stinking deregulation mess

Steve Albini writes an essay for the Negativland site about how screwed the music industry really is, particularly if you're a young indie band looking for a "Big Break."

Never mind any "artists rights" noise you might hear - examine the hypothetical numbers he includes toward the end of the article and you'll see exactly why the music industry hates MP3s.

The Problem With Music