Wiki Economics

Of interest:
Britain's Three-Day Week
Keynes' Bancor proposal...
...which lost out to the Bretton Woods system

DuPont Analysis

Via a Motley Fool article, I read about the DuPont identity, a formula that describes the elements of return on equity (ROE):

ROE = ( net profit / sales ) x ( sales / assets ) x ( assets / equity )

Put another way, the rate of return to stockholders is the profit margin times asset turnover times leverage, which makes intuitive sense.

Emergency Funds vs. Debt Payoff

This doesn't really apply to me per se, since I have a cash cushion, but some folks I know would do well to consider the points in the article.  I would argue for building up an emergency fund at the same time as paying off debt.  True, there is an impact due to the cost of the loaned money that's not being paid off, but there's no guarantee that the credit line won't be cut off, so the emergency allocation needs to be there.  Similarly, it doesn't make sense to put all your available capital into payments on a house loan because there's no guarantee that you'll be able to get a home equity line of credit when you need it.  "A bird in hand is worth two in a bush," as they say.