A restful if not short week on Vacation, which was enjoyable and with back to school fairly quiet as well.
This week has seen some interesting financial news:
- A first meeting of the National Capital Financial Bloggers Association met at a Starbucks in Ottawa’s East End (although none of us ordered more than 1 coffee and 1 of us didn’t even buy one, to show our own internal frugality). In attendance were Larry MacDonald of Investment Ideas Blog and the bloggers behind Canadian Capitalist,  and Canadian Money Blogs Reviewer. I found the conversation invigorating and very interesting, given I had never spoken to other bloggers about “the business” and also about Financial Matters in general. You need to read what these guys write, I do, and find them interesting and also causes me to think about Financial Ideas that maybe I hadn’t thought of.
- Interest rates are staying the same for this month, which is a good thing. Given the Fed in the U.S. lowered their rate, is the tight money philosophies that were being espoused at the start of the year being revisited? I don’t think so, this economy is starting to overheat and inflation is certainly not too far away.
- The Public Sector continues to grow from it’s bottom in 1999, since 2000, public sector employees have represented about 19% of the total employed labour force, but if government continues to grow, who is going to pay for it, given their main income is from us.
- Apple announced a cheaper iPhone (a discount as it were) which is causing folks to be really mad at Apple about dropping the price so soon. I think I actually agree with Steve Jobs when he said, if you keep waiting for the next big thing, or the next price drop, you’ll never buy anything high tech. Oh, and there still are no iPhones set up for Canada (you can hack them evidently to work here but it is going to cost you).
Enjoy your weekend, the fall starts soon.