Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour. Here’s some things I’ve read the past few days.
Broccoli
No, I’m not telling you eat broccoli. But apparently this vegetable could make an impact on the Supreme Court’s decision on the health care law. The article attempts to trace the broccoli argument to its original source while explaining it along the way. Whatever the Supreme Court decides on health care, it’ll be rooted in whether the government can force people to buy a specific product. Funny, all I could thing about was Dana Carvey doing the Choppin Broccoli SNL skit.
Moneyball For The NBA
If you’ve ever seen Moneyball, you’ll understand this article about building a championship NBA team. A really smart student at Stanford put a bunch of basketball statistics into a software program built to understand cancer, diabetes and oil spills better. Makes sense. It spit out a bunch of data that says the perfect NBA team can be built based around 13 key positions. Some interesting stuff that could change how general managers build NBA teams. Continue Reading…

The days of getting a Social Security statement in the mail have come to an end. At least for everyone under 60 years old. About a year ago the Social Security Administration stopped sending annual statements to save money on budget cuts. It worked. But it left several million people without easy access to their statements.
An abundant, cheap energy source sits underground and could be the fuel needed to spur economic growth for decades to come. It’s not oil, though the U.S. is seeing a renaissance in oil production of late. It’s natural gas and there are so many ways to play this energy source.
Safety plays a big role where we put our money. We know the FDIC protects our bank accounts from bank failures, but does anything protect our brokerage accounts? The SIPC insurance coverage is there to protects investors when their brokerage firm fails, assuming the broker is a SIPC member.