Shinycroak

"Now I don't mind I'm chopping wood, / And I don't care if the money's no good."—The Band, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" What are we to do in deflationary times, when the banking system is unreliable? Not only the banking system, mind: every major business we depend on has turned toxic—there are few honest deals from cell phone companies or airlines. There is no complete answer, no substitute for a reliable financial system and I see no indication we are going to have one in less than ten years. So what do we do instead? Gift and barter, I think. Be liberal with our friends. It has never been easier to manufacture small runs of a design. So we can trade products and services. This is far from ideal. The great value of a neutral medium of exchange—money—is that there is no problem trading machine tools for money, and then buying food with the money. This is much harder in a barter-and-gift economy: a series of trades must be arranged, and ...

(This is the first of what I hope to be a pair of posts. This one will address the personal finance issues; the other, over on Advice Unasked, will address broader issues of economics and policy.) Don't hold debt. Most salaries will not rise in this period; we will not be in a better position to pay down debt in the future. In general, debt securities are preferable to equities in deflationary times, however this only applies if the debt securities are trustworthy—hard to judge in the current regulatory and financial reporting regime. There is something to be said for a savings account, or even cash in an actual safe, though the safe carries a risk of burglary. Most property is likely to fall in value in this period. Speculation will at times raise the prices of some valuables like jewels and precious metals through this period, however this is not something to be relied on; even speculators can run short of cash. Bartering personal services in this period is a way to conserve...

[Edited 2010.08.02 to add lapel and headworn singer's microphones.  2010.08.08 change "singer" to "performer and announcer"] Since The Raven now works long-distance for a large government lab (LGL) which shall remain nameless, he has had to acquire a comfortable high-quality headset for long on-line conversations. Headsets turn out to be an area where a large amount of design and research has been invested. There are numerous types of earphones and microphones, signal processors, and devices. I've only scratched the surface of the market, and I came up with the following incomplete set of options: Wired or "corded" vs. wireless. Wireless sets sometimes include Bluetooth at considerable expense. Audio processing Basic telephony set. High-quality telephone set—includes audio processor. Some versions provide wideband sound reproduction, but this doesn't work with the actual telephone network, which is still bandwidth limited to 300-3300 Hz. ...

Restocking fees and non-refundable deposits are the same thing. Many products are now sold in this way, and sometimes we don't find out that there's a non-refundable deposit until we go to return the unsatisfactory product. With the relaxation of regulation and fraud prosecution, such deceptive selling practices, long abandoned, have made a comeback. The marked price of goods is no longer their real price; instead, there are many hidden charges. The hidden charges may appear beforehand, like shipping charges, or afterwards, like the non-refundable deposit, which bites when the product turns out to be unsatisfactory. The price of a product becomes the stated price, plus whatever the hidden charges are, and buyer beware. Do not, also, underestimate the costs of time in a purchase. An online purchase from a distant seller may in fact have a lower price, even after shipping charges are included, but by the time it has been shipped and received, and possibly exchanged once or tw...

These are small, inexpensive printers and all-in-ones which use Epson's Claria six-color inkset. The quality of photographic prints from these printers is quite high; Adrian Buckmaster reviewed them at Boing Boing: I was very impressed with print quality; the image referenced above would have shown up any deficiencies straight away. A close comparison showed a slight posterisation in the mid-tone skin areas which was corroborated by the gray test strip which showed magenta cast in the mid tone areas. Sharpness was excellent; there were no tram lines or banding, and the gray areas, with the exception of the above caveat, showed clean tones. *** The Epson Artisan 800 also works well as an all-in-one, with the scanner and fax facilities simple, reliable, and of good quality. The device has a relatively straightforward touch-panel interface and less-straightforward but usable drivers. Supplies...ah, there's the rub. The Artisan line comprises three units: the Artisan 50 p...

As of this writing, this is the only web site to use for free annual credit reports. Accept no substitutes--all others are not actually free, or are actual scams run by identity theives. Expect to be confused by the site (this is apparently by design), & bring a temporary e-mail account, which will be collected and placed in your credit file.

Review: "Call quality is only so-so." (cnet.com) Experience: most user speech was unintelligible to called party in a moderately noisy store. Product: Sony DR-BT160AS wireless stereo headset, which has very good stereo listening quality & probably works sort-of ok for talking in a quiet room or stopped car. Shop: Sony Outlet Store in Tualip Washington, about an hour from Seattle. A very nice shop & worth returning to for good deals on electronics.

Google , the not-so-evil empire. Google provides real high-quality  services at the cost of viewing unobtrusive advertising. The corporate motto is "Don't Be Evil" and the Google employees I know take it seriously. They're not saints, but you can do business, and not need to count your fingers afterwards. They are still a commercial empire, however, and they are rather snoopy. Amazon and Apple , medium-evil empires. Commercial empires of a more evil sort. Both do genuinely valuable things. Unfortunately, every now and again they try to take over the world. Microsoft , cell phone companies, Facebook , evil empires.The are price-gougers, monopolists, oligopolists, spies, intellectual property thieves, sellers of your time and attention. Microsoft charges hugely more than anything reasonable for their products; cell companies are probably making gross profits of 500-1000%. In dealing with cell companies, expect to feel like a chump; get the best deal you can & ...

This is where I put up occasionally shopping and finance advice--things I decided would be worth publishing that don't belong in my political blog. So! I'll start out with the post that persuaded me to start this blog: on evaluating online shopping services. Does the store: Let you just buy what you want? Once you've finished looking for your product, does the store let you just buy it, or does it keep offering you alternatives--that is, trying to sell you something else? This a bad sign because it tells you that the store doesn't care about your time. Exception: "you might also like..." can be a reasonable thing for books, CDs, DVDs, and so on. Ask a price comparable to market, or does it seem low? If the price is substantially lower than most other places, chances are there's a catch. Perhaps many customers return the product, and the store charges a fee for this. Perhaps the product is counterfeit, stolen, or imported to the USA without the manufac...