Tag Archives: e bay

Three Money Insights for Wednesday

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Another huge wave of phishing scams are showing up in your e-mails. These two are predominantly from E-bay and Amazon. The Amazon one works for the crooks because so many people have dealt with the company. The e-mail will state that your order has been cancelled and to click on the link. Tons of people do and are asked to enter their password. Once that’s entered, the crooks can go into the real Amazon within minutes and place orders for hundreds or thousands of dollars and have them shipped wherever they want. Amazon allows third-party shipping and retains your credit card information on your profile.

Don’t click on an e mail – almost never. Go to the real Amazon or E-bay on your browser. And you can also hover your mouse over the hyperlink the crooks want you to click where the bottom left side of your screen should show you the actual web site it is re-directing you to.

If you want to save some money in the kitchen, stick to a budget, and/or reduce waste, there are two new web sites that are kind of cool. Both are set up for you to enter the ingredients you have in the house and will ‘translate’ them into figuring out what you can make for dinner with what you have! The two sites are www.saymmm.com and www.supercook.com

What would you pay to have lunch with one of the richest and most successful investment people in the world, Warren Buffet? Lunch with Buffet was auction off last Friday at $3.5 million. It’s an annual auction in support of the Glide Foundation helping the homeless in San Francisco. I’m sure it’d be great investment insights but at a big price…

More Stories and Insights from the U.S.

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Last week we discussed some real on-the-ground stories from Phoenix. Here are a few more insights worth sharing:

First and foremost, something very critical that separates us from the current U.S. policy. We spoke briefly last week about Prime Minister Harper traveling the country stating how well we are doing as Canadians in this economy. And he’s right. This isn’t about politics, although in the interest of full-disclosure, I’m a fiscal conservative. I believe that much of the intervention in the U.S. economy by the government is doing nothing more than creating a phony and temporary sugar high. Cash for clunkers was $3 billion of tax money to sell 700,000 cars – the car market is now dead again.

There’s an $8,000 tax credit for first time home purchasers. I guarantee you, when that expires in November, the housing market will die off again. Foreclosures are still increasing, and there are more than 17 million people out of work – and that’s still rising. The only way to get the economy back to health is to create jobs, and to reduce the killer debt load the average American is under.

If you believe the government programs are a blessing and not a temporary fix – just wait a year for them to expire, and you’ll see the results. Until then, you might not like Prime Minister Harper’s policies, but as a former economist, he knows that governments can’t be the solution to everything.

General Motors has now begun to sell new vehicles on the giant auction site e-bay. The trial with their California dealers was last month, but you can bet it’ll be back nation-wide. And GM is now working on a $4,000 vehicle. Tata Motors is selling their inexpensive one in India right now for $2,000, and they already have European certification, so you know they’re coming to North America at around $5,000 or so. Yes, GM is behind again – but not as far as usual.

Anyone who travels a fair bit will love this story: For some time now, there has been an on-going, multi-country investigation into illegal price fixing by airlines into their fuel surcharges. The CEO of Virgin Atlantic has already admitted to it. But it’s sad that any company that’s convicted will only have to pay a fine. And that fine will be way less than they made in profits from the fuel surcharges. Some of these executives should spend some jail time!