I saw a new vehicle the other day that I hadn’t ever seen before. It was a crew cab compact pickup called the Mitsubishi Raider. I have always been a big fan of pickup trucks of all kinds.

My favorites are the classic trucks from the 50’s like the 5 window Chevy’s.

Second favorite would be the 1972 Chevrolet C10 with rally wheels. My grandfather had a green and white one, and I wish I had been smart enough to keep that one in the family.

We are getting ready to sell a used van at our house. There is lots of information on the internet about new and used cars that is helpful for both car buyers and sellers. I use Edmunds and NADA to look up prices on used cars. I also use Autotrader and Cars.com to look for comparable vehicles for sale to see what the local market looks like. I ran across a new site called TheCarConnection.com that is dedicated to new car information including reviews, breaking news and spy shots of models that are not yet available.

One of the big questions in this tough economy is whether it is a good time to buy a new car. If you are in the market for a new car, experts say that car shoppers should make a budget and stick to it. Don’t get tempted by the great deals on more expensive models. Check your credit and get a preapproved loan to put yourself in a stronger negotiating position at the dealership. Consider certified used cars which will be less expensive while still offering an attractive warranty. Used cars also depreciate more slowly than brand new models. The economy is tough right now, but sooner or later things will begin to bounce back. They always do.

In these days of a tough economy, many people will be looking for ways to ease the stress of debt that has piled up for many reasons. Whether they are college costs, unexpected health care expenses, or just monthly bills that are outpacing income, the need to avoid bankruptcy or calls from collection agencies will force a search for solutions. Debt consolidation services are one way to lower monthly payments and interest rates or consolidate your bills into one loan with improved terms. Bills.com claims to be your one stop resource for saving money. The site offers tips and resources for the best debt consolidation option for your specific situation.

Just when you think you have caught up, another bill comes in the mail. If you have bad debt, bill consolidation can help. Bill consolidation brings all of your debt into one loan. The process can be started by applying for a secured loan on your property and will work best if you can get a lower interest rate. You may wonder why another lender would be willing to work with you. Lenders make money off of the interest you pay, and if the loan can be secured by property, then they have collateral for the debt. Monthly payments can often be lowered by extending the length of the loan. If you can cut some expenses and begin to pay down your debt, then you might not need bill consolidation, but if you are having trouble making ends meet, bill consolidation might be a good option for you.

I have a credit card with Citibank, and every once in awhile they change their terms, usually not in my favor. One time they made the payment due date earlier, and on several occasions they have changed the interest rate. It’s not always easy to figure out which Credit Card company offers the best deal, but a web site named CardHub is making an effort to level the playing field.

Cardhub offers an easy to use search tool that will narrow your choices based on credit quality, personal or business cards, annual fees, and issuing companies. Visitors can also look for cards offering the specific type of credit card reward program that they are interested in. Before I started narrowing down my search, the list included 41 different cards, and I wound up with 38 cards listed with the best regular rate listed at 7.99% and no annual fee . I never have understood why I would want to pay a credit card company in order to help them make money. CardHub made it easy for me to compare current credit card offers to my existing account.

If you were hoping to get a job at Salisbury University this fall, things just got a little tougher. Due to a 400 million dollar budget shortfall in the State of Maryland, the entire University of Maryland system has imposed a hiring freeze. All staff and administrative jobs have been removed from the Salisbury University HR web site including the open position of Dean of the Perdue School of Business. Faculty openings remain listed, as the university probably hopes to continue plans for class offerings in the spring and fall semesters of 2009. According to the Towson University student paper, the memo went out to all universities last Thursday that the hiring freeze would affect all positions that have not been filled.

I don’t know what the farm fields look like in your neck of the woods, but every field to the south and east of Salisbury seems to be popping up with corn plants. My first thought is that this is not a good thing. While farmers are trying to take advantage of the higher prices for corn, this means that other crops are going to be in shorter supply due to a lack of cultivation. If the pattern is more widespread than just this part of Wicomico County, then corn prices will likely hit a plateau while other commodities continue to rise since they will be in more limited supply. And if the corn crop is hit with some form of natural disaster before it can be harvested, then all bets are off.

A Friday AP news article ponders the ramifications of a notable ten property real estate auction occurring today on Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay. This is quite possibly the beginning of the end of a way of life that has survived for centuries on this Maryland island. The most likely buyers of these properties are people looking for vacation or retirement homes and not the watermen who face a continuing decline in their industry on the bay. New investment on Smith Island could actually provide a needed boost to the local economy which has lost many retail businesses due to a decreasing population and struggling seafood industry. In a few years, we will know whether Smith Island can renew itself as a vacation destination, or will the vitality of the island follow the same path as the island’s receding shoreline.
(h/t to Maryland Politics blog where I first saw a reference to the AP article.)

On June 11, horseshoe crabs made the front page of the Wall Street Journal. These prehistoric looking creatures have been the subject of discussions between conservationists and watermen on the Delaware Bay for several years. Horseshoe crabs use the beaches of the Delaware Bay as the prime location for laying their eggs in the spring. A migratory bird called the Red Knot uses this same area as a stopover to feast on the eggs which sustain them on their annual journey between the Arctic and the southern tip of South America. Add in the dollars from the increasing industry of ecotourism, and things become quite contentious.

The horseshoe crab has become an increasingly sought after form of bait for fishermen who use the creature to lure another sea dweller called the whelk into watermen’s traps. The crab is also used for bait to attract several species of fish as well. The controversy surrounds the fact that as the horseshoe crab population has decreased due to the harvest by about 60 watermen in the business, the number of Red Knots counted around the bay has also decreased by an alarming rate, from 90,000 in 1989 to 13,000 in 2006 according to the WSJ story.

The result of this decline was a moratorium imposed by the states of Delaware and New Jersey on the harvest of horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay which was challenged in court. The Delaware moratorium was recently overturned by the state court, so the debate is renewed once again to find a balance between man and nature. One possible solution is to allow the harvesting of only male crabs which is a reasonable suggestion due to the fact that female crabs take ten years to reach egg laying maturity. The creation of a crab sanctuary off the coast and harvest limits will lessen the chances of overfishing the horseshoe crab, but a permanent long term solution is the ultimate goal to protect all of the interests involved in this debate.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported the latest figures for mortgage foreclosures and delinquencies.

The delinquency rate on residential mortgages stands at 4.84% for the first quarter of 2007 which is 10% higher than the same period a year ago.

The percentage of mortgages entering foreclosure increased to a new record of .58% which is over 40% higher than the year ago number.

Governor O’Malley Creates Homeownership Preservation Task Force

DLLR, DHCD Expand Programs to Prevent Foreclosures and Combat Sub-prime Lending Schemes

BALTIMORE, MD (June 13, 2007) – Governor Martin O’Malley today announced the creation of the Maryland Homeownership Preservation Task Force to help prevent home foreclosures for working families in Maryland. At a press conference in Dundalk, Governor O’Malley declared June “Home Ownership Month” in the State of Maryland and announced a number of statewide initiatives to protect homeowners from foreclosure and predatory lending schemes, known as sub-prime loans.

The law of supply and demand has long been a standard of the study of economics. This law controls the prices of everything from raw materials and commodities to the latest fad items like the iPhone or Tickle Me Elmo. There are two vastly different products that are currently seeing new highs in prices due to high demand and restricted supply. These two products are gasoline and stocks.

The effects of supply and demand on the price of gasoline are quite obvious to us on a daily basis. This coveted fuel recently hit all time highs in price even on an inflation adjusted basis compared to the peak in the 80’s. The supply of gasoline is restricted at the point of refining. There has not been a significant increase in the capacity of our nations refineries in decades. This lack of investment in refinery infrastructure can be blamed mostly on integrated oil companies who are driven to optimize their earnings, but blame can also be placed on increasingly restrictive environmental regulations that have discouraged the expansion of our refinery base. As a result, we now import about 13% of our gasoline from foreign refiners to make up for a lack of capacity domestically.

There is another number that is reported in the business pages on a regular basis that is referred to as refinery utilization. This number quantifies the percentage of all refineries that are currently operating. The current range of refinery utilization varies between 85% and 90% which is considerably less than the historical range of 90% to 95%. There are also complications involved with the production of as many as 12 different formulations of gasoline required by different regions of the country. If a national standard for gasoline formulation were adopted, the refining of gasoline would be less expensive, and the price of gas would decrease considerably.

The law of supply and demand can also produce positive effects on our finances. The recent new highs in the Dow 30 and S&P 500 stock averages are due in large part to a decreasing supply of stocks being sought by an increasing amount of dollars. The supply of stocks is decreasing due to record volumes of stock buybacks by publicly traded companies and private equity buyouts of other companies listed on the various stock exchanges.

Many companies are currently using their cash flow to buy back their own shares in the open market. These buybacks provide support for stock prices at current levels, and they decrease the amount of stock that is available for trading. These buybacks have reached numbers in the hundreds of billions of dollars among all the companies that are removing their shares from the market. Exxon Mobil is buying back $31 billion in stock, while Proctor & Gamble and Time Warner are each purchasing about $11 billion of their own shares.

Private equity buyouts are also removing hundreds of billions of dollars of stock from the open market. The most recent buyouts include Avaya for $8.2 billion and CDW for $7.3 billion. All of the money that is paid by companies in their share buybacks and by private equity groups in their buyouts is usually reinvested in the stock market. The supply of stocks is decreasing, and the amount of free cash for investing is increasing, so our IRA’s and 401k’s are hitting new highs all thanks to the law of supply and demand.