3 Great Reads

One of the best features of the blogosphere, IMHO, is the wide-ranging topics presented on an ongoing basis.  Here are 3 I especially enjoyed this week:

• What is the best cash rewards card?  How do they compare?  How much can be saved by choosing intelligently?  Here is a great article, "Best Cash Back Credit Cards, August 2012"  from Free Money Finance, examining these questions that anyone with the analytic bug will enjoy.  Be sure to check out the comments section--it includes valuable observations as well.  This article is worth sending to college students, also, since they are on the verge of dealing with these questions.
• From Biz of Life comes a Bloomberg video interview of Jim Grant.  If you watched the Republican Convention, you know that Romney has said he will replace Fed Chairman Bernanke.  The Fed Chairman is said to be the second most powerful position in the world.  Some have said that gold bug Jim Grant should have that position.  I fully agree with Grant's position that the Fed has morphed into a central planning group whose actions mirror those of the old Soviet Union in their ineffectiveness and downright harm.
• I previously covered the poor performance of hedge funds, the bastion of "sophisticated" investors.  In this post, "Couch Potatoes Crush Hedge Funds",  Andrew Hallam, author of the best-selling Millionaire Teacher, goes into greater detail on hedge fund performance and explains how the average investor can do better.

So there it is:  personal finance, economics, investment performance - all in one fell swoop.  Enjoy!