myth: noun, from GreekRead more

Going through an old file cabinet, I found an unopened Texas Commerce Bank statement from July of 1995. Three checks got my attention. The first, to Texas Electric for the June 1995 electric bill, totaled $123.31. The second, to Southwestern Bell for phone service, paid a paltry $16.12, and the third met a $54.85 Sammons Cable bill.Read more

"It has always seemed to me that this putting off the day of payment for anything but permanent improvements was a fundamental mistake. The Ford Motor Company is not interested in promulgating any plan which extends credit for motorcars or for anything else."Read more

Just two years ago many were e-mailing me or calling the radio show to ask about their options for buying a car, while admitting that their credit scores had suffered from a poor repayment history. I was always torn in discussing these issues, knowing full well that 17 years earlier these individuals would simply have had to wait — and pay their bills on time — for up to seven years to clean up their credit. Or, if forced to acquire a slightly better ride than they currently owned from a "tote the note" used car lot, they would pay interest rates that were close to loan sharking. Over the years in this column I’ve discussed personal credit many times; despite all the positive economic realities of living in North Texas, and although ours is one of the nation’s more vibrant economies, something is terribly wrong. For Dallas Fort Worth’s collective average Beacon (credit) score is the lowest metro area score in America – just 650.Read more

This is the first weekend of the 41st Tokyo Motor Show. It’s best known for highlighting the most outrageous creations and concepts to emerge from Japanese automakers’ design and engineering departments, but this year there is trouble in the Land of the Rising Sun: Many manufacturers declined to pay to promote their vehicles to the Japanese market at this venue.Read more

It’s hard to find much to criticize in the journalistic work of Robert Fisk of the British Independent, at least as it pertains to the Middle East. Based out of Beirut for more than 30 years, Fisk is hard-wired into the region’s news and events. One of the few journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden – three times, from 1994 to 1997 – he’s won more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent. If anything about his work could be criticized, it might be that his writings make him sound a bit pro-Arab. Then again, his sympathy for the people of the Middle East may be what has given him such extraordinary access to events in that part of the world.Read more

Nothing could have been more interesting than all the commentary on how new car sales fared in September. Most discussed and agreed upon was the fact that new car sales last month tanked because the Cash for Clunkers program ended. Even franchised new car dealers vocally endorsed that statement in interviews on national networks and NPR. But there’s one small problem with that endorsement’s believability: New car dealers live in the present and the month just past; they rarely remember the how or why of new car sales one year ago.Read more

"By buying U.S. Treasuries and mortgages to increase the monetary base by $1 trillion, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke didn’t put money directly into the stock market, but he didn’t have to. With nowhere else to go, except maybe commodities, inflows into the stock market have been on a tear. The dollars he cranked out didn’t go into the hard economy, but instead into tradable assets."Read more

The intense concern and panic that swept the nation after Lehman Brothers collapsed last September has apparently subsided. Even our officials have cautiously said that the recession probably ended last month; in a moment of prudent honesty, they added that it might be a long time before employment numbers show improvement.Read more

The Opel franchises in America were terminated in 1975. A year later, one Dallas Buick dealer still had five Opel Mantas for sale; years of Texas sun had bleached all the color out of the vehicles’ velour interior and created cracks in the vinyl dashes.Read more