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If you are involved in the Empire Avenue beta or plan to sign up for an account on July 28th when the site launches, this may be for you. If you use WordPress for your blog, there is a brand new plugin called Empire Avenue Tools. One simple plugin adds two features to your WordPress blog. The first lets you quickly add a link to your profile page along with an icon before your ticker. The second is a profile badge widget. Installation and configuration for both took me about 3 minutes.

Here is what the icon and my ticker looks like: (e)DPC. To achieve this, all you have to do is type “(e)”TICKER, without the quotation marks. That’s it. It will insert the icon and link directly to your Empire Avenue page.

For the badge, you simply add the widget to your sidebar, enter your ticker symbol, a title (if you like), and choose from two sizes. Then your done. You can see mine in my sidebar to the right. Pay no attention to my plummeting value.

A big shout out to Olivier Lussier (e)OL for the development of the plugin. And another to Bill Pitcher (e)RZR for his article about the plugin.

I became interested in the stock market my senior year of high school when we played the stock market game. I captained my team to 2nd place among the 350+ teams in Texas. I was hooked. I also credit that game to my love of all things finance and economics, and a reason I went on to earn a graduate degree in Finance.

Tonight I started playing the virtual stock market, but this time its not about following Wall Street or the economy. It’s a new website/social media game where you can buy share in your friends, businesses, singers, artists, and whoever else creates an account on the site. Buy them, sell them, join them.

The site will come out of Beta and be open to the public on July 28th.

The basic idea of the traditional stock market is buying shares in a company. You look for companies that are creating products or providing services that you expect to do well. Then, you buy a small piece of ownership in that company (shares) if you believe that company will continue to produce great products, content, or services that will add value to their stock price, thus earning you increasing wealth.

Empire Avenue is a new virtual exchange where you can buy shares with virtual currency (called Eaves) in a person, friend, or business that has an account with Empire Avenue. Once you create your account you then link it to your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, etc. If you post something during the day (creating content), you earn currency for that work. Everyone that owns shares in you also receive earnings (dividends) as an investor. Therefore, its best to buy shares of people who are actually producing content and building their brand. You can then buy with your virtual currency, or reinvest them to build your network and your influence, thus attracting more investors and creating your empire.

So what’s the point? Well, for many, it will be something fun, competitive, a way to test their online influence and that’s where they leave it. However, there is also a way to translate this into real money, should you decide to do so. The underlying crux of the concept is advertising. That is where real dollars are made. You may carry ads for various business that you choose so that you can decide on your content and what message you will send out. As Empire Avenue receives ad revenue, they pass a portion (the majority according to their CEO) onto you for doing all of the work. You can carry advertising through them, or eventually, through your own channels if you wish.

You get currency for the work you do and the work of those whose shares you own. For those that want additional virtual currency, you may purchase it (as in big online worlds like Second Life, etc) with real dollars through Empire Avenue. I can’t imagine wanting to pump real money into it myself, but plenty of people do on other sites, so I am sure this will be a great revenue stream for the company.

My ticker is (e)DPC. If you have an account, or if you sign up, let me know. I may want to buy shares in you so you can make me a mogul! EAVB_MXCHRNEMKN

Supposedly, this is from an article in the St. Petersburg Times. I say supposedly because I couldn’t find the article/letter. The Business Section asked readers for ideas on “How Would You Fix the Economy?” Regardless of whether this is real or not, the author makes some VERY good points. As one who enjoys good economic banter/discussions (with informed people), I thought most of this is right on.

Dear Mr. President:

Please find below my suggestion for fixing America’s economy.

Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage. Housing Crisis fixed.

It can’t get any easier than that!

If more money is needed, have all members of Congress and their constituents pay their taxes…

There are times when I am reading or learning about a subject when I wonder how my religious beliefs might preclude me from a certain line of work. I have though about legitimate occupations that would be difficult for me to pursue for one reason or another. However, I never considered economics to be one of those areas.

I have recently started a new book and I found the first chapter difficult, almost setting the book aside. The central focus of the book is the idea that past economic theories may be, at least partially, incorrect. The emerging field of Complexity Economics disavows many of the theories and underlying tenets of Traditional Economics. The first chapter of this book lays the foundation for tying economics to evolutionary theory.

This is difficult for me because I don’t subscribe to the theory of evolution. I do believe that species evolve and change, but certainly not to the extent of Darwinism. Man might have things in common with apes, but we did not come from them.

So how can I continue this book, which I believe makes some very valid assumptions, by applying evolutionary theory to economics? After much thought, I believe the answer is thus: My lack of belief in evolution does not preclude my belief that the conceptual arguments for human evolution cannot apply to other disciplines. According to the book’s author, “Evolution is an algorithm; it is an all-purpose formula for innovation, a formula that, through its special brand of trial and error, creates new designs and solves difficult problems”.

In this vein, most everything in this world undergoes an evolutionary process. When I started my new job, the route I now take to work had to evolve. I went a certain route one day, a different one the next day, and also tried those routes depending on what time I left work (5:00pm or 7:00pm). Over time, I discovered which route is fastest and easiest based upon the time I leave work. In fact, I usually go to work one way and come home another (not sure why, it just seems best).

So, though I don’t believe evolutionary principles apply to the creation of the universe, I can certainly see how those same principles apply to most aspects of our lives on some scale. With that internal debate settled, I have moved on to chapter two, which has already been very interesting.

The book: Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics, by Eric D. Beinhocker

P.S. If you are still reading this post, do me a favor and just say hello in the comments…

I couldn’t help but adminre Porsche’s creativity when I read this article. Porsche stands to make billions in profits this year, but not from selling cars. If their strategy works, the profits will actually come from their investment in Volkswagen stock. This is causing quite a commotion in Germany. Not because of the profits, but from how they were generated.

For a short time, Porsche was actually the most valuable company in the world, ahead of Exxon. VW stock was climbing because Porsche had been buying their shares in large volume (supply and demand in action). Seeing the run-up in the share price, many hedge funds began short selling the stock, expecting the price to drop. The idea here is to sell stock you don’t own at the current price, then when it goes down, you buy it back and make the difference.

Now here is the catch. Under German law, companies do not have to disclose their holdings until they have a legal right to purchase the stock. Porsche owned 43% of the stock, but didn’t tell anyone that they also had purchased options to buy another 32% of the stock. This meant that there was very little VW stock available on the open market. Again, supply and demand took over and the price jumped. Actually, the price took off because all of the short sellers had to buy shares to cover their short positions! This made Porsche BILLIONS of dollars because the value of all of the stock and the options they owned.

I am guessing it won’t be long until Germany changes their disclosure laws. My understanding is that it won’t take other companies too long to catch on to this practice as well. You’ve got to love financial creativity in down times!

For those of you who haven’t heard, Congress approved a $700 billion dollar bailout. That is how I always see it written. Let’s fill out all the zeros: $700,000,000,000!!!

One of the main beneficiaries of said bailout was AIG to the tune of $85 billion preventing bankruptcy. AIG was a MAJOR player as a Credit Default Swap insurer/underwriter. Most people have never heard of this type of unregulated security. If you haven’t, you will over the next two years, at least in my estimation. I believe these securities are much more to blame for our current economic situation that ANY subprime lending. In fact, these swaps are even riskier than subprime lending. Now figure that the subprime mortgage market is roughly about one trillion dollars. The risky credit default swap market is now up to about sixty two trillion! —-> $62,000,000,000,000!

So AIG gets a multi-billion dollar rescue package. How do you improve fiscal responsibility now that the public AND regulatory eye is squarely focused on you? Well, if you’re AIG you send your executives to a luxury spa resort in California and spend $440,000 on them. Needless to say, some in Congress are a little steamed about it.

Attention corporate Boards of Directors: I can be hired away from my current company. I have a dual-MBA, went to a good school, and graduated with honors. I am positive I won’t run your company into the ground as efficiently as those you have hired in the past. Heck, I probably wouldn’t have lost AIG more than $60 billion. That would have been a savings to taxpayers of $25 BILLION! I will do it for half of the total compensation package of your previous three CEOs. I will not take company sponsored trips, unless exclusively for business. No yachting in France. No dinners with John Legend. (See photos). And I will pay for my own home and vehicles. I will accept a bonus package based on my performance, and I promise not to ask you to waive pay guidelines to pay a $5 million bonus if the company is losing billions as Martin Sullivan did at AIG in 2007. Think about it and get back to me.

Most of you have probably at least seen a picture of a SmartCar. I have seen a handful of them cruising the area around my office. But what if you wanted the fuel efficiency, only with a different look? Well, here’s the solution (from a circulated email)

When I first heard the talk of a $700 billion bailout of the housing market, my initial thought was that it sounded like we are creating SOEs (State-owned entities). In other words, a step toward a socialist economy.

I’m still not sure where I stand on the issue. I don’t think it is certainly the best option, I also don’t know that it is best to do nothing. I can’t pretend to imagine the economic impact doing nothing might have. Tonight I came across an article about how Sweden rose from a very similar situation in the early 1990′s. If you like economics and want to see what may be a better idea than turning companies over to the government without giving anything back to shareholders, here is the article.

I found a video of T. Boone’s new energy plan. Cool thing is, this video was actually shot in the future.

Actually, I hope wind energy takes off. Cost efficient and makes great sense.