Pop stars and personal finance

This article is wonderful. In part, yes, it is wonderful because of the humour. In terms of teaching a lesson in terms to which a lay audience can relate, though, it is fantastic. Really, really nicely put-together.

Would You Marry Britney Spears?

Recent court papers show that blonde quasi-bombshell Britney Spears allocates none of her $737,000 monthly income to savings and investment.

OK, she’s rich enough that it doesn’t matter. But it’s not (just) pantyless peek-a-boos or feeding frenzies at McDonald’s that cry out to us for help. It’s millions of children who lack role models in finance. If I may be blunt, we’ve got a nation of financial numbskulls in the making.

Fortunately, we can stop it.

Britney isn’t the only one. Scores of less-flush celebs (witness the reportedly broke Lindsay Lohan, or net-worth-around-their-neck hip-hop artists) set a financial mis-example for kids. Our kids. Your kids. And our poorest, least-educated children suffer the most. High-interest credit cards, poor credit, abusive loan rates: They’re headed toward our kids like Lindsay in an SUV, and nothing short of our national competitiveness is at stake.

The quick-and-dirty numerical illustration within is entirely worth the journey over to the Motley Fool.

Violence in Iraq, too

Statistical update on the previous Iraqi fatalities post.

According to figures released Monday by the Iraqi government, 16,232 civilians, 432 soldiers and about 1,300 Iraqi policeman died in 2007. The previous year, according to the figures compiled by the health, defense and interior ministries, 12,371 civilians, 603 soldiers and 1,224 policeman were killed.

The government’s figures were roughly in line with a count kept by The Associated Press, which found that 18,610 Iraqis were killed in 2007. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 died.

Bollocks. Of course, I’m left-wing: according to the freaks that sent us to Iraq, I love the body-count (three cheers for those people getting jobs at the New York Times. Formerly known as the Newspaper Of Record. Now, any dead fish with any self-respect at all would reject it).

So, Iraqi civilians and police fatalities up for the year, troop fatalities down. Domestically, I would expect this one to be called a win. To be fair, and this was the same caveat I entered last time, also: the numbers do appear to be trending downwards (weakly – bear in mind we don’t have much with which to work. I wouldn’t start insisting things like surges are or are not working):

Click for larger versions. All the data comes from icasualties.org.

It is a trend matched in the unconscionably forgotten theatre of this foolish also, Operation Enduring Freedom. Or enduring something, at any rate.

They (icasualties.org) also have a neat series of retrospectives. I shall be interested to see the next one.