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I have been working this weekend (not enough of it, granted) on organizing and preparing our household 2009 taxes for filing. There is plenty of time before April 15th deadline in United States, but I like to have breathing room as this process always takes way longer than one expects (and hopes). I have been self-filing via software for many years now, and this year again opted for H&R Block software for Home and Business, which is newly renamed TaxCut software from prior years.

First, I am not convinced that going through this annual ritual is good for US Residents nor US Government. Accounting is getting more complex every year, and way too many “grey” areas still exist in the code. On top of this, creative return preparers often taking on “risk” in your name, because ultimately each of us is fully responsible for their Tax return.

Solution: Fairtax.org – which sounds like a great idea to me! In fact, I say bump it up to 25 or even 30% ! It simplifies accounting for all, and should provide boost to our overall GDP, IMHO.

As an alternative, I say we should introduce government mandated accounting cloud. In fact, the two solutions aren’t mutually exclusive! Such cloud will have strict requirements for reporting directly from Point-of-sale systems, inventory systems, and other software systems companies already use in-house to track their own accounting! Only this time all these systems will be unified by single standard and have specific requirements for “calling home” to the cloud within 48 hours of transaction, for example. I know everyone is afraid of “big brother” effect, but accounting anyhow ends up being reported one way or the other, and providing country-wide standard should only help keep it all fair!

I am still blogging less in a futile effort to minimize “ramblings”. But I am out there on the Web, on Twitter and now on all encompassing Google Buzz, which you should be able to subscribe to via my Google Profile page.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate a bit. No, not about one step part, but about it being Easy. It is a little harder for regular folk like me and you.

I’ve been meaning to post on economy for a while, especially on my dormant Econoville blog, but what finally prompted me to post is a call from my father, this weekend. He was really concerned about whether or not we were going to loose our home. You need to know that he doesn’t live in the US, so I was surprised to hear that even in his corner of the world there was so much “misinformation” on the housing crisis in the US, and the collapse of our economy.

I have posted further details about the importance of Consumer Confidence Index, at least the way I see it (and I am no economic expert). And the gist is – our fears and overall “feelings” drive our behavior. A lot of purchasing and spending is directly driven by our emotions and thus, economy takes a hit. This in turn hits us, which in turns hits the economy.

The bad news – Nothing is faster than big President’s speech, to scare us all into stopping our spending, as clearly seen in the chart above. I am not saying there aren’t real problems out there in housing market and in auto industry, and in Financial industry (more on that separately). But, rather than helping these industries, the speech caused All of us to cut back our spending! The Result – accelerated freefall of the Economy!

Onto the good news – I am a strong believer in Moore’s Law, and the related Singularity. What this means for us, in my view, is that this whole Economic Cycle will be shorter this time around. Perhaps as short as 6 months, and yet shorter in the future.

Laying blame is easy, but I certainly wonder – What, if anything, could have been done differently to avoid this crisis. Meanwhile, printing more money clearly turned out to be pretty good idea to boost things. Now, if only we can manage to figure out who to give all those pretty new bills to… Definitely needs to be someone who is a big spender!

Welcome to 2008!

I am not into putting together "year end review" of 2007, like some other bloggers, and I especially don’t like all the posts on New Year Resolutions for 2008. One of the late lessons you learn in life is that when you Talk about doing something in the future, and you keep talking about it, chances are you will not do it. The more you discuss doing something (instead of actually going for it!), the more you realize that it probably isn’t all that great, or something could go wrong, or just loose interest in general…

So instead of some empty resolutions, I took some affirmative action today, some first major steps, if you will, with more to follow:

• First, I am adding Watch page to my blog. It’s right up there on the header, next to About Me and other pages. The idea is to aggregate some of my favorite videos in one categorized page. Right now it’s mostly videos I blogged about already, that I enjoy, but I will be adding some other fun videos as I come encounter them. Hopefully you will return to that page often (Bookmark it!) and I trust you will enjoy them as well.
• Second, I am announcing launch of another blog called EconoVille that I will moderate (but guest posters are welcome). As you probably figured, it will focus on all things related to Economy and Economics. I have been fascinated by Economics as a science for a while now, and I find it especially amazing that even in this day and age with all the research that was done, Reality often drifts away from our Economist predictions.
• I am also taking affirmative action on few other project of mine, but I am not prepared to talk about those just yet. Details sure to follow, I promise.

So, have a great new year! I will continue to update my Shared Deals & Blogs (on the right column here) multiple times each day with the latest bargains and major tech developments and news. I also hope to bring you more tips about technology and, of course, life in general.

PS: Do yourself a favor this year and start using Web Readers (Google Reader or Bloglines), it makes it so much easier to keep up with your favorite blogs and web sites! And, once you sign up for free account there, don’t forget to Subscribe to this Blog!