Personal finance, insurance, financial markets, investments, banking, checking accounts, loans, mortgages, stocks, bonds, Wall Street, trading, hedge funds, money markets, exchange rates, mutal funds. You can also see entries assigned to this category.
ad grat n. Ad grat, or auto grat, as it’s know in the biz, is a restaurant standard that means gratuity is automatically added to a check. Generally the gratuity is 18 percent, it’s added on the pre-taxed total for large parties (between six and eight or more) and the restaurant should note on their menu if they practice this policy. [EnglishFood & DrinkMoney & Finance] [full cite] (Sep. 14, 2006)
affinity fraud n. When the scoundrel running the fraud is a trusted person, it makes the crime even more repulsive. Affinity fraud, as it is known, often includes people who put themselves in positions of trust at churches or schools, in social and civic organizations and other environments, only to financially abuse the relationships. [EnglishCrime & PrisonsMoney & Finance] [full cite] (Apr. 16, 2007)
afflufemza n. Lying in bed the other night, cradling some seltzer water, my stomach gurgling, the word for my malaise suddenly came to me: “afflufemza,” wherein the problems of affluence are recast as the struggles of feminism, and you find yourself in a dreamlike state of reading firstperson essays about it, over and over again. [EnglishMoney & FinanceNew or Nonce] [full cite] (May. 5, 2006)
agflation n. Look, we’ve already seen in the investment world the term “agflation” has now been coined, and that’s simply a result of this, and that inflationary impact of higher grains prices or higher agricultural commodities prices that will be inflationary, will push food prices up. [EnglishAgricultureMoney & Finance] [full cite] (Jun. 20, 2007)
alligator n. In the coming months, I predict we’ll see an increase in people dumping real estate they can’t afford. They’ll be forced to sell because they’ll be eaten alive by a phenomenon known as negative cash flow. Investment properties that you have to feed money to every month are fondly known as alligators—if you can’t afford to feed the property every month, it eats you. [EnglishHouses & HousingMoney & FinanceSlang] [full cite] (Oct. 15, 2006)
alligator economics n. One reason why the wage-earning middle class increasingly can’t afford California is that wages, adjusted for inflation, have been stagnant for two decades. In the same time, the percentage of income needed to pay for rent, healthcare and child care has spiraled. Economists call this “alligator economics,” because wages are a horizontal or falling line, while costs rise like an alligator’s upper jaw. [Money & Finance] [full cite] (May. 19, 2004)
alpha n. What, exactly, do investors think they are buying when they hire investment managers such as hedge fund general partners? They would probably say something like “the ability to outperform the market”. In professional investor parlance, that is called “alpha”, or the excess returns that the general partner’s skill at active management provides. He knows from number crunching that Ford bonds would come back from the dead, or that nickel inventories were too high. [EnglishMoney & FinanceJargon] [full cite] (May. 17, 2004)
Amero n. Pastor has also called for the creation of a new currency which he has coined the “Amero,” a currency that is proposed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso. [EnglishMoney & FinanceNew or Nonce] [full cite] (May. 26, 2006)
amero n. Steve Previs, a vice president at Jefferies International Ltd., explained the Amero “is the proposed new currency for the North American Community which is being developed right now between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.” The aim, he said, according to a transcript provided by CNBC to WND, is to make a “borderless community, much like the European Union, with the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso being replaced by the amero.” [EnglishMoney & FinanceNew or Nonce] [full cite] (Nov. 29, 2006)
ash cash n. The Church of England is taking steps to ban “ash cash” payments to clergy for taking funerals at churches and crematoria. Instead, the money will go direct to dioceses. The move will stamp out the “crematoria cowboys,” clergy who supplement meagre or non-existent incomes by conducting dozens of crematorium funerals at £96 a time. [EnglishUnited KingdomMoney & FinanceReligionSlang] [full cite] (Jan. 24, 2008)