Sifting Through a Bowl of Capital Crunch: Understanding Finance

Four years, five apartments and one city seven time zones away ago, I was thrust into the arguably geek-chic world of financial media after success on a three-hour writing test taken in an un-air-conditioned Istanbul Internet café—on an evening when the temperature was in the mid-90 degrees Fahrenheit come midnight.

My smattering of style guides and key dates in recent Middle Eastern history, in addition to a commitment to deodorant, got me the gig. But once there, I was in a swirl of currency buybacks and value-added. Did you know the latter is used as a noun as well as an adjective? Example: “Due to the value-added it gains from processing, cereals are subject to an 18 percent value-added tax in Turkey.” Talk about a capital crunch.

That economic conundrum was solved by mixing bulk oats with yogurt and honey—two signature products of my country of residence at the time. For my job, however, financial glossary sites such as Investopedia and InvestorWords made palatable the alphabet soup that can emerge from terms like EBITDA and P/E ratio.

In the time that has ensued since my appetite for financial info sites was first whet, I’ve added financial news sites Seeking Alpha and Minyanville to my usual bill of fare. And OANDA.com’s historical exchange rate calculator is an indispensable little nugget whenever I need to explain to readers in dollar terms the worth of a euro or pound figure.

I myself have a little financial column that launched on Tuesday, “Chin Up in the Downswing.” It not only helps to bolster my own personal stock, it just might make you (or your bestest investor friends) realize that even in this unsavory recession, positive economic and financial indicators are released every day.

Or at the very least, it’ll help wash down your daily serving of Capital Crunch. Financial Crunch is likely sweet as is.

Anne Szustek
Senior Writer

Follow “Chin Up in the Downswing” on Twitter. For general financial information and guides to financial sites, see findingDulcinea’s Web Guide to Personal Finance.

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