I’m very pleased that I was asked to sit on the blogger panel at Prosper Days. If I hadn’t been invited, I probably would not have made the trip. The other panelists on the blogger panel were Jim Bruene, Editor in Chief of the Online Banking Report and NetBanker blog; Kevin Gillett, Editor in Chief of the Official Prosper Blog and CTO of Panoramic Software; and Dave McClure, Master of 500 Hats. I was in excellent company and I really enjoyed the discussion that took place.

I was a bit surprised to learn that we were the only session taking place in our time slot. With no other session taking place, everyone was observing the blogger panel. I was surprisingly at ease and wasn’t all that nervous. It probably helped that there was a crew filming the session with 10,000 watt light bulbs that made it difficult to see the crowd. It also helped that I hadn’t prepared a whole lot and simply responded to questions with my experiences and knowledge.

I’m anxious for the video to come out so that I can see how I performed. It’s difficult for me to assess my own performance, because it almost seemed as if I would just open my mouth and words would come out. I have a difficult time recollecting the things I said and how well I answered the queries. I’ll post a link to the video as soon as it’s available, along with my self-assessment.

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If you ask the average American what they think of current gas prices, they would probably tell you that they think $3 per gallon is too high. If you ask me, I think that Americans are spoiled and they don’t realize how much cheaper gas is here compared to the rest of the world. Not only is the absolute price of gas cheaper in the U.S. than anywhere else, but with one of the highest per capita GDP in the world (ranked 4th in 2006 according to the International Monetary Fund) it is even cheaper in relative terms. Here is the average end-use price per liter for January 2008 in several nations:

France	$1.988
Germany	$2.061
Italy	$1.961
Spain	$1.568
UK	$2.037
Japan	$1.427
Canada	$1.050
USA	$0.809

Source: End-User Petroleum Product Prices and Average Crude Oil Import Costs report from the International Energy Agency

By comparison, the average price of fuel in the U.S. for January of 2008 was $3.06 per gallon, but in Germany it was $7.80 per gallon! The UK isn’t that much better at $7.71 per gallon. Even our neighbors to the north (Canada) are paying nearly $4 per gallon ($3.97 to be more precise) so I think those of us in the USA really have very little to complain about.

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Last month, the PMI Group released their winter 2008 risk index. The risk index ranks the nation’s largest 50 metropolitan areas according to the likelihood that home prices will be lower within the next two years. California and Florida had several metropolitan areas with very high risk. If you are looking to relocate any time soon, you may want to avoid those two states and perhaps look to Texas instead. Texas seems to provide a much more stable housing market in terms of price stability, with several metropolitan areas having less than a 1% chance of lower home values in the next two years. If you’d like to see the report in its entirety, you can see it here.

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I remember ages ago when Google Fight went viral (even before the term viral went viral). Just for grins, I performed a Google Fight between Prosper.com and LendingClub.com:

Prosper wins by a score of 135,000 to 13,700!!!

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