World Weather Gone Haywire: Effect On… and the Economy

My Comments: No, we are not doomed. But it’s worth paying attention to from time to time. If you are looking for solace, you won’t find it here. My cousin in England just wrote to tell me their weather is noxious and unpleasant. Have you thought about the price of vegetables and fruit in the …

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Some Hints About Inflation

My Comments: How many of you remember the inflation numbers from the late 70’s? 12% comes to mind. And was that ever exciting and frightening. Since then, the people who pull most of the strings have been sensitive to this and have taken steps to keep inlfation under control. The other extreme from high inflation …

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Should Your Investments Include Europe?

My Comments: Europe has been in the news a lot recently. President Obama is/was over there, it’s the 70th anniversay of D-Day, the Ukraine is a basket case waiting to get resolved, and so on. And all this time, people have investments and between dealing with the heat of summer and the need to take …

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The Return of the Inflation Chupacabra

My Comments: A few weeks ago I wasted several hours exchanging replies with someone who asked “who is responsible for inflation?” My initial response was to the effect it is a “what” question and not a “who” question. But that soon devolved into discussion about irrelevant issues that I decided meant the writer had never …

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There Isn’t Going To Be A Crash Anytime Soon

My Comments: Last week I posted an article that suggested you be very cautious with your investments going forward. This article says “never mind”, all is well, keep going. Unfortunately, from my perspective, both are completely rational, plausible, and probably accurate. Which means that I have no earthly idea how this is going to play …

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How Will The Federal Reserve Raise Interest Rates?

My Comments: There is little argument that sooner or later the Fed will start to push interest rates up. And when they do, there is going to be confusion about how fast and how far they push. This in turn will cause some volatility and timing issues on Wall Street. But all this is part …

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3 Reasons The Current Equities Market Is Exhausted

My Comments: Many of my clients are asking how come their investments are not as exciting as what they hear on TV these days. And my standard answer is that exciting comes in two flavors, great and frightening. For the most part, I’m trying to help them avoid the frightening part. For many years I …

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Capitalism: Looking Past The Bottom Line

My Comments: If this author is right, then this issue will have an impact on the mid-term elections this fall as well as the elections in 2016. The lasting legacy of the Obama administration will be the PPACA or ObamaCare legislation. When it was enacted, our cost of health care was increasing much faster than …

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US Economy: Blame Misaligned Policies, Not Structural Flaws

My Comments: I recently engaged in what turned out to be a mindless discussion on LinkedIn that started with the question “Who Creates Inflation?” My comments and those of several others offered our thoughts that it was a “what” that creates inflation and not a “who”. It was soon apparent that the leader and some …

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The Largest Supply Side Shock Since The OPEC Crisis Of The 1970s

My Comments: I realize that many of you have no idea what happened in the 1970s. I’d like to forget some of it so you’re ahead of me. The OPEC Crisis was a move by oil producing nations in the middle east to cut supply drastically, which caused gas prices to jump dramatically and leave …

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