My Comments: Most of us are waiting for the inevitable crash. We hope there'll never be another, but the realists among us know one will appear sooner or later. The tax bill enacted in 2017 was supposed to result in greater consumption numbers since it was passed to presumably reduce the tax bill for most …
Category: Economy & Markets
One stunning chart undercuts Trump’s favorite economic scorecard
My Comments: As an observer of both the stock and bond markets over the past 45 years, I can assure anyone that while there is a correlation between market movements and economic health of the nation, it is far from 100%. Couple that with an understanding that over those same years, we have seen huge …
Continue reading One stunning chart undercuts Trump’s favorite economic scorecard
Investing Money – 2020 Outlook At A Glance – The new age of uncertainty
Most people, especially those accumulating money to use in retirement, wonder how the financial future is going to play out. I want to be absolutely clear that I have no clue. That being said, I tend to rely on those whose job it is to make predictions, whose resources are global, and whose track record …
Continue reading Investing Money – 2020 Outlook At A Glance – The new age of uncertainty
Gundlach: US Stocks ‘Will Get Crushed’ in Next Recession
My Comments: There are bulls and there are bears in the investment world. Bears are typically pessimists, always expecting bad things to happen. And from time to time they do. Over the years, I’ve not been a fan of Jeffrey Gundlach since I’m basically an optimist, and I’ve been right from time to time. That …
Continue reading Gundlach: US Stocks ‘Will Get Crushed’ in Next Recession
It’s great the stock market is setting records, but it’s not because the economy is great
My Comments: I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving. For my family, it’s the biggest family gathering every year. As we now move toward Christmas and the New Year, there is still much activity and conflict in the world. And confusion and discord here in this country. And behind much of it …
Observations About the Federal Deficit
My Comments: Arguments about being debt free have been with us forever. For those of you who understand economics and finance, there’s a need to differentiate between debt as a micro-economic vs macro-economic issue. On a personal level, the micro-economic level, we live finite lives. What we owe or don’t owe, significantly influences how we …
As a Kentucky mill shutters, steelworkers see the limits of Trump’s intervention
My Comments: This is a fascinating, and troubling, article that reveals two things to me. The first is that what we hear and read about at the national level has an abstract reality that as individuals we can usually only experience intellectualy. We may like it or we may hate it, but our response is …
Continue reading As a Kentucky mill shutters, steelworkers see the limits of Trump’s intervention
Who Among Us Pays Income Taxes?
Mindful that much of the Revolutionary War was fought in order to not pay taxes to the British in the 1760’s, it’s obvious that if our nation is going to sustain itself, money has to come from somewhere. I'm not going to dig into the weeds and talk about all the different kinds of taxes …
Consumers may have carried markets as far as they can
My Comments: lost in the news cycles now heavily invested in the Ukraine/Trump matters, is the state of our economy. While correlation is never 100%, there is a relationship between the state of the economy and the performance of the stock and bond markets. And those markets are where millions of us have money invested …
Continue reading Consumers may have carried markets as far as they can
Record debt and inequality gap? It’s almost like 40 years of Republican tax cuts failed
My Comments: I don’t enjoy paying taxes. Never have. But from day one I’ve known they were a necessary evil. So I paid and rarely complained since I knew life in civilized society calls for answers that only government can satisfy. Over the last several decades, however, and especially of late, tax breaks have gone …
Helping Define Your Financial Future 