My Comments: This is the power of free market enterprise. Without controls, if you have a monopoly, or close to a monopoly, you can expect a profit motive to drive the train. What I see happening is that while they can, drug companies are taking in as much as possible before ObamaCare (PPACA) forces them …
Continue reading First Million-Dollar Drug Near; Prices Double on Dozens of Treatments
My Comments: Last Friday, I brought “Bitcoin” to the financial table for a lot of you. Just as Facebook has become a fixture in our lives over the past decade, so too will Bitcoin, or something similar. Turning the clock back on the digital age is not going to happen. The challenge for us is …
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 …
Continue reading The Largest Supply Side Shock Since The OPEC Crisis Of The 1970s
My Comments: Over the years I’ve had people wonder why I’m an optimist. They’ve decided I’m simply blinded by whatever it is that causes me to lean to the left instead of the right. To their mind, the world, and in particular America, is going to hell in a handbasket. I believe that for centuries, …
Continue reading Forecasts of US Fiscal Armageddon Are Wrong
My Comments: Now that the University of Florida's march to the national title game in basketball is behind us, (Congratulations, guys, for giving us several months of enduring pleasure as we watched you grow and succeed!) it's time to come back to earth and consider how life is likely to play out on other fronts. …
Continue reading A Deal Over Ukraine is Ugly But Unavoidable
My Comments: China is today the 2nd largest and arguably the 2nd strongest economy in the world. It differs from us in a material way in that it has few of the myriad infrastructure elements of our economy, which have evolved over the past 235 years. In China, it’s very much a work in progress. …
My Comments: Many, if not most of us, are sick and tired of the arguments about ObamaCare, the nickname for the PPACA, passed by Congress and essentially OK’d by the Supreme Court. Between you and me it's here to stay, and yet needs a lot of adjustments to make it realistic and meaningful over time. …
My Comments: There are just as many ways to lose money with bonds as there are with stocks. The risk is different; what happens to interest rates in the future vs corporate earnings and their relative size. That’s an oversimplification but you get the idea. The chart above shows interest rates from 1790 – 2012. …
My Comments: Followers of this blog may remember my frequent mention of Thomas P.M. Barnett, a prolific writer and thought leader on global economics and political forces. Years ago he said that within a couple of decades, the US would become a net exporter of energy. He asserted this transformation would re-write a lot of …
Continue reading Energy Price Spread: Natural Gas Vs. Crude Oil In The U.S.
My Comments: For many years, more than I care to remember, I searched for wisdom from among the many magazines and more recently, the many emails that cross my desk on a daily basis. How and what was going to happen and how could I help my clients benefit from the insights that surely came …
Helping Define Your Financial Future 