As readers of this blog know already, I’m fascinated by the thinking and writing of Thomas P.M.Barnett. He is a strategic thinker with an ability to express complex ideas and to synthesize those ideas in a way that is understandable to those of us not so blessed. Here is a recent article by Barnett that …
Continue reading A Look Ahead at the Geography of Global Security
Yesterday I found article on the web version of Financial Planning magazine. In it the authors extolled the steps they thought Steve Jobs had taken regarding his estate to minimize the estate tax bills that will eventually come due. They never said what his estimated estate might have been but did suggest that the tax …
From the Financial Times, by Shahien Nasiripour in New York Homeowners across the country struggle to be responsible citizens and make timely payments on their home mortgages. For millions, this is a priority and as a result, other discretionary uses of their money get set set aside. The vacation trip, the weekly visit to a …
Continue reading Fed Governor Urges More Help for Homeowners
I want to build on comments revealed the other day in a writing by Jacob Weisberg which appeared on September 13th. He was talking about the debate in Florida that featured 8 Republican presidential hopefuls. For many years I’ve been telling my children that one of the issues they will face as they age is …
When you finish the comments below, be sure to visit the tab above called CollegeMoneyNow. There you will find a short presentation on this topic that I created to help you solve this problem. According to a study released Tuesday by Fidelity Investments, parents are ill-prepared to meet tuition costs, with their savings likely to …
Continue reading Parents’ College Savings Falling Far Short of Goals
As I analyze the many blogs and articles that stream across my inbox talking about the current financial issues, one clear takeaway is that there are political crises and there are financial crises. Yes, there is overlap and in the short term great uncertainty as they both operate in tandem. But increasingly, I think what …
As we all know, the origin of the current financial crisis was the subprime mortgage meltdown in the United States. To be more precise, it originated in a financial system generating paper assets whose value depended on the price of housing. It assumed that the price of homes would always rise and, at the very …
By George Friedman The current economic crisis is best understood as a crisis of political economy. Moreover, it has to be understood as a global crisis enveloping the United States, Europe and China that has different details but one overriding theme: the relationship between the political order and economic life. On a global scale, or …
Continue reading The Global Economic Downturn: A Crisis of Political Economy
They are not helping, that's for sure. This is a lengthy discourse that helps understand why the market crashed last week and why you can't expect any quick solutions. But knowing there aren't any isn't as helpful as understanding why there aren't any. This will help you get there. The headline drama masks the damage …
Continue reading Are Politicians Wrecking the World Economy?
MURPHY'S LAW: If anything can go wrong, it will. MURPHY’S CORROLARY #1: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. MURPHY’S CORROLARY #2: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. QUANTISIZED REVISION OF MURHPH’S LAW: Everything goes wrong all at once. O'TOOLE’S COMMENTARY: Murphy was an optimist.
Helping Define Your Financial Future 