by P.J. DiNuzzo April 9, 2013 Doomsday Prophecy When a former White House Budget director who famously never balanced the federal budget suddenly claims to have special powers to forecast a major economic crisis, it's hard to understand why anybody pays attention. But recently David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan's budget chief back in […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo April 16, 2013 Infinite Duration, Substantial Risk Interest rates remain mired at historic lows. Today, if you invest $100 in two-year Treasury bonds, our government will pay you less than a quarter in interest each year. So wouldn't it make more sense to put your money in a relatively new category of […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo April 23, 2013 Deceptive Marketing: How some advisors make themselves look better than they are. Investment companies, brokers and even financial advisors have pioneered clever ways to make themselves look far better than they actually are. Recently, in an article in the Journal of Financial Planning, a financial advisor laid out some […]
by P. J. DiNuzzo April 27, 2013 Bitcoins and Tulips If you want a little excitement in your investing life, consider the graph that accompanies this article. It shows the remarkable growth in price, and then the remarkable fluctuation (mostly down in recent weeks), not of a hot internet startup, or a bond issued by […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo May 7, 2013 Getting Things Done in Washington If you're among those who believe that nothing can get done within the partisan bickering on Capitol Hill, you should know that both parties came together with remarkable speed recently to pass bipartisan legislation. There was virtually no bickering, posturing or visible hostility as […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo May 14, 2013 Lower Deficits and Bad Data America's budget deficit is ballooning out of control, right? As it happens, while Congress and certain pundits scream that we need to cut government spending to the point where we can drown the executive branch in a bathtub, analysts are discovering something surprising: the U.S. […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo May 21, 2013 Investing by Population The map you see on this page has been widely circulated among professional investors, and it tells an astonishing story. The circle encloses less than an eighth of the world's total land mass, but it includes more than half of the world's population. Within that circle […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo May 28, 2013 Real Banking Reform Banks seem to be hogging the lion's share of the profits in the American economy–the banking sector rakes in almost a third of the total profits earned by all corporations, and the four biggest banks have nearly 40% of all deposits. The total assets of the […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo June 4, 2013 The Underground Recovery A few weeks ago, the New Yorker magazine reported on a study by an obscure but astute University of Wisconsin economist named Edgar Feige, who has been poking around in the economic activity that takes place "underground," out of sight of traditional statistics. Chances are, you […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo June 13, 2013 Sell in May? Not So Fast With the U.S. stock market indices hitting record highs seemingly on a daily basis, it's easy to wonder if we're experiencing a market bubble that is about to burst. Compounding the worry for some investors is the old market adage: "Sell in […]
