investment

Stop Fooling Ourselves: Americans Can’t Afford the Future

"Simply continuing along the status quo is a vote for digging ourselves deeper as the constraints of the future arrive. Behavior change is necessary in order to improve our chances. At the core of the needed change is redefining prosperity. In modern society, it has largely come to be defined by material possessions, usually assuming that the more (and the more expensive), the better. In the future, we'd do much better to define it by: our health (both physical and emotional), our purpose, our ability to meet our needs sustainably, our relationships, our level of happiness. In sum, all things that were once valued much higher in our culture." Continue reading →

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is accused of hiding information about big losses

"Washington dealt a double blow Thursday to JPMorgan Chase as a Senate report accused its iconic chief executive of hiding information about a massive loss from regulators while the Federal Reserve unexpectedly said it had found a 'weakness' in the bank’s capital plans. The report takes the bank to task for hiding losses for three months last year, overstating the value of its trading positions and ignoring red flags. When regulators grew concerned, JPMorgan withheld information about the nature of the portfolio, Senate investigators say." Continue reading →

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What to Keep in Mind about the Tax on Cyprus Bank Deposits

"Those who lent money to Cyprus’s banks by buying their debt rather than by depositing money at the banks, will suffer no losses at all. Those who lent money to the insolvent Cypriot government, will be paid off at 100 cents on the euro. In other words, the banksters are protected. Only depositors with banks will suffer losses in this International Monetary Fund engineered plan. It's as blatant example of who the IMF really works for. This is not the liquidation of a bad system. It is an attempt to protect the crony system and the banksters who are part of it. It is a tax on the 'little people' who keep their funds in the form of deposits, rather than bonds." Continue reading →

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Debt addiction, USA: How much debt reduction has the crisis caused?

"The trend of ever-rising overall debt has thus continued. The deleveraging in the household and financial sector has, however, resulted in a reduced pace of debt accumulation overall, despite heavy borrowing from the federal government. In 2010, for the first time since 1992, the economy has grown faster than total debt, and this has continued in 2011 and in 2012, if at a slowing pace. Consequently, total debt stands at 359% of GDP today, slightly down from its peak of 381% in 2009. At 359% debt-to-GDP is back to where it was at in early 2007. Again, not much deleveraging has occurred in total." Continue reading →

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Not Your Father’s Stock Market Anymore

"Unfortunately, we live in a world where the majority of investors are granting far too much credit to the market data they are being fed. They are making decisions based on faulty premises. They often do not even understand the basics of monetary expansion and how that affects purchasing power. The most important issue, however, is that the powerful artificial forces affecting stock markets cannot hold free-market adjustments at bay forever. That is why it is important to select stocks based not just on 'mainstream' indicators of performance and industry leadership but also on the business cycle, apparent monetary stimulation and other outside forces." Continue reading →

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Fraud in the Financial Markets: Are You Vulnerable?

"It can be hard for investors to defend themselves, especially because we judge other professions similarly. You go to a doctor with a good reputation for helping patients; you don't assume that he was lucky. But in finance, someone with a good reputation might – believe or not – just be lucky, or worse yet, fraudulent. My advice for avoiding many problems is simple: don't focus on someone's net worth for your investment decisions. Instead, consider their ideas and pretend that you heard them from the intern just starting his first day on the job. Does the idea still sound like a logical and reasonable investment plan?" Continue reading →

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Has the bull market in stocks become ‘too big to fail’?

"Officially, the Federal Reserve isn't supposed to worry about keeping stock prices flying high. But when Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was asked about the market's outlook last week on Capitol Hill, he sounded like a lot of bullish Wall Street investment strategists. 'I don't see much evidence of an equity bubble,' he told the Senate Banking Committee in his semiannual testimony on Fed policy. Stocks 'don't appear overvalued given earnings and interest rates.' More important for the markets, Bernanke pledged to continue the Fed's policy of pumping colossal sums into the financial system to support the economic recovery." Continue reading →

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Treasury chief Jacob Lew not worried about financial bubble

"US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Thursday that he was not worried about a potential financial bubble forming as Wall Street stocks racked up record highs. 'The analysis that I’ve seen doesn’t give me reason to be worried right now,' Lew said in an interview on US business news channel CNBC. Lew nevertheless called for monitoring of the situation in order to avoid another crisis like the 2008 Wall Street crash that led to the Great Recession. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday closed at a record high for the eighth day in a row, though the US economy remains sluggish and massive government spending cuts kicked in on March 1." Continue reading →

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Land prices rising even after year of record drought

"American farmers may have suffered an historic drought last year, but the price of their land is skyrocketing. In Iowa, the land prices jumped 24% in 2012 and and have gained 63% over the last three years, according to a study by Iowa State University. Last year, farmers recovered some $14.7 billion in insurance payments for crop damage, a record sum. US government forecasters expect overall farming income to gain 14 percent this year. 'Farmers have cash on hand and with low interest rates, the best place to make investments is to buy more land that they can farm to be more profitable in their operation,' said Lyle Hansen, a real estate agent." Continue reading →

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