The first two parts of this series of posts updated first some quick hits and then larger principles that I recommended to the Biden campaign last summer when Joe emerged as the front-runner candidate. The Trump administration really screwed up the U.S. Tax Code even worse that it had been, especially in business taxes. We need desperately to restore both tax… Read more »
Now that GameStop is drifting back to pre-craze valuation levels I would like to step back and suggest that this phenomenon has simply been the confluence of four old investment stories and one great old movie. The stories are, in brief: Short selling is not some intrinsic evil, however it does frequently elevate an old ethical dilemma called moral hazard…. Read more »
Simultaneously refusing to extend financial aid to the teetering economic bottom of the U.S. populace, the Senate voted a New Year’s Eve bi-partisan override of President Trump’s veto of the $741 billion defense authorization bill. This bill always sets me off for its size, its over-extended purpose and its embedded corruption, but this year I have decided to take a… Read more »
Ever since a data update arrived in my email from the Actuaries Climate Index in August I have been wanting to revisit one of my most re-tweeted posts from two years ago, called “Listen to the actuaries if not the scientists.” The short read here is that the climate continues to change in a dangerous direction, as determined not by… Read more »
In mid-November a fundamentalist Tulsa megachurch held a packed, largely-maskless Christian concert for 2500 people. I’ll deal with the theological ironies in a later post, but despite their likely support for “Right to Life,” I can confidently say that, statistically, the attendees surely murdered people with the coronavirus that night, perhaps people even not in attendance. Ignorance of basic mathematics… Read more »
We are in that season, especially in Florida where I live, when my mail is flooded daily with Medicare switching come-ons, and every other television commercial seems to be pitching me as well. One of my most-viewed posts from last year was my advice to treat this decision as a series of bets on “your money or your life.” This… Read more »
Note: This is a cross-post with the Iowa blog Bleeding Heartland. Ever since I began this blog in January of 2018, Donald Trump’s “not-normal” finances have been in my head and have appeared in this blog numerous times. Now that the media frenzy over his Covid diagnosis has abated somewhat, perhaps we can get back to Trump’s financial frauds. In… Read more »
If you are fortunate to be living off sizable and broadly diversified investments in the world’s financial markets, then your financial position by mid-August likely came back pretty close to where it was in January of 2020, before the “Coronavirus Crash.” This is especially true when dividends and interest payments received since then are included. And if you are not?… Read more »
The first two parts of this series of posts looked at quick hits and then larger principles that I believe Joe Biden should focus on in rescuing the mess that is the U.S. Tax Code. We need to restore both tax fairness and revenue effectiveness, both of which are in rough shape today. Business and corporation taxes, the subject of… Read more »
Especially when the economy is going to hell, money is just a quantification of the choices available to you at this moment. And your array of personal choices may not look very good at this particular time. My CPA hat has been in retirement, but I think it is time to put it back on and talk about some financial… Read more »