Protect Your Future Today
The Chinese government just recently announced plans to issue $2 billion in dollar-denominated debt, its first dollar-denominated debt issuance since 2004. With countries such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela turning to the yuan both for political reasons as well as for oil sales, and with the yuan’s recent inclusion...
A group of Congressmen in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies recently held a forum to propose the monetization of the Mexican Silver Libertad one ounce silver coin. The monetization of silver in Mexico has been a favorite project of Mexican businessman Hugo Salinas Price for years, and the idea continues...
After the massive Equifax data breach, you might want to take proactive measures to check your credit history and prevent your identity from being stolen. Equifax’s measures to protect consumers in the aftermath of the breach have rightly been criticized, from setting up a site that asked for even...
President Trump claimed today that rich Americans will “not be gaining at all” from his proposed tax reform plan. That runs counter to many analyses of the tax reform plans he campaigned on as a candidate, which found that the rich would in fact benefit. The devil, of course,...
The national debt when Bill Clinton took office in 1993 was $4.188 trillion. By the time he left office in 2001, it was $5.727 trillion, an increase of 37 percent. As profligate as that seemed at the time, it has been overshadowed by even greater subsequent debt increases. By...
Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer unexpectedly announced his resignation last week. He will resign from the board in October, meaning that President Trump will now be able to appoint at least 4 of the 7 members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, thus making an immediate...
Fees charged on 401(k) plans have been falling for years, but that decrease has slowed down recently. The average 401(k) plan expense ratio is now 0.41%, down from 0.52% in 2013 and 0.42% in 2016. Lower fees are important to investors for a number of reasons. The primary advantage of...
In the aftermath of the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole conference, there has been renewed discussion of a potential currency war. Central banks responded to the financial crisis by pumping trillions of dollars worth of liquidity into the financial system. It wasn’t just the Federal Reserve that engaged...
If you’ve ever read mainstream financial advice, you’ll notice that gold is hardly ever mentioned as an investment asset. At best, you might find some advisers who recommend holding 4-5% of a portfolio in gold, or more likely in a gold ETF or gold index fund. Most advisers look...
US stock indexes tumbled today, posting their worst losses in nearly three weeks. There were a wide number of reasons for the fall, starting with the slide in financials. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 234 points, with 55 points of that loss coming solely from the drop...