Short summary - I haven't been able to find any Obama Roth IRA taxation proposal that would amount to double taxation. Further, the most obvious way of taxing Roths - making the earnings (but not contributions) taxable - would neither amount to double taxation nor be feasible to implement in any case.
----------
Obama floated a lot of ideas regarding IRAs, but I'm having a real problem finding any proposal that wold amount to double taxation of Roth IRAs (i.e. taxation of money in (as is done now) and taxation of the same money (not its earnings) on the way out.
Taxing the earnings would simply make the Roth look like a nondeductible IRA, which no one says is double taxation. A scheme like that would be, IMHO, virtually impossible to implement. That's because taxpayers typically discard records of Roth contributions (and conversions after the five year waiting period is up). So they can't identify what part of a Roth distribution constitutes earnings. In contrast, when you make a nondeductible IRA contribution, you file a Form 8606, and each year after that carry over the information into the current year's tax filing.
Getting back to whether Obama ever proposed double taxing Roths. The best I've been able to find is this statement suggesting that Obama's proposed cap of 28% on the tax benefit (exclusion from income or tax deduction) would result in double taxation. The page notes that this was a new proposal for for FY2017 (2016), i.e. for Obama's last budget.
http://www.pension-specialists.com/hottopics/0216Obama.pdf (item #1)
Under this proposal as described, if you contributed to a traditional IRA, and you were in the 33% tax bracket, you'd pay 5% (33% minus 28%) on your "deductible" contribution, and as the "streamlined" summary appears to read, also pay income tax when you withdrew that contribution. But that's for a traditional IRA, not a Roth.
Further, the government proposal anticipated this problem and addressed it. Here's the full set of FY2017 (2016) proposals:
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/General-Explanations-FY2017.pdf
On pp. 153-154 (pdf pp. 164-165) you'll find the proposal in question. It says that "If a deduction or exclusion for contributions to retirement plans or IRAs is limited by this proposal, then the taxpayer’s basis will be adjusted to reflect the additional tax imposed."
In other words, instead of treating the money coming out as having a zero basis, the cost would be increased (on paper) so that the taxpayer doesn't pay that extra 5% a second time. Part of the contribution would be treated as a nondeductible contribution (which is what it really would be).
I don't see this proposal affecting Roths at all, but given the special handling of traditional IRAs to ensure there's no double taxation, it seems highly unlikely that the same issue wouldn't be addressed, assuming that Roths are even covered by the proposal.

@BenWP, from reviewing SEC filings I believe the strategy changed in October 2015. At that point the only name change was to replace AllianzGI with Fuller & Thaler. The name change to explicitly include "Small Cap" happened at the end of January this year. I believe the strategy actually changed in 2015 because the stocks in the portfolio before and after the change were very different, from clearly large cap names I recognized easily to mostly names that I didn't recognize or know are a lot lower on the capitalization spectrum. M* also changed the category designation, showing the portfolio in the small blend box of their 9 box in 2015 and which I assume relates to where they finished the year and then changing the category designation to small blend in 2016.
I'm not particularly concerned about turnover because I would buy it in my IRA if I decide to do that and their performance in the small blend category, albeit for just 2 years, might be even better than their previous performance. If you're willing to put any weight on 2 years and you're comfortable with the total assets chasing the strategy then it's pretty interesting. I normally compare small blend funds to my favorites, VVPSX, MSCFX and FSCRX as well as IWB rather than peers, which is an extension from what Sam Lee was talking about to include a few small cap funds I really like, have held and/or would like to hold (VVPSX), and these guys look great for the last 2 years. I think I'd like to see how they do in a more extended negative market because they haven't done anything special in the few isolated negative months in the last 2 years and they didn't do well against my comparisons in January 2016. Can't someone whip one of those up just for comparison's sake?

Hello,
After some thought, Old_Skeet has decided it best to keep posting the barometer updates under the Buy-Sell-and-Ponder thread rather than reopening the Markets as More thread. The big reason in me doing this is that I wanted to move away from hosting an ongoing thread and to reopen the Markets and More thread would put me back to doing just that. Thank you @Puddenhead for taking the thread over. It is much appreciated and from my perspective you have brought some new and good insights to the thread. But, what really makes the thread is the post of many and not just a few.
This week Old_Skeet's market barometer closed the week with a reading of 138 and with that moved back into overbought territory. Last week the barometer closed the week with a reading of 143. Generally a higher barometer reading indicates there is more investment value in the S&P 500 Index over lower reading. The three best performing sectors for the Index last week were energy (XLE), real estate (XLRE) and technology (XLK). The only sector found this week, from a technical perspective, as being scored undervalued is staples (XLP). In addition, the Index advanced +0.26% for the week and closed just short of 2588 for a year-to-date gain of 15.59%.
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
Within, Old_Skeet's global compass the three best performing etfs, that are followed, were VT, EFA and EEM. With this, the global and foreign etf's out performed the domestics this past week.
From an equity allocation review Old_Skeet's equity weighting matrix indicates that due to elevated stock valuations I should be position somewhere towards the low range within equities; however, due to a seasonal investment strategy I am currently overweight (what the matrix calls for) by five percent. Within equities, according the a recent Xray analysis, I am (about) ... 60% domestic and 40% foreign ... 75% large and 25% smids ... 40% value, 30% blend and 30% growth. Looking back to the first of the year I was (about) ... 70% domestic and 30% foreign. Because of my use of a good number hybrid and dynamic type funds (that adjust their asset allocation, styles and sector weightings) has made my portfolio more adaptive to the ever changing market climate without me having to throttle it as much as I use to. Currently, Morningstar Portfolio Manager list my year-to-date investment return at 12.17%. In comparison, the Lipper Balance Index is reported by the WSJ year-to-date at 11.86%. I'm thinking, this is not too bad of a return for a 50/50 portfolio that adjust within certain ranges (of course) and from time-to-time +/- 5% from its neutral position. I'm sure there are others out there that have out performed me. But, being in retirement I have now dialed my risk down a good bit within my mutual fund portfolio along with not being as active with position changes as I use to be.
And, with an overbought barometer reading, I remain in a cash build mode with all mutual fund distributions paying to cash area of the portfolio while I await the next stock market pullback. My next scheduled calendar rebalance is May, 2018 unless market conditions should warrant otherwise.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Wishing all ... "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet

FYI: (Click On Article Title At Top Of Google Search)
Structural flaws and market conditions should keep them from playing a primary role in investors’ portfolios.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=wHz9WZXDBKWXjwSG2aHgDw&q=Long-Short+Bond+Funds:+Not+Ready+for+Prime+Time+Barron's&oq=Long-Short+Bond+Funds:+Not+Ready+for+Prime+Time+Barron's&gs_l=psy-ab.3...6308.12393.0.12688.12.11.0.0.0.0.175.808.9j1.11.0....0...1.1j2.64.psy-ab..1.8.589.6..35i39k1j33i160k1j33i21k1.88.F7TRKtz69mk
M* Long-Short Bond Fund Returns:
http://news.morningstar.com/fund-category-returns/long-short-credit/$FOCA$XS.aspx

@ MFO Members: Have read and invested in Frank Holmes for years, he kinda GROW's on you, and then he doesn't !
Regards,
Ted :) :) :)
GROW:
YTD: 142%
1-Yr. 126%
3-Yr. 4.9%
5-Yr. -(7.84)%
10 Yr. -(14.33)%
http://performance.morningstar.com/stock/performance-return.action?t=GROW&region=USA&culture=en_US

China Funds:

Lower ER options:

I have always enjoyed reading Frank Holmes' newsletter, but I have had trouble stomaching his fund's roller coaster rides and higher ER fees with the exception of NEARX.
Here's what US Global offers at my brokerage:

Intro to Article:

The world is changing fast right now in ways that many investors might not easily recognize or want to admit. This could end up being a costly mistake. If you’re not paying attention, you could be letting opportunities pass you by without even realizing it. With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of five agents of change that I think investors need to be aware of and possibly factor into their decision-making process.

PDF version of Article:
usfunds.com/media/files/pdfs/investor-alert/_2017/2017-11-03

@LLBJ: what you point out about FTHNX changing its stripes in 2015 does seem to be reflected in the massive distributions of $6.58 made that year while the NAV was between $16 and $20. If they were unloading large cap stocks that had appreciated, the distributions make sense. 2016 appears normal and if what @David found out is true, this year won’t be as bad as I had thought.
Did you find out if the fund changed its name at the time it altered strategy? The whole thing seems strange to me.

FYI: ( For those of you who are not aware David Snowball was Marla Brill's gatekeeper on her mutual fund website.)
For most of the last few years, investors have largely ignored emerging market stocks as the prolonged and positive momentum of the U.S. economy and healthy corporate earnings reports kept them satisfied with stocks closer to home.
Over the five years ended August 31, the annualized return for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index was 5.3%, while the S&P 500 returned 14.4%.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/are-emerging-market-etfs-getting-frothy-35389.html?print

Sorry, LLJB, I should have been clearer. I've been reading work on the adviser's site, which is more extensive. https://www.fullerthaler.com/news. They've run the strategy in several wrappers back for a couple decades. Microcap, if I recall correctly, is 17 years old.
The original adviser (Undiscovered Managers) sought out Fuller and Thaler based on their private work, that fund was then sold (perhaps twice?) before Fuller and Thaler moved from sub-adviser to adviser. The previous owner of the fund withdrew something like 90-95% of the fund's assets when it became independent, which allowed them to transition from a larger cap product (which the adviser wanted) to a small cap one (which they wanted). I'll see if I can extract more info about the small cap accounts.
David

The Fuller & Thaler fund looks interesting but M* reports the fund was large cap blend at least through 2014 and only then became small cap blend sometime in 2015. From reading the annual report it sounds like it was an Allianz fund that Fuller & Thaler sub-advised and then I guess when they bought it or took it over for themselves they changed it to a small cap fund. It appears this happened in Q4 2015, but the "small cap" part of the name is less than a year old. The performance is still good but some of the statistical comparisons might not be completely fair considering the change in style. For instance, in Q3 2014 M*'s small cap blend category was down 6.75% while the fund was up 0.78%. That helps all the risk adjusted return metrics but unfortunately I think the fund was large blend and the S&P 500 was actually up 1.13% that quarter.
In "The Bottom Line", David said they communicate clearly. I went to their website and it's not clear they communicate at all. There are no commentaries and the only communication I found was in the annual report. Interestingly, there was nothing about the portfolio or what the managers think about the markets. There was a sentence or two that covered performance attribution, sector allocation hurt, stock selection was good so they outperformed the index in total, but almost all of the commentary was exactly what's in David's write-up- people make mistakes and they make more mistakes in small caps so they're trying to take advantage of that. They do post lots of news about Dr. Thaler on their website, even an article by someone named Lewis Braham, but I was hoping they'd provide at least a little insight into how they think about some specific examples from the portfolio.
I like the concept of the fund a lot. Can anyone suggest alternatives to compare and contrast where behavioral finance is a driving force in the fund?

In only a decade the badness and deep damage should be crystal-clear:
http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-cut-and-jobs-act-will-cost-15-trillion
... add $1.51 trillion to the debt before accounting for interest or possible gimmicks. This cost would likely be enough to cause debt to exceed the size of the economy by 2028 – bad news for the nation's fiscal and economic future.

That news isn't so great for people who actually work for a living ($75K- wages, or as Putnam is quoted in your article, "middle- to lower-income workers"). Less than 4% of them max out their defined contribution plans (if they even have plans). So they wouldn't necessarily have been hurt by a reduction in the max allowed.
But since the government isn't getting revenue from this move, it's likely that working stiffs are losing out somewhere else (either with less of a "cut", or an increase in taxes).

This is not surprising if you look at the constituencies.
- Estate tax - largest 0.2% of estates are subject to this tax. Money talks.
- Property (and presumably income) tax deduction - Enough Republican members of Congress from higher tax states to sink any proposal to eliminate this deduction
- 401k cap reduction - Only 1/3 of employees have access to defined contribution plans and participate; of those, only 10% max out. While it is true that nearly all who do are high earners (1/3 of $100K+ earners max out, while 4% or fewer of employees earning $75K- max out), these are still not the really high rollers involved with the estate tax. They have other mechanisms, like top hat plans, self-employed plans (with $55K limits), etc.
So few people are affected by reducing the cap, and those who do, while somewhat better off, aren't the ones pulling the strings.
The distribution of those maxing out comes from this 2017 Vanguard report, linked to by Ted:
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/33534/vanguard-how-america-saves-2017
----
Edit: Regarding property/income tax deductions - more complete stories report that only the property tax deduction would be preserved. ISTM that's a direct slight of mid-to-upper middle class people, especially in areas like high tax areas like San Francisco and New York, where the majority of people (64% and 51% respectively) are renters, but deduct substantial local income taxes.
Often the combination of state/local income tax and municipal property taxes is enough to exceed the standard deduction, while the property tax alone isn't. (That's especially true in NYC, where the property taxes are lower but there's a city income tax in addition to the state income tax.) So those with extremely expensive homes get to keep itemizing their property taxes, while middle class people lose the deduction, and lower class people never itemized.
"'No matter how they construct this compromise, Republicans are still socking it to the middle class and the upper-middle class, but this time picking winners and losers,' Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/10/30/house-gop-tax-plan-would-now-allow-americans-to-deduct-property-taxes/?utm_term=.0eb51c6e000b

I completely glossed over your mention of VG Flagship before. My apologies. I'm confident of this Flagship information because I recently went through getting Vanguard to clarify it:
As a Flagship customer, you get 25 free trades/year. Free (NTF) trades don't count toward that limit, but all other stock/ETF/TF fund trades do count. So if you brought over both T. Rowe Price funds and Fidelity funds, and didn't trade anything else, you'd be able to buy and/or sell the Fidelity funds 25 times without being charged a fee.
The T. Rowe Price (or Vanguard) funds wouldn't count against that limit because they're already free.
I'm just guessing, but the rep might have emphasized "buying or selling" because at Fidelity, selling TF funds is free. At Vanguard, the sells could incur fees if you were to go above your limit of 25 fee-waived trades (including TF sells as well as buys).
Note that you don't have to move your Vanguard funds into a Vanguard brokerage to get the 25 trades. You just need have enough in Vanguard funds for Flagship status regardless of how you hold them (as funds or in the brokerage).
With $1M+ at TRP, you qualify for an even higher level of service ("Enhanced Personal") there. (No free trades, though.) Free planning services, free WSJ online subscription.
https://individual.troweprice.com/public/Retail/Products-&-Services/Select-Client-Services/Enhanced-Personal-Services

@davidrmoran, I stand corrected for the right trading symbol. For tax-deferred accounts the minimum is $5K plus the $50 transaction fee. The $100K is for taxable accounts. Certainly this is not a tax efficient vehicle for taxable accounts.

You would not have to pay a fee to buy or sell T. Rowe Price funds in a Vanguard brokerage:
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/other/bytype?FundFamilyId=6107
Even a partial consolidation has the advantage of dealing with fewer institutions. You don't have to convert existing Vanguard funds to do this.
That said, there is an advantage in keeping assets at T. Rowe Price if your balance is high enough. At $250K ($100K for grandfathered accounts, I believe), you get a M* premium membership and some advisory services.
https://individual.troweprice.com/public/Retail/Products-&-Services/Select-Client-Services/Personal-Services

I think we can all agree that the last 10 years have been abnormal... GFC, elongated recovery boosted by QE. I have no crystal ball to tell you when things will turn, but I do believe they will and we will all be on this forum posting about our low (maybe negative) absolute returns.

Abnormal or not, but many Baby Boomers, especially the older ones, have firmly secured their retirements due to the past 10 years (or 9.5 years to be more precise) and have or are transitioning to a more conservative mode. The joys of being old! First it was the decades of the roaring 80s and 90s and then the QE driven decade. For most, no skills required, just being a full fledged participant.

True, and that's great. However, for investors still participating in the markets, we can't fall victim to the end point sensitivity here...

I think we can all agree that the last 10 years have been abnormal... GFC, elongated recovery boosted by QE. I have no crystal ball to tell you when things will turn, but I do believe they will and we will all be on this forum posting about our low (maybe negative) absolute returns.

Abnormal or not, but many Baby Boomers, especially the older ones, have firmly secured their retirements due to the past 10 years (or 9.5 years to be more precise) and have or are transitioning to a more conservative mode. The joys of being old! First it was the decades of the roaring 80s and 90s and then the QE driven decade. For most, no skills required, just being a full fledged participant.

@Ted I agree recent performance has been lackluster, but this is precisely the kind of problem value investors face in a strong bull market, especially value managers like Einhorn who can go both long and short or bet against stocks. It is also remarkably similar to what happened in the go-go 1990s to many value investors who started to lag the S&P 500. Also, eerily similar is talk of a "new paradigm" and that value investing seems not to work on disruptive tech companies. A number of value managers were fired in the 1990s, only to be redeemed in the subsequent crash.