Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Lewis,
Personal BK laws are very generous in the US as well. This is a good thing as well. Again, it's painful enough for there not to be moral hazard. But forgiving enough for people to go on with their lives.
Of course a BK will follow you p…
Lewis,
I read the article and didn't see ANY concrete examples of Trump's actions in the article. In the RE development world, bankruptcies occur all the time. M&A is basically built on acquiring BK or close to BK companies, then restoring so…
Using OPM is how the vast majority of the wealthiest people gain their wealth. It's the key to leverage up so to speak, but it's not like it requires no talent or hard work to get people to invest in you/your company.
Greece's employment rate has been at extreme low measures for decades now. In fact, it's higher today, than pre-EU.
They may be better off outside of the EU, IMO. Then they can work and spend as little or as much as they want. Their only constr…
The EU and Euro currency seems to be set up for failure. How is it that German (and other) citizens will subsidize Greece ongoing who has a labor force participation rate around 53%? They won't. It's not politically feasible.
Greece will have t…
Ha, austerity may or may not have been the right prescription, but the underlying problem remains and regardless of whether they inflate or tighten their way out of their mess, there will be plenty of pain regardless.
Austerity didn't cause their i…
Press,
Maybe a contrarian view..... Buy when there is blood in the streets and sell to the sounds of trumpets.
Easier said than done, but it's certainly one approach.
You could easily argue though that there is still plenty of worry for the mar…
Certainly could be. When I look back at historical charts, junk bonds often provide signals for tops and bottoms of the stock market.
It seems like the funds that hold higher quality stuff are still hanging in there, but the more aggressive fund…
I am definitely a little over-insured, but with a young family that helps me sleep a lot better at night.
My wife is probably a little under-insured. As a stay at home mom, the cost to replace all that support wouldn't be cheap.
I would love to see a similar piece no the "US Dollar collapse, Gold to $5,000" calls from guys like Jim Rickards and Peter Schiff.
What tools these guys are.
And they're all selling something.
Having Congress set interest rates? I can't see any downside to that at all...you?
Even Joe Kernan was aware enough to be flummoxed with that idea.
Having a bunch of political foes who derive their power by taxing and distributing money handed the …
No surprise that the Germans won't hand Greece another bailout check without some assurances that they will actually participate in the terms they agree to.
Either way, eventually the Greeks will have to pay for this, either through inflation, au…
People like a fighter, and Trump is certainly that. He also has the uncanny ability to answer any question you give him with 150% confidence like Bill Clinton does, regardless of how truthful or idiotic the answer is.
Those are great qualities to …
His newsletter is titled "The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report".
It seems with a title like that, you're always going to be expecting bad things to happen.
Of course, a broken clock is right twice a day, so he could quite possibly be right this time.
@Clacy - I believe that you are right and that the majority of the American public agrees with you. Now if we could just get politicians to see the light.
Just a quick search ...
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A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that…
The law is now here to stay, so both sides need to come together and pass tweaks and changes to improve it.
There is no point in taking an all or nothing repeal stance if you're a Republican, and clearly the Dems need to realize there are fixes nee…
There seems to be an explosion in biotech medical advances recently and it's resulting in a lot of M&A activity to push higher. It is reminiscent of the dot.com bubble, but as we've seen before, markets can go much higher than you would normall…
bee, that's a good point. Boomers retiring and drawing down their savings, may hurt stock returns for a period of time (maybe even a long period of time), however that money filters out into the economy and is passed in the form of wages to the you…
Hard to know if it's due to lack of overall consumer spending, or just that shoppers tastes come and go, and Gap has fallen out of favor a bit.
Probably some of both.
I think the anti-debt people often over sensationalize all debt. I do happen to think debt can be an effective tool, but it comes with risk obviously.
Household debt for depreciating assets like cars, furniture, etc is to be avoided for obvious …
@clacy. I think his money is more valuable than his time in this context. Besides, he can hire someone to do it and reduce unemployment as well.
So, to me hiring people to give out his money, sounds a lot like a foundation.
You know what I would do? Instead of blindly giving to charities I would try to directly fix system problems. Find deserving candidates who have run up student debt, interview them, and bail them out.
If I had that kind of money, I would want to se…
In certain religious traditions the most admirable form of charity is to give anonymously. So it's a little obnoxious for Gross to be boasting about how much he'll give especially since he will be of course receiving a huge tax write-off for doing s…
Not fair, in my opinion to attack him for answering questions about his giving. He is a public figure, a billionaire and constantly in the media.
He was asked some questions, and answered them.
That's totally different than the guy who goes aro…
I get what you guys are saying about worrying about the young folks but there are a many benefits of new technology. When you consider how much better the lives of you people can be now vs what our parents and grandparents went through to get ahead.…
No by "free money" I literally mean free, created/printed money to counter balance the deflationary forces. If robots mean a significant productivity boost, due to reduced labor costs then there won't be any significant threat of inflation.
Inflat…
Robots taking over should be very deflationary. Good for those that already have built their wealth, but not so great for those in debt or trying to build wealth.
I could see governments getting more aggressive with money printing/welfare if that…
If what he says is correct, then this will probably end badly. This is a new frontier for the Fed and central banks, that's for sure. We're in uncharted territory with negative rates and so forth. I'd be surprised if it doesn't create some uninte…
To be fair, I would lump all tax advantage accounts together (and maybe even from spouses) to give you real numbers. I have for instance, had four 401k's but after leaving the companies I worked for, rolled them into IRA's (multiple accounts as a m…
JCP, Sears, Radio Shack, etc are all dinosaurs and will eventually be extinct. The life cycle of companies, is not much different than the human body. Eventually your usefulness to the marketplace wears out and a new company takes your place.
For…