2021-06-30

Back at the end of May, Germany’s statistical accounting agency (deStatis) added another one to the inflationary inferno raging across the mainstream media. According to its flash calculations, German consumer prices last month had increased by the fastest rate in 13 years.

2021-06-22

Weekly Market Pulse on June 21, where we look at significant things from last week’s events with Joe Calhoun.

2021-04-06

Hey! It’s just an IRA. What is there to know? You put money in and it’s a tax deduction, you get to take it out after 59 ½ without paying a penalty, and at 72 the IRS makes you take some out. What else could there be?
In reality, there’s a lot more.

2021-03-10

Social Security is an important part of almost every retirement plan, whether you’ve saved enough or not. That’s why it’s important to know as much about your Social Security situation as possible. And you don’t want to wait until you’re about to retire to gather the facts and take appropriate steps. Social Security planning needs to start 5 years before your target retirement date.

2021-02-25

Fear of the ultra-inflationary aspects of fiscal overdrive. This is the current message, but according to what basis? Bigger is better, therefore if the last one didn’t work then the much larger next one absolutely will. So long as you forget there was a last one and when that prior version had been announced it was also given the same benefit of the doubt.

2021-02-22

Last week was only four days due to the President’s day holiday but it was eventful. The big news of the week was the  spike in interest rates, which according to the press reports I read, “came out of nowhere”. In other words, the writers couldn’t find an obvious cause for a 14 basis point rise in the 10 year Treasury note yield so they just chalked it up to mystery.

2021-02-09

Even the feds haven’t been able to keep up. Without the government having taken over student loans in the wake of 2008-09’s Great “Recession”, there’d have been almost no additional consumer credit extended during the decade since.

2021-02-09

First, it was 10%, then 20%, and today more than 50% of U.S. retirees pay taxes on their Social Security benefits, and the number is expected to go even higher. The cause seems to be that one government hand doesn’t know, or care, what the other government hand is doing.