The entry of the United States into World War I placed a heavy financial burden on the government. The scale of such encumbrance was at the time almost unthinkable, and today is incomprehensible. Federal government expenditures in 1916 were all of $734 million, with $125 million financed by the new income tax authorized a few years prior by the 16th [...]
Durable goods orders were up a seasonally-adjusted 6.5% in the month of June 2017. Nearly all of that gain, however, was due to a jump (131%) in new orders for civilian aircraft. That meant demand for transportation equipment, a highly volatile segment, rose 19% in the month. Excluding all that, durable goods were up just 0.2% month-over-month. Sentiment indicators like [...]
Medicare. The name is as recognizable as Kleenex®, KFC®, and Coca Cola®. But if asked what Medicare is, most people can only tell you it’s government health insurance for older people. If you’re going to do serious retirement planning you need to know more than that. If you don’t, you could miss sign up deadlines and that will cost you. [...]
I suspect President Trump has been told that markets don’t like radical changes. If there is one thing that any elected official is afraid of, it’s the internet flooded with reports of grave financial instability. We need only go back a year to find otherwise confident authorities suddenly reassessing their whole outlook. On the campaign trail, candidate Trump was very [...]
What happens when you die? Whether you believe in an eternal after-life, or that you come back as Aunt Polly’s cat, in the world of money you choose the answer. Depending on your choice, as an old Eagles tune says, it could be heaven or it could be hell for the people that matter to you. Planning, or lack of [...]
Buried in the dusty archives of the IRS code is a military secret. The benefit for some military families can be substantial – the ability to deposit up to $500,000 into a Roth IRA, all at one time. In 2008 the Federal Government passed the Heart Act (Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act). It allows surviving spouses of military [...]
To take, or not to take—that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler to wait until 70 for the outrageous fortune of a larger Social Security check, or suffer the slings and arrows of a reduced benefit at age 62. Social Security is an important part of retirement income for many Americans and deciding when to begin benefits is a key [...]
Are my social security benefits taxable? That’s a frequent question when doing retirement planning. The simple answer is it depends on your income. But it wasn’t always that way. For almost 50 years, no one was taxed on Social Security benefits. Then, during a study of Social Security, a Senate Finance Committee Report said, “…by taxing social security benefits and [...]
The TIC data for May was inconsistent. It has been that way for several months, and importantly describes what I think is the operative “dollar” condition. Though the data is several months old already, we can tell by certain real-time prices and indications that the difference between 2016 and 2017 is very clear in some parts, and none in others. [...]
It is like a great many things forgotten now, but five years ago today the head of the ECB compared Europe to a bumblebee. That’s not quite right, however, as Mario Draghi really said the euro was like a bumblebee, but you’d be forgiven for mixing the two up. The purpose of his folksy analogy was so that Europe and [...]
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