Dear Reader, Last week, the CPI inflation was released, showing the highest year-over-year inflation in 30 years. After living and investing in a low-inflation economy for a couple of decades, investors now need to pick some inflation-fighting stocks and funds. In the 1980s, the Federal Reserve killed inflation by quickly and massively increasing interest rates. […]
The Fed
Are You Making Investing Harder Than It Should Be?
I published this article five years ago. Sadly, things seem to be getting worse. The message is even more important today. Those who think and act independently will always survive. Today is a real downer. We just finished a wonderful week with our youngest grandchildren. They’re now gone and the house is quiet. That’s not […]
What The Fed Is Really Doing With OUR Money
The Federal Reserve is owned by “Member Banks” that have now merged into huge brokerage, investment firms; many deemed “Too big to be allowed to fail”. G. Edward Griffin explains: “The Federal Reserve is a cartel- it’s a banking cartel. And like all cartels, it only has one purpose – and that is to serve […]
Are You the Mark at Wall Street’s Casino?
Las Vegas – the gambling capital of the world. Nevada heavily regulates the casinos; requiring a certain percentage paid back to the gamblers. They pour billions into their posh establishments, enticing customers into their casinos and make huge profits – legally. If the public felt the casinos are rigged, they would lose customers, jobs, and […]
Whistling Past The Graveyard
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s recent remarks really infuriated me. He is “Whistling Past The Graveyard”, again trying to deceive the public. Wolf Richter shares some of his recent remarks: “Inflation has come in above expectations over the past few months.” “The expectation is that high inflation readings will start to abate.” “We don’t in any way […]
Using Options To Juice Your Fixed Income Returns
The Federal Reserve’s ultra-low interest rate policy and quantitative easing programs are regularly debated among economists, armchair analysts, and everyone in between. Monetary policy can be pretty complex, with hundreds of variables to consider. So, it’s not a huge surprise that there’s so much disagreement on policy. Most studies have shown that the Fed’s increasingly […]
If Not Now – WHEN??
My grandfather was a WWII Army Sargent, an uneducated farmer with a Ph.D. in common sense. One of the lessons he preached; the longer you ignore a problem, the more it will grow. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell never met my grandfather. This Schiff Gold article confirms my grandfather’s thinking: (Emphasis mine) “During a webinar sponsored by the […]
How to Outperform 98.8% of the S&P 500 With Dividend Stocks
For 2020, the S&P 500 index returned 18.40%, so if you didn’t earn almost 20% in your stock portfolio, you might be wondering what happened. But just because the overall returns are high, it doesn’t mean all stocks are performing the same way. For example, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) managed to earn just […]
MMT – Modern Monetary Theory –or– Magic Money Tree?
The politicos are hawking Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to finance their reckless spending. Investopedia explains: “Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic framework that says monetarily sovereign countries (that) spend, tax, and borrow in a fiat currency they fully control, are not operationally constrained by revenues when it comes to federal government spending. …. […]
The Options Trade If You Think Interest Rates Are Going Up
For the moment, short-term craziness in the market has evaporated. Volatility is returning to more normal levels—well, normal for the last year anyhow. Most of 2020 as well as January 2021 were anything but ordinary. Nevertheless, we can’t ignore the future…and the future certainly includes potential interest rate movement. After the pandemic hit, the Federal […]