By Mike Adams Her husband died in February 1978. She sat down with a financial adviser and did some planning; the FA believed she would be financially stable. Her late husband’s life insurance was enough to replace his income at the interest rates prevailing in 1978. Their stockbroker bought a couple of dividend stocks for growth and bonds for income. It seemed the widow would be set for the remaining years of her life… BUT! By the summer of 1986, the bonds had matured, and

By Sara Kraft Last month, the US government passed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which may be the most significant piece of legislation issued by the United States government in over 50 years. The IRA seeks to address and ease the lifestyle changes necessitated by four major issues facing US households: income inequality, climate change, health care, and inflation. The IRA is the largest investment made by any government toward confronting climate change to date. The b

By Mike Adams There are investors still sitting on the sidelines in cash waiting for the day of “Capitulation”. Capitulation is that time when retail investors just give up and sell all their stocks, forsaking any stock market gains. Sometimes it is a one-day affair; sometimes the sell-off takes several days. And sometimes it occurs over such a long period of time that it isn’t obvious until after the fact, when we can look back at historical data and examine the trends. Capi

By Mike Adams Inflation was just beginning in 1963 when Bob Dylan wrote the song “The Times They Are A-Changin'”. Prices increased as wages grew and the demand for raw materials increased faster than supply. In the late 1960s, government spending for the Great Society and Vietnam War also drove up prices. By the early 1970s, when the oil crisis hit, inflation was well underway and headed higher. That was then. This is now. It’s Back! For the last five years, I have been w

By Mike Adams Like the old Western movies, out of the desert come the vigilantes. Only this time, we are not talking about townspeople who have gotten together to chase the bad guys out of town. This time the vigilantes are the so-called “bond vigilantes”. The remerged in 2019, went silent, and are now back again. The bond vigilantes are not an organized group. They are the bond brokers and bond traders who have been dubbed vigilantes because they follow the bond yield curve

By Mike Adams What a time! Some used car prices have jumped to over the price of a new car! We are just coming out of lock downs, shutdowns, and face-downs and now the biggest European war since World War II has erupted. What are investors to do? It reminds me of two of the great investors. Warren Buffett said: “Be greedy when everyone is fearful and fearful when everyone is greedy”.[1] Peter Lynch said “When I ran the Magellan Fund, the market had 9 declines of 10 percent or

By John Waggoner, AARP December 2021 5 things retirees are paying more for today. Inflation drives prices higher at the pump, grocery store over past year. No one likes inflation, particularly retirees who are on a fixed income. Inflation in the past 12 months has jumped for older Americans, as well as for the nation as a whole — but not evenly, and not in some of the places you might expect it most. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces the Consumer Price Index for

By John Waggoner, AARP, November 10th, 2021 The income ranges, adjusted annually for inflation, determine which tax rates apply to you. You may be making plans for filing your 2021 income taxes, but in a few short weeks you'll be living in tax year 2022, and tax year 2022 will differ substantially from 2021. Your tax brackets will be slightly higher, for example, as will your standard deduction. There is still time to reduce your 2021 tax bill, but for many deductions, t

You know the old story. Drop a frog in boiling water and it will immediately jump out. But put the frog in cool water and slowly heat the water to boiling and the frog just sits there and never moves. Whether the story is true or not doesn’t matter. It illustrates an issue of preparing for inflation. Inflation does not zoom from one percent to 20 percent in a month or a year. Those of us old enough to remember living through the high inflation days of the 1970s remember it mo