I am guessing $4,200 in crisp greenbacks. Statistically I am right but in reality I know I am way off the mark. Let’s do the math. Divide the value of all the dollars in circulation by the U.S. population (man, woman and child) and the result is that everyone should be walking around with $4,200 […]
Eric Hanson
The Tail of Two Cities…
I was on the Board for many years of the Humane Society here in Burlington and one of the things in life you learn is, there are dog people and there are cat people and there are not that many who are both dog and cat people. Spoiler alert – I am a dog person. […]
How To Deal With The Ups and Downs…
Anne is writing about long term returns on page 4. I will deal with the shorter term here. It seems like every week there is a problem of overwhelming magnitude on Wall Street. If we don’t act on it, surely something dire is going to happen. But you know these overwhelming problems often are not […]
Infrastructure On The Cheap(er)…
There are not too many cities that can build expensive subways or other mass transit systems today. China may be the exception but the rest of the urban world is stuck with impossible parking and bumper to bumper rush hour commutes. But there are rays of hope. Curitiba the capital of the Southern Brazilian state […]
The Road Less Travelled…
Colombia and Ecuador are not the most popular South American tourist pick. They don’t have the same allure as Carnival in Rio, or Patagonia in Argentina and Chile. But they still have a lot to offer. With diverse climatic regions (ranging from the Amazon to 19,000 foot volcanos to Pacific coast beaches) they are “biodiversity […]
So What Can We Expect?
We are talking about the stock market here. Keep firmly in mind the quote: “It’s tough to make predictions especially about the future”. This is as apt today as it was when first uttered by Yogi Berra. But we will still venture undaunted into the forecasting abyss. Historically common stocks have returned between 10% and […]
Who is Going to Teach Ethics 101 to HAL?
You remember HAL, the fictional character/computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. She/He/It controlled the systems of the Discovery I spacecraft. Well, HAL is about to come soon to an automobile near you. The recent crash and death of an owner of a Tesla Model S using the Autopilot System has raised a lot of issues […]
Who’s In Your Corner?
The U.S. Department of Labor recently issued a new Rule for advisors dealing with retirement accounts. Some background is in order here. Advisors are held to a legal standard of conduct when dealing with investors. But different advisors are held to different standards. Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) which we are, are held to a “fiduciary” […]
O.K. Time To Get Over It…
Donald Trump is for real. When he first declared as a candidate, charging that Mexico was sending us its thieves and rapists, everyone laughed at his political naivete. Then when the primary season began no one thought that he had a chance against the mainstream favorite, Jeb Bush. And now that he has become the […]
Yeah! Let’s Hear It – We’re #81!
This is China’s world ranking in soccer (“football” to the rest of the world). China, you might remember, is the country that won the most gold medals, 51, at the Beijing Olympics. And yet in the world’s most popular sport, China is just barely ahead of Jordan and Equatorial Guinea and still trailing Zambia (#78) […]
We Are Sometimes Accused of Being Too Optimistic
Not this time. Let’s get right to what could cause the next crisis. China. Time Magazine pointed out in January that the problems of the Great Recession were never really fixed. Financial crises are most often caused by the rapid build up in debt. We saw this with our housing debt blow off in 2005-2008. […]
Everything Should Be as Simple as it Can Be, But No Simpler… (Attributed to Albert Einstein)
Pundits in January feared that the global economy had reached “stall speed.” Central Banks had done as much as they could to prop things up. At some point the world might turn in on itself for a major Recession. Things look a lot brighter today. But what about the long term outlook for the U.S.? […]
