892 articles · page 35 of 45
When it comes to publicly discussing journalism’s ability to be objective, all shades of the political spectrum have their opinions. However, financial journalism has traditionally been considered more objective, mainly because it relies on financial data, market statistics, audited company balance sheets and information contained in legal vetted annual reports and press releases. But that…
While it’s not politically correct, here is something for political pundits to ponder: Are the Republicans trying to finish what bin Laden started? In a 2004 video message, Osama bin Laden boasted about leading America to a path of self-destruction, in an interview with Ted Koppel, the former managing editor of ABC’s “Nightline.” In the…
Most advice on retirement planning has traditionally focused on the basics of portfolio construction, risk management, diversification, maximizing contributions and other financial considerations. But there is also another important aspect of retirement that only gets marginal coverage. That aspect is happiness. Various indexes, such as the World Happiness Report, now exist which measure the “happiest”
Call it good timing, fortuitous luck, or being in the right place at the right time, but the cannabis industry seems poised to become the most technological industry ever to develop. While the assembly line revolutionized auto manufacturing in 1913, this sole technological advance did not immediately change other elements critical to the car business,…
Just as the Great Depression of the 1930s (that lasted from 1929 to 1941) affected an entire generation of Americans, the 2008 recession is having the same affect, according to a new study by Allianz Life. The people that have been especially hard hit are Generation X and the Baby Boomers. Their responses should alarm…
When there are more people renting apartments or homes, it reduces the opportunities to build wealth, according to some of the basic rules of financial planning. The latest statistics show that the historic increase in the number of people renting a place to live, as opposed to buying a dwelling, means that one of the…
In a democracy with so many forms of open communication and social media, it would not seem possible that propaganda would have a major role in shaping public opinion and government policy today. Yet despite all of the supposed sophistication among a population inundated with all forms of information and constant media access, modern propaganda…
Sometimes the simplest message can become profound. Consider this simple one below: This contains some powerful tricks to break personal connections that prevent people from working together. It does this by inserting economic jealousy, class hatred, and greed into a simple cookie analogy. In this case, the banker has the power to tell the story,…
Principal Life, a subsidiary of Principal Financial, one of the nation’s largest companies in the 401(k) industry, likes to portray itself as the folksy neighbor interested in your financial well-being. But as a recent settlement shows, Principal Life has no qualms about pushing its own, more expensive proprietary funds to unsuspecting employees…
The age of consumerism has passed over the financial services industry. This means average investors who buy mutual funds, insurance policies, annuities and other types of investments work under the assumption that their financial representative is working in their best interests. This is a false assumption. As numerous lawsuits and ongoing battles over the role…
When politicians are in office, they see the huge money luring them to vote in a certain direction. When they leave office, they are free to more openly pursue that huge money. All they need to do is shed the veneer of respectability. When they openly take the money and become political influence peddlers, they…
Fool’s mate happens in chess when a player, often a novice, is boxed into a position where any action leads to defeat. That’s the case for individual investors today as evidenced by the record 1,089 point drop in the Dow-Jones Industrial Index in first few minutes of trading on August 24, 2015. After about one…
NOTE: This web site very rarely publishes articles from other people (this is only the second one), however, this is an exceptional article by author and former JP Morgan Chase executive William D. Cohan who gives a detailed account of how the banks have taken over the U.S. justice system for their own benefit at…
In the never-ending debate about the retirement advisor industry’s adoption of the fiduciary standard–aka, giving a customer an even break–a Department of Labor (DOL) official has cut to the chase and said the fiduciary rule would effectively change the advisory business culture. And that’s exactly why the industry hates the fiduciary standard and financial regulation.
What happens when a company that espouses financial transparency with all of its customers and shareholders suddenly shifts gears and changes its structure to hide financial information in order to pay fewer taxes? Should the company still be trusted by its customers? Does it still meet the standards of being “socially responsible”? Or, were the…
In the latest part of this long saga about big rigging of the London Interbank Offering Rate (LIBOR) that began in the early-1990s, eight of the world’s largest banks have agreed to pay a little over $2 billion to settle charges that their traders rigged the world’s largest benchmark for their own benefit. The banks…
As the current presidential campaign season develops, economic and financial concerns about the income gap, wage stagnation and retirement financial security have become paramount issues. But as history has shown, political power is intertwined with economic power. This is true more today in the U.S. more than ever before. The obvious answer to directing the…
Financial services providers who are disenchanted with their broker-dealers or who simply want to re-invent themselves as decidedly pro-investor advisors have a great opportunity today to re-make themselves into Progressive Financial Advisors. Progressive Financial Advisors (PFA) would be a distinct genre of financial professionals and would provide much more than those adopting the fiduciary standard. They would be…
Maybe it was just bad timing, bad politics, bad people or a bad system, but for anyone concerned about law enforcement and the delivery of justice to the afflicted, the administration of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder from 2009 to 2015 was a mockery of the law and a great victory for white collar criminals.
Willie Sutton, the infamous bank robber, said he robbed banks because that was where banks kept the money. He was correct. Today, 401(k) educators, financial planners and benefits administrators freely complain that participants are not saving enough because they are not disciplined enough. They are wrong. The answer to why workers don’t save enough is because they are…
