When Uncle Sam’s income (i.e. tax revenue) is less than his spending he runs a budget deficit. The Treasury Department sells Bills, Notes and Bonds (i.e. “Treasuries”) to cover the shortfall. Who are the buyers? Who enables the federal credit card? Historically the gap was filled from overseas. Individuals would buy Treasuries due to [...]
On Friday the Treasury Department further relaxed penalties on people who didn’t pay a sufficient minimum of their total income tax throughout 2018. Taxpayers can now avoid penalties if they paid at least 80% of their 2018 income taxes through withholding and/or quarterly estimated tax payments. That’s a second moving of the goalpost. In 2017 [...]
Each year taxpayers must remit the lesser of 90% of their estimated current year income tax liability or 100% (110% if AGI > $150,000) of their prior year income tax liability. Doing so meets the safe harbor requirement thus eliminating penalties for failing to meet the statutory minimum remittance requirement. Ignorance of the Law is [...]
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Excellent work by the folks at Pension Partners. Everything you wanted to know – and then some! Spend some time with the data. Quite eye opening.
The optimist expects good outcomes. He’s often disappointed. The pessimist expects the worst. He’s pegged as a doom and gloomer. The realist doesn’t have expectations. He keeps on open mind. Who’s right? No one. But who’s happiest? The realist. Why? Let’s have a look. We like to plan for the future. We like order – [...]
Couple of problems with being human. Well, OK, more than a couple but we'll limit to two for the sake of discussion. Anyway... We assign way way way too much value to the most immediate events. It's called recency bias. The S&P 500 went from a low of 666 in March 2009 to over 2,900 [...]
A bit more than ten years ago Lehman Brothers which at the time was the 4th largest investment bank in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy protection. The event has become the symbolic start of what’s been called the Global Financial Crisis (“GFC”). Today we continue to see its effects on both the global economy and [...]
Given how touchy people seem to be nowadays we’ll provide some prefacing: The following data is objective and not intended to support any agenda. It isn’t pro/con Trump. It isn’t pro/con tariffs. It isn’t pro/con Wall St. Put down the pitchforks and torches. As Neil Young wrote, “Throw Your Hatred Down.” Whew! OK – with that out [...]
Lately there’s been a lot of noise about an inverted yield curve. What’s that mean and why is it important? MEANING: Typically ST interest rates are lower than LT interest rates. The “yield curve” – a graphical plot of interest rates – would be upward sloping. An inverted yield curve is the inverse. ST interest [...]