t's tough not to appreciate the irony in this week's offerings from MarketWatch. On Feb 26th Chuck Jaffe wrote his weekly "Stupid Investment of the Week" column only to be followed on Mar 1st by John Spence's column about an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") benchmarked to the airline industry - Claymore/NYSE Arca Airline ETF. The offering [...]
On Feb 23rd Senator Ron Wyden (D - Oregon) and Senator Judd Gregg (R - New Hampshire) introduced the "Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010" to overhaul what they dubbed a "broken" tax system. Among other provisions the bill would preclude the issuance of tax-exempt (i.e. muni) bonds beginning in 2011 while changing [...]
With stock and bond markets well off their March lows some of us are using this “confirmation” of economic recovery to add risk to our investment portfolios. Since one can always count on the American public to have a short memory here’s a sobering reminder of what it felt like to live through the meltdown. [...]
Unsustainable deficits, quantitative easing, lack of faith and a near zero Fed Funds rate have conspired to punish the Dollar in recent months. Commodity prices have risen nearly as much as the Dollar as fallen since most are Dollar-denominated and require increased pricing to preserve purchasing power (as opposed to reflecting supply/demand considerations). Speculators borrowing [...]