Why do our problems never seem to go away? Why are we continually talking about the same issues with little real progress made?

I was watching a wonderful movie on Turner Classic Movies the other night entitled, Wilson about Woodrow Wilson (You can admit it, you thought it was about...

I don't know how many of you saw this article in the New England Journal of Medicine published on October 10, 2012 (Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates). In it, the author, Franz H. Messerli, M.D., claims to have found a strong linear correlation (r=.791) between the...

Very few investors bother to check and see what the total fees and costs are that their investment advisor/broker is charging them to manage their money. Even if they ask, they are often told that the services are free or nearly free with the broker forgetting to mention the large...

With apologies to Jon Stewart who I am sure is all over this, I thought it was time to name the ever-expanding military sex scandal. Nookie-gate had its appeal, but TailGate was just too good to pass up. I was the first to coin the terms Obamanomics and The Great...

We have already seen in this series that many investment products on Wall Street like many mutual funds have large annual costs associated with them making them a poor investment choice in the long term. If a mutual fund total costs run 2% per year and the fund generates a...

I love my Kentucky family roots, but one of the downsides is I am often copied on emails that circulate there among so-called conservatives.

This one (see below) showed up in my inbox this morning. I share it with you because I think it says quite clearly what many white...

This looks like it is coming down to be the closest election we have seen in a while, where nine battleground states could decide it. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the Electoral College, many Americans live in states that have may have been decided already.

If you have already...

I couldn't help but notice that the polling coming out of Florida, Virginia and Ohio recently shows that people over 65 favor Romney's plan of creating vouchers for Medicare, while those under 55 are against it and support Obama's plan on Medicare. The split is easily explained by...

One of the advantages that small investors cite as to why they continue to deal with Wall Street's large banks after how they were treated in the crisis is that they like dealing with large, reputable well-capitalized institutions that they are certain will be around in ten or twenty years.

The most straightforward and effective way that Wall Street rips off small investors is for them to lie about the products they are selling you. And it happens all the time. Every day, brokers tell clients that they have a great deal for them; don't worry, it's completely safe; it...

We saw in the last post in this series that bonds may not be as safe from the very real risk of future inflation as we thought. Now, we would like to suggest that equities or common stocks don't always do better than bonds in the long run....

As I said in my last post, when investing clients tell their stockbrokers that they want to minimize their risk to world events, brokers typically suggest that they increase their holdings of bonds and decrease their common stock holdings. In today's world, this is terribly misguided advice.

Bonds have the...

I have a great response to what will certainly be Mitt's big argument in the presidential debates, that because of his business background he is better qualified to manage the economy than Barack.

When Romney claims that he is better qualified to manage the economy, Barack ought to shoot...

I tell my investment advisory clients that quite possibly the worst advice that Wall Street brokers are giving their clients today has to do with asset allocation. Clients aren't stupid. They come to their broker worried about the global economy and understand that inflation poses a very big risk to...

Republican efforts to personally attack President Obama have pretty much failed. People like Barack too much to believe that he is un-American, a socialist, a communist, a terrorist, a Muslim or a Kenyan, not that there is anything wrong with being a Kenyan or a Muslim. Similarly, Republican attempts to...

Investors can lose a lot of money, buying high and selling low, if they are very frequent and active traders. Trading costs and commissions alone can really eat into their profits as well as frequent trades that create big tax liabilities payable now rather than later. I am not sure...

Before speaking about hidden fees and expenses, I'd like to take a moment to discuss the magnitude of the fees that Wall Street admits to and discloses for managing your money. There is no reason to delve into the world of hidden fees when stockbrokers, financial advisors and mutual funds...

An investing client of mine asked me Sunday morning if I thought it was fair that 50% of Americans paid little to no federal income tax.

Of course, this is a loaded question. Others have pointed out that while some poorer Americans pay little to no federal income tax, they...

Much of this is excerpted from my new book, Survival Investing: How to Prosper Amid Thieving Banks and Corrupt Governments.

Investors have been sold a very big lie over the years, that greater diversification always leads to higher risk adjusted returns. Diversification theory gives false confidence to investors that they...

In speaking with my financial advisory clients, I find the most misunderstood concept is the difference between nominal returns and real returns. And Wall Street brokers and bankers are very quick to take advantage of this situation.

Simply stated, a nominal return is the annual percentage return a security...