Holiday gifts for the American consumer

Have you read about the recent boost in U.S. consumer spending? Of course you have and you know it is attributed -- at least in part -- to a steep drop in energy prices, particularly a drop in gasoline prices.

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This development is described by some in the financial press as a tax cut because the benefit accrues to the consumer in much the same way a tax cut does. That is, by paying less at the pump, we automatically keep more of what we earn. I wonder how Keynesians who routinely advocate for enormous government spending to stimulate demand are reacting. Putting money directly in the hands of taxpayers can also spur consumption.

Blessed with friends on the other side

Wikipedia image This post contains excerpts from an April 10 e-mail response to a dear friend of mine (edited for emphasis and anonymity). “Dear Mortimer, I’ll say hello to the guys for you and I’ll be thinking about you this evening. As for politics, yes, we tend to gravitate toward sources that share our views. However, I also read the New York Times Op-ed pages and watch MSNBC (as hard as those tasks are for me). I suppose you watch Fox on occasion and I know you read the WSJ – so good for both of us. We try. The state-sponsored education you cite that we both benefited from, came largely from our parents' sweat equity – translated into tax dollars – that funded the University of Wisconsin system. True, my friend. But, I'm not arguing for zero taxation, or zero government involvement in our lives. When Progressives argue in favor of entitlement programs, they'll sometimes cite Social Security (under-...

Economics 101 for the rest of us

W arren Buffet and Carl Icahn are famous investors but fewer people may know Ray Dalio. Mr. Dalio founded an investment firm 40 years ago called Bridgewater Associates. With $160 billion under management, Bridgewater runs one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, Bridgewater website I recently discovered (among 3 million other people) a thirty minute YouTube video that Mr. Dalio produced to explain fundamentals of what he calls the economic machine . This video, which he narrates has been translated into several languages and viewed over 3,200,000 times. The content begins slowly with basic concepts but progresses to explain the primary levers that policy-makers use to manage and stimulate the economy. You can find it here . There are numerous lessons cleverly and clearly explained here. Example: I hadn't appreciated why economists seem obsessed with Wage Growth until I watched this simp...

Calling the market peak -- REVISITED

Greetings! Based upon feedback I received from one of my valued seven readers, what follows is a refinement of the views expressed in the previous post about market timing. Recall we're talking about predicting the direction of the equity market as a whole, or a large swath of it like the S&P 500 --- not individual stocks. I didn't mean to imply that one cannot utilize deep experience and technical analysis to correctly predict a stock market peak (or trough) some of the time. There's an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. However, who's consistently made these bold calls with enough accuracy to "beat" the market? If you accept the proposition that the answer to that last question is nobody -- why would one ever wager more than they could afford to lose by trying? Vector created by pikisuperstar - www.freepik.com

john maddente | midwestern clarity

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