One of the most trusted and long lived market prognosticators is the Kiplinger Letter, available by subscription only.
I like the format.  Four tightly edited pages, with pertinent charts and bullet points…it’s targeted to busy decision makers who want useful summary data, and not a lot of prose and theory.
The August 2009 letter was a sober […]

Longtime readers know that the Blue Jeans Millionaire has a healthy fear of overly zealous government intervention and regulation.
So it may come as a shock when we endorse the actions of Kenneth Feinberg, the so-called Pay Czar in forcing rollbacks of executive compensation for the mendicant companies that still have their hand in the government’s […]

That’s the title of a provocative essay in the October 5, 2008 Forbes, by Janet Novack and Stephane Fitch.
If the title doesn’t grab you…the subtitle will…”Roughing up the Middle Class.”
You’d best go to the source to get the full treatment.
What the authors have done is to line up all the tax and regulatory incentives that […]

Younger workers may never have experienced the thrill of receiving an actual paycheck.
It’s an anachronism now, just as prior generations used to line up at the paymaster’s window to receive cash compensation.
I’ve long favored direct deposit, as the essential first step in gaining control of your personal finances.
From there, the income stream can be diverted […]

Be careful what you wish for.
Just as generals are always fighting the last war, so also are the oversight and regulatory agencies.
In their zeal to punish all wrongdoing,  they have caused considerable  damage to the nascent recovery.
Case in point—- the stated income loan.
You may know it more by its colloquial nickname….the liar’s loan.
It turns out […]

Odds are better than even that the savage 2007-2009 recession ended the second quarter of this year.
Stock market investors are the first to feel the wind at their backs for a change…but it’s a different story for the legions of workers — including a large swath of middle managers — who are, or will soon […]

Most of the pending legislation comprising financial regulatory reform will serve no purpose other than to add to the regulatory burden facing private enterprise.
It will boost government employment, of course, but its effect on productive America will be to function as a shadow tax….something that removes capital from the private sector as it transfers to […]

Health care will become a universal entitlement sometime this year.
The only question now…is how to pay for it.
My proposal is hardly original.  It was, in fact, a cornerstone of the McCain campaign last year.
And that would be to tax health care benefits paid to employees by their employers.
Since fairness is the dominant theme in this […]