Last month JP Morgan released the report of a task force set up to explore the huge trading losses suffered last year in its CIO group.  The facts, in brief, appear to be as follows: CIO stands for Chief Investment Officer, and the original purpose of the CIO group was to manage JPM’s liquid asset… Read more

Fourth quarter United States GDP contracted by about $5 billion dollars, which is 0.1 percent negative growth annualized. This is after 3.1 percent growth in the third quarter which was the strongest quarter in 2013. The largest drivers of the fourth quarter decline were a contraction in government spending of 6.6 percent and a change… Read more

In early 2007, before the financial crisis hit, author Naseem Taleb published his best-selling book “The Black Swan” in which he argued that extreme events occur more frequently than most of us are trained to expect.  We are trained to think in terms of the “normal” distribution, or bell-shaped curve, in which events more than… Read more

Morningstar has published a research report that purports to show that a properly constructed financial plan can generate a meaningful increase in lifetime retirement spending.  The value added from a plan is referred to as “gamma” following in the line of Greek letters being used to assess investment returns.  The first Greek letter “alpha” is… Read more

This is a comment on the national November Employment Situation report released last Friday, and I use numbers from the report to calculate when the United States might reach the Federal Reserve unemployment rate goal of 6.5 percent. The unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent in October to 7.7 percent in November which might appear… Read more

A central concept in Modern Macroeconomic theory is that capital stock will be accumulated through the process of saving for the future. A new country, starting with a low capital level, will accumulate capital for some number of years or decades until reaching an equilibrium level of capital stock. Progressive taxes on capital income imply… Read more

Actor, economist, humorist Ben Stein has written an innovative book1 on financial planning.  Instead of telling you what you should do to improve your financial position, Ben tells you 49 things you can do to impair your financial position – to reduce wealth, reduce income, and increase the chance of destitution.  Many of these things… Read more

T. Boone Pickens is famous as an oilman, corporate raider and energy investor.  He is also a graduate of Oklahoma State University (OSU) and an avid supporter of the University and its athletic programs.  Reportedly, he has donated nearly $500 million to support various OSU initiatives.  About five years ago he had the bright idea… Read more

The advance estimate of U.S. third quarter GDP was released this morning, indicating that the economy grew at 2 percent. Third quarter growth was driven by private consumption and government defense consumption. Investment expenditures were weak, and trade was a small drag on third quarter growth. Business investment expenditures actually contracted, while residential real estate… Read more

 How to become a Billionaire By Bill Ackman Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has produced an interesting lecture on finance and investing.  It can be found at www.floatinguniversity.com.  It is one of twelve lectures on “big ideas” currently residing on the site.  Ackman’s lecture, titled “All you need to know about finance and investing in… Read more