Category Archives: Finance

Finance, Politics

Midterm Election Day

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It is finally the day. The day all of the junk mail from candidates stops flooding my mailbox. The day all the robocallers stop calling my phone. The day email spam slows down.

Now for some observations.

The most curious spam email I received was a survey request. It asked me to participate because they said they know that my mail-in ballot was received by the county registrar of voters. What the heck?!?! First off, how did they find that out? I didn’t realize that my ballot status was that easily accessible. In fact I didn’t realize that you can check the status of anyone’s ballot. Looks like big brother knows more about me than I realized. Of course I never answer surveys. But it is curious.

And here’s another observation.

The stock market is up today. That’s interesting because I would assume that the Wall Street crowd believes that the Trump Train will be continuing. That would indicate that the investment computers expect control to stay with the Republicans. If the robots calculated a Democratic controlled congress, I would have expected a sell-off because the Train would be heading off the rails.

I would contend that the investment crowd has more data and better models than the talking heads on the news. Predicting trends is important to them. It’s MONEY to them, not just a partisan talking point.

Look what happened in 2016. All the TV idiots were predicting a Hillybob landslide win based on their models.  They got that wrong.  Next all the talking heads then went on to predict an economic apocalypse after the election of President Trump. How accurate were the stupid people on TV?  Just look at how the market responded.  It jumped up right after the election and essentially hasn’t looked back. “No one” should have known what President Trump would actually do. Of course we can now look back and see the rollback of regulations, the trade deals, and the tax cuts. How could the “market” have known that President Trump wasn’t just another lying politician and wouldn’t do what he said on the campaign trail?

Of course we’ll see in the next few weeks how this all turns out.

Business, Finance

Finally, Someone Else Noticed

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The past 2 days have been brutal to the stock market and everyone’s investment and retirement portfolios.  Wednesday the Dow dropped 831 points.  Today it dropped 551 points.  You may see a recovery tomorrow, which is known in the biz world as, “the dead cat bounce“.

A Reuters reporter penned a piece that said this sell-off can be blamed on fund managers and MACHINES. You can read the piece HERE.  Golly, someone noticed.

Let’s take a trip in the “wayback machine”.  Over 2 years ago, I wrote that the SEC needs to fix the stock market system by eliminating 2 things, short selling and high frequency trading (automated market transaction done by MACHINES). You can read my piece HERE. I pointed out that the SEC made some fundamental changes in trading rules in 2007 that may have led to the “great recession of 2008”. These changes let MACHINES crash the economic system.

And in August of this year, I wrote a warning piece about the Chinese developing Artificial Intelligence, which could be used to control all the world’s economic systems, using MACHINES. You can read that HERE.

The systems can be fixed BUT since big money talks, I predict that NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

Culture, Finance

What Is Best?

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According to CNBC the US is way behind European countries as the “best” place to retire. The US ranks well back in 16th place. The NUMBER ONE place to retire is SWITZERLAND according to the CNBC article. You can read the amazing article HERE.

As someone who is semi-retired, I had to look up some numbers as Switzerland does not in my book seem like the “best” place to retire.
Here are some figures.

Housing. You’d better have more than the average retirement savings that most people in the US have put away. A 900 square foot apartment will put you back a cool $1,000,000.00 !!! A million buck$ for less than 1000 square feet of living space. Sounds pretty “best” so far.

Food. Eating is quite the bargain in Switzy. A meal at an “inexpensive” restaurant will only set you back about $25. How much food can you buy at Denny’s for $25? Once again quite the “best” bargain. A meal for TWO at a “moderately” price establishment will only set you back $103.00. Like the birdie said, “Cheap, cheap, cheap”. Okay forget dining out, how about some good home cooking. A gallon of milk will cost you $6. Not much more than milk at Walmart for $2. $6 isn’t that much more than $2 is it? A dozen large eggs is only $5.61. Again Wally has them for $2.67. Not too much more is it?  Once again very “best“.

How about some TRANSPORTATION? A Toyota Corolla over there is only a bit more than $26,000.00. A Corolla here in the states is right around $19,000.00 if didn’t haggle and paid full MSRP. $7,000.00 MORE for a car is just another drop in the “best” bucket.

Taxes. Here’s a cool thing about living in Switzerland. They tax you on your wealth. You pay taxes on everything you own INCLUDING money that you’ve saved. Here in the US you’ll hear the progre-sissies screaming about capital gains taxes benefiting the rich. Capital gains taxes are taxes on EARNINGS and NOT on the PRINCIPLE (money you’ve saved). The Swiss fix this problem by taxing on both PRINCIPLE AND EARNINGS, every single year. If you’ve saved $100,000 and you had 5% growth, here in the US you only owe taxes on $5000.  In the “best” Swiss system you get taxed on every single penny of your savings,  the $5000 in earnings PLUS your $100,000 in savings, EVERY YEAR.  Makes your nest egg smaller and smaller every year.  Pretty good deal, right?  This is to prevent EVIL WEALTH ACCUMULATION by fiscally prudent people. Tax all wealth to give away to everyone. Wealth redistribution.  Wait isn’t that one of the “best” idea with DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM?

Is CNBC promoting “FAKE NEWS”? Nah, that can’t be.  They’re a “real” news agency.  They wouldn’t lie to us.  They’re all the “best” reporters without a socialist agenda.