Guadi

The Shallowest Generation

The government is not the country. The irresponsibilty is rooted there, in the government. The fiat money, fractional reserve banking system and debt based currency which is nothing but a claim on future production which may or may not occur is a recipe for disaster. It's not a question of if but when. The unfunded liabilities only exist because our constitution has been ignored or 'deconstructed' to mean whatever the statist says it means. The country is rudderless without a meaningful adherence to the oath of office by our politicians and bureaucrats. If the constitution is meaningless so is the oath to 'preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America'. As Madison said in Federalist #10, "Enlightened statesman will not always be at the helm", thus the reason for being faithful to the constitution and it's limits on the power of the central state. The unfunded liabilities are directly tied to programs which are in fact unconstitutional at the federal level.

While Merrill was Writing Down $8 Billion, Stan O'Neal Was Playing Golf

21 rounds in a month and a half?

Should Individual Investors Stop Picking Stocks?

A focus on total return within a proper asset allocation while maintaining a sell discipline for the mildly speculative portion of a portfolio will do just fine as long as transaction costs are kept low. My personal clients have outperformed the indicies for a few years running now and, barring a collapse in the bond market (although cash is an asset class as well) should continue to outperform. The biggest obstacle to performance is the fairly common concern about taxes on the income generated along with short term gains. Proper portfolio management can minimze tax consequences while outperformance can continue. The biggest obstacle to performance is shortsightedness and failure to focus on the big picture, in other words, investor psychology. The problem with basic equity indexing is the lack of net dividend cash flow.