Wealth Downdraft
New Estimate Shows Public Pension Shortfall Ballooning to $4.4 Trillion
photo credit: emsphotonut41 Joshua Rauh just blogged on “Everything Finance” a new estimate of the current unfunded public pension liability for both state and local governments: Using June 2009 data, Robert Novy-Marx and I measured a $3.1 trillion gap in state and local pension systems, arising from $2.3 trillion in assets and $5.4 trillion in [...]
Capital Gains Roller-Coaster and the Size of Government
New 2009 data from the IRS shows how foolish it is for government to tax capital gains income. As shown in the chart below, capital gains income for 2009 is now back to 2002 levels ($224 billion). Of course, thanks to the housing bubble, this is after a massive run-up in capital gains income to [...]
Back to Business Fundamentals
photo credit: pquan This is a guest column from my friend J Dwight of Dwight Investment Council on “Back to Business Fundamentals” in light of the recent stockmarket roller-coaster: Whenever the market tanks, it is helpful to remind oneself of what business fundamentals work and how businesses create products and services and translate revenues into cash [...]
Wealth Alchemists Say “Showing the Rich We Can Do What We Want”
photo credit: ignat.gorazd This news/video story, “Showing the Rich We Can Do What We Want” from the BBC is very disturbing from a number of angles (click link to watch the video). First, we have two British girls who obviously lack any moral restraint from destroying other people’s property. Second, they equate all businesses with [...]
Disturbing Facts on Social Security
Below is an infographic from the Congressional Budget Office on the current and future state of Social Security . . . not a pretty picture.
Social Security and Medicare Go in the Red
From my previous blog post–The State of America’s Private Sector XX: April 2011–I noticed a disturbing trend in some of the underlying data. But first I had to hit the personal income methodology books at the Bureau of Economic Analysis to make sure I understood all the definitional issues involved. Now I’m satisfied that what [...]
How Much Interest Does Uncle Sam Pay?
I’ve just become aware of this website called Government Gone Wild. Below is one of their videos which puts into perspective exactly how much in interest Uncle Sam pays each year. Hat tip to Mish.
How Bad is the U.S. Trade Deficit with China?
photo credit: prayitno According to a new study by Asian Development Bank Institute, some of the U.S. trade deficit with China may be a statistical illusion (pdf). More specifically, they delve into how the iphone, invented in the U.S., actually makes our trade deficit with China worse. In a nutshell, China is only an assembler [...]
Student Loan Debt Exceeds Credit Card Debt
photo credit: Manuel FERRANTE In a previous blog, I wondered whether or not college was worth cost? Now we are getting a better picture of the cost and it isn’t pretty. According to a story in the New York Times about student loan debt: Student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time [...]
Debt, Debt and Mo Debt
This is a good video portraying how our over-reliance on Chinese money may come back to haunt us . . .
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