A popular prescription in the personal finance domain is to increase or maximize annual contributions to 401(k)s or similar retirement plans. However, one of the best financial decisions I’ve m

The present contains all possible futures. But not all futures are good ones. Some can be quite cruel. The one we actually get is dictated by the choices we make. For the last few months I’ve b

Everything we know about classic economic theory suggests the US economy should be experiencing Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation right now, thanks to the nearly $2.2 trillion the US Federal Reserve has p

Editor's Note: This article was written by James Quinn, a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. James has held high-level financial positions wit

I’ve been in South America this week, speaking nine times in five days, interspersed with lots of meetings. The conversation kept coming back to the prospects for the dollar, but I was just as

Peggy Noonan, maybe the most gifted essayist of our time, wrote a few weeks ago about the vague concern that many of us have that the looming monster has the potential (my interpretation) not only to

The G-7 meeting has concluded and the only accomplishment was yapping about the need for a strong dollar. Consider G-7 Finance Chiefs Campaign for “Strong Dollar”.   Finance chief

Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part article. Part 1 can be found here. Marking MtM to MarketProponents of Mart-to-Market (MtM) argue that basing values on current prices provides an accurate

Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), Austrian economist, author and 1974 Nobel Prize-winner for Economics wrote: “With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governme

As the credit crisis commenced in 2007, paradoxically, nobody actually defaulted. Outside of sub-prime delinquencies, corporate defaults were at a record low. Instead, investors in high-quality (AAA-