Here are some thoughts I wanted to share. (more…)

1. Adult children may remain as dependents on  their  parents’
policy until their 27th birthday (more…)

-International Stocks (weighted by marketcap) 20% (ACWI) (more…)

Go Long Scotch & Physical Gold (more…)

Charlotte Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America’s classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. (more…)

A popular variable annuity — the one with guaranteed “living benefits” — may be the riskiest product ever sold by the insurance industry. Risky to the health of the insurance carriers, that is. The guarantees are costing them far more than the premiums they charge, and their stock prices have plunged.
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The concept of private equity is straightforward. You pool millions of dollars pulled from the wallets of wealthy Americans and institutional investors and then make bets on companies you think are underperforming, or growing and simply in need of a little cash to get over the hump from good idea to great business. The rewards can be sensational upon exiting the investment. How this occurs varies, but one common method is through the initial public offering (IPO) where a company offers shares to the public, both newly created ones as well as those of existing shareholders. As an interesting exercise, I thought I would examine a private equity investment from start (initial funding) to finish (IPO), assessing how all the stakeholders made out.
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This Supreme court move will bring cheers to those who have lost their house or land to squatters. On Tuesday, the court said it wanted a change in the law that gives ownership rights to the one who has usurped a property by squatting by taking advantage of the fact that the owners were have had little time to inquire about their property.
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The National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, the accepted arbiter of U.S. recessions, said on Monday that the U.S. economy tipped into a recession a year ago.

At 12 months and counting, the current recession is already the third longest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
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ConocoPhillips said Wednesday that it would sell 600 company-owned gasoline stations in the United States to PetroSun West for $800 million, completing the oil major’s exit from the low-margin, highly competitive retail business. (more…)