Big Ideas: No Poor Countries In his foundation’s annual letter, Bill Gates makes this prediction: By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world Mr. Gates makes a compelling argument that we have overlooked the massive economic, political, and social progress in countries that we regarded as desperately poor.  He attributes …Read More

Big Ideas:  US Energy Independence in 20 Years For most of our adult lives, oil has had a huge influence on the US economy and foreign policy.  (Remember: the gas lines in the 1970s?  the first Gulf War to reverse Kuwait’s takeover by Iraq?)  In the next 20 years, oil will still dominate, but for …Read More

Safeguards After the Target Breach The Target credit/debit card breach was a wake-up call to take greater measures to protect our accounts on an ongoing basis.  We should assume this will happen again. Here are some steps that may help: 1.  Use cash.  But be careful about the amount of cash you carry routinely.  (If …Read More

Review of 2013 Stocks and Bonds A simple statement about stock and bond returns in 2013 is:  Stocks were terrific, bonds were terrible.  (See chart at bottom.) Let’s cover the bad news first.  The bond markets were the worst since 1994, yet generated only small losses in the low single-digits for intermediate term bonds.  Short …Read More