I never buy gas at the most convenient convenience store along my daily commute. It may be the only convenience store I’ve seen that doesn’t carry milk or fountain drinks. This past weekend, however, its parking lot was full – just like it will be next weekend. The lot was so packed last March that a car couldn’t have gotten to the pumps even if someone did want to buy gas. The station does appear to sell a lot of beer and fishing worms; it also offers an opportunity for those who feel lucky or believe they have some special … Read More

When a recent Federal Housing Agency report revealed that the one-year 7.6 percent increase in Knoxville home prices ranked in the country’s top ten, it provided rationale for real estate sales folks to proclaim that now is a great time for Knoxvillians to sell their houses. Of course, even in my follicle-challenged condition, my barber thinks it’s always a good time for me to get a haircut, too. If you sell your house today at a big profit, what will you do with your newfound gains? You have to live somewhere. You will buy another house, likely more expensive than … Read More

The meeting with this husband and wife was difficult and awkward. They had several children, none of them yet out of high school. Along with the husband’s siblings, the couple owned a struggling company, started by his grandfather.  Disagreements among the sibling owners made an already difficult business environment worse; the company had neglected to pay payroll taxes. The couple had neglected to pay personal taxes. The foreclosure loss of their once mortgage-free home was particularly traumatic, as the public nature of that sort of thing was humiliating. The situation was so dire that the company eventually had to sell … Read More

Prior to the attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil refinery facility, oil had been trading around $60 per barrel; prices began to skyrocket before the explosions ended. Despite Saudi officials’ assurance they would quickly restore full production at the world’s largest refinery, Mike Fitzpatrick, vice president of energy risk management at international investment bank Fimat warned “this situation is going to get worse before it gets better.” Sound familiar? This happened in 2006, not a week ago. Drones used in the most recent attack on the Abqaiq refinery delivered more precise destruction than the car bombs Al-Qaeda used in 2006, … Read More

In August, the economy added 96,000 new private jobs, well below the expected monthly gain of 150,000. It was another rationale for superficial analysts to warn that the economy is on the brink of repeating the 2007-2009 carnage of the Great Recession. Those analysts are wrong. We may or may not be on the brink of another recession, but the underlying fundamentals of the economy are much different than those of a dozen years ago. Some are better; some are worse. However, almost every measure of the health of the banking system is stronger today than immediately preceding the Great … Read More

If you’re buying bonds to reduce the risk in your 401(k) or other investment account, you might want to rethink your concept of risk and exactly what you’re trying to achieve. If your goal is to accumulate long, or even intermediate, term wealth, bonds will – in my opinion – almost certainly increase your odds of failure over the next 5 or 10 years. The yield on a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond has dropped to 1.9 percent, less than the 2.03 percent average rate of inflation for the past 3 years. The inflation-adjusted yield is less than zero. Investing in … Read More

In my experience, the majority of people consider themselves to be some degree of middle class. If asked if they were rich, most people reading this column would answer no. And by almost any objective definition, most of them would be wrong. We first must define “rich.” Most surveys seeking to compare financial wealth (as opposed to standard of living) use some sort of income definition. If you earn above a certain dollar amount, you are rich. In reality, there is a significant difference between being rich and having a high income. Financial wealth (being rich) is about net worth … Read More

Being old, social media mystifies me. I cannot fathom why anyone would be on Facebook providing information to hackers, thieves and predators about their family, activities and possessions. To me, Facebook “friends” are equivalent to be being friends with Harvey the 6-foot white rabbit. During my final years at the University my doctoral students persuaded me to join Twitter because the regulators I researched tweeted information days earlier than it appeared in their press releases. Still I shuddered at the thought of following someone and having someone following me. But I learned to hate Twitter because the news is now … Read More

Talk about an impending recession dominates recent news. Google searches for the word “recession” have increased ten-fold in the past month. (Searches originating from the District of Columbia exceed those from all 50 states; Tennessee ranks 36th in recent searches for the word.) According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the probability of a U.S. recession is now the highest since 2008. The questions I’ve recently been asked expose how little many people know about recessions. It should be no surprise there are so many misconceptions about recessions; many Americans have only experienced one meaningful recession in their … Read More

In the most recent monetary missile exchange in the U.S./China trade war, President Trump announced a 10% tariff on an additional $300 billion in Chinese imports. In retaliation, China “requested” that state-owned companies stop buying U.S. agricultural products. Trump then backed down a bit, postponing some previously announced tariffs and cancelling others. All politicians want to retain power – Trump via the ballot box next year and China President Xi Jinping via control of the country’s military and Communist Party. Trump cannot afford to wreak economic hardships on the voters he needs next fall; Xi cannot afford to appear weak … Read More