Today’s Dark Lords of Finance
"At some point, a real market correction will arrive. And when it does, pension funds and insurance companies will be more exposed than ever before to volatility in the...
Guest Column
For B-Ds, Independence May Prove Confining
Our guest columnist is founder and CEO of Wealth2k, a Boston-area firm provider of digital platforms for advisors who use its Income for Life Model retirement planning system. ...
VA Issuers Show Optimism: Morningstar
This report on first-quarter changes to variable contracts, produced by Morningstar's John McCarthy, is a must-read for anyone trying to stay abreast of the VA market.
Inspiring Economic Growth
The Nobel Prize-winning Yale economist believes that a big, inspiring fiscal stimulus, akin to the 1960s space program of the 1960s, might cure what ails America.
Computers as Enablers—and Disablers
"When computers and other machines take challenging tasks away from us, we turn into observers rather than actors," writes the author of the acclaimed new book, "The Glass Cage:...
Daniel Kahneman on Intuition, Etc.
In this continuation of our video of Daniel Kahneman at the Investment Management Consultants Association conference in New York last month, the Nobel Prize winner explains why expertise is...
Tax Corporations Less, and Capital Gains More?
Effective tax reform will undoubtedly require some difficult compromises. In this opinion piece, retirement expert Gene Steuerle of the Urban Institute describes a potential trade-off that is bound to...
An Unconventional Truth
Simply put, we live in a world in which there is too much supply and too little demand. The result is persistent disinflationary, if not deflationary, pressure, despite aggressive...
Should Undersaved Americans Work Longer?
In this review of "Falling Short," the new book about America's retirement crisis from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, labor economist Teresa Ghilarducci disagrees with the...
Extend RMD Relief to Indexed Annuities
A professor at The American College rebuts last week's RIJ critique of the National Association of Fixed Annuities' letter to the Treasury Dept. The letter asked that qualified...
What Are We Betting On?
'Central banks do not have the tools to deliver rapid, sustainable, and inclusive growth on their own. The best they can do is extend the bridge; it is up...
The Fed Sets Another Trap
"The Fed’s incrementalism of 2004-2006 was a policy blunder of epic proportions... The Fed seems poised to make a similar – and possibly even more serious – misstep in...
Nobelist Bill Sharpe Talks about Investing
Near the close of this interview with Sharpe, which was published last week in AdvisorPerspectives, the Nobelist mentioned that one of his favorite publications is Retirement Income Journal... though...
2014: ‘A Year of Cautious Optimism’
"This is one of those time periods where the stuff in the middle has surprised by not performing in-between the stuff on the ends," writes West Coast market philosopher...
Half a Trillion is Still a Big Deficit
"If the next 20 years are similar to the last five, with very slow growth and median incomes declining, then the budget deficit will grow inexorably larger and Social...
The Death Spiral of Capitalism
"The effect of a decade or more with negative real interest rates is likely to be devastating," writes this ever-bearish pundit. He expects the central bank response to the...
Parallels to 1937
"Now, as then, people have been disappointed for a long time, and many are despairing," writes the 2013 Nobel laureate in economics.
Booming Until It Hurts?
As usual, the stock market appears to be climbing a wall of worry. This 2013 Nobel laureate believes that such worries are healthy, but only as long as they...
The Fed in Denial
The largest US banks are still 95% debt-financed, according to the Global Capital Index. With that much leverage, it does not take a lot to create fear of insolvency,...
Time for Fed to Take ‘Beer Goggles’ Off
“Early next year, or potentially sooner depending on the pace of economic improvement, the FOMC may well begin to raise interest rates in gradual increments,” said the CEO of...
