● The 7 Most Important Equations for Your Retirement: The Fascinating People and Ideas Behind Planning Your Retirement Income
By Moshe Milevsky
Summary via publisher, Wiley
Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Biology; every field has its intellectual giants who made breakthrough discoveries that changed the course of history. What about the topic of retirement planning? Is it a science? Or is retirement income planning just a collection of rules-of-thumb, financial products and sales pitches? In The 7 Most Important Equations for Your Retirement…And the Stories Behind Them Moshe Milevsky argues that twenty first century retirement income planning is indeed a science and has its foundations in the work of great sages who made conceptual and controversial breakthroughs over the last eight centuries. In the book Milevsky highlights the work of seven scholars—summarized by seven equations—who shaped all modern retirement calculations. He tells the stories of Leonardo Fibonnaci the Italian businessman; Benjamin Gompertz the gentleman actuary; Edmund Halley the astronomer; Irving Fisher the stock jock; Paul Samuelson the economic guru; Solomon Heubner the insurance and marketing visionary, and Andrey Kolmogorov the Russian mathematical genius—all giants in their respective fields who collectively laid the foundations for modern retirement income planning.
Author Archives: James Picerno
Passive Asset Allocation Strategies Are Still Tough To Beat
Brett Arends of SmartMoney skewers the simple stock/bond balanced fund strategy, and rightly so. There’s no reason to rely on a basic equity/fixed income mix in a world where a wider array of asset classes are available through low-cost ETFs.
Jobless Claims Were Unchanged Last Week
No news is still good news for jobless claims. The risk that the labor market’s revival has stalled is still on everyone’s mind, but there’s nothing ominous in today’s update on new filings for unemployment benefits. Claims were flat last week, holding steady at a revised 370,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The number du jour is a yawn, and for the time being that’s ok. Treading water has a short shelf life for inspiring confidence, but for the moment a broader review of the numbers continue to suggest that job growth will roll on.
The Economic Implications Of Quantifying Policy Uncertainty
Is policy uncertainty holding back the economic recovery? Stanford economics professor John Taylor says it is and writes that “recent research by Ellen McGrattan and Ed Prescott (on increased regulations) and by Scott Baker, Nick Bloom, and Steve Davis (on policy uncertainty) supports this view.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also advises via its recent small business survey that “concerns about over-regulation are the highest we’ve seen in the past year, with 42% of small businesses citing it as a major concern and 52% citing regulations as the top threat to their business.”
Industrial Production Rebounds Sharply In April
If you’re looking for evidence that recession risk is rising, you won’t find it in today’s update on industrial production, which surged 1.1% in April—the biggest monthly rise since December 2010. The cycle may be drag us down in the months ahead, but industrial production is putting up a pretty good imitation of swimming against the tide.
Retail Sales Growth Turns Sluggish In April
Retail sales rose a meager 0.1% last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the smallest monthly gain since December, the Census Bureau reports. The retreat in the growth rate isn’t terribly surprising, given the relatively strong pace in each month during the first quarter. Nonetheless, today’s sales news won’t inspire confidence amid all the renewed worries about the potential blowback for the global ecoomy if Greece leaves the euro and the possibility of rising recession risk in the U.S.
Strategic Briefing | 5.15.12 | Will Greece Leave The Euro?
European leaders and financial markets braced for Greece exit from euro
The Guardian | May 15
With attempts in Athens to form a government after last week’s election looking increasingly doomed, European leaders abandoned their taboo on talking about the possibility that Greece might have to leave the euro.Shares, oil, and the euro were all sold heavily on Monday in anticipation that anti-austerity parties would garner support in a second Greek election likely to be held next month, bringing the row between Greece and its European creditors to a climax.
Is That A Recession Or Just More Slow-Growth Turbulence?
The Economic Cycle Research Institute last week repeated its forecast that the U.S. is headed for a new recession, a prediction that the consultancy has been emphasizing since last September. There is some damning evidence to consider, starting with the slumping rate of growth in personal income, a danger sign that’s been with us for months.
Book Bits | 5.12.2012
● Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline… and the Rise of a New Economy
By Daniel Gross
Q&A with author via Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace)
Ryssdal: All right, so here comes the put-up-or-shut-up: You say early in this book that the ingredients are already here. You say ‘it’s tough to see what exactly is going to propel the United States forward, but the ingredients are already here.’ Like what?
Gross: Well exports is obviously one of them. The fact that the world has been growing more rapidly than the U.S. is a big source of this declinist thinking. An author like Tom Friedman goes to China and says, ‘Oh boy, they’re building high-speed rails and look at us, we can’t build infrastructure; we’re finished.’ Exports started turning up in April 2009, before the economy at large did. In the last two years, they’re up 35 percent. When the rest of the world gets rich, or gets middle-class, they buy what we make. That includes Boeing jets, gas turbines. I found a family-controlled, little company in suburban Pennsylvania that makes wallpaper. 2007, 2008 — 80 percent of this business was at home; now 70 percent is overseas.
Strategic Briefing | 5.11.12 | The Outlook For Oil Prices
Oil: A Temporary Selloff?
BCA Research | May 10
Oil prices may stay under downward pressure in the near term and are particularly vulnerable to euro volatility. Nonetheless, our cyclical bias is still positive…. Moreover, many of the headwinds for oil prices should prove temporary even if a washout in the euro does develop. Generous Fed liquidity reduces the odds of sustained U.S. equity weakness at a time when the U.S. economy is on a stable, albeit slow growth path. In this environment, lower oil and product prices have a self-stabilizing aspect by supporting consumer and business confidence, suggesting that without a major exogenous shock, the downside in oil prices from current levels is lmiited. Bottom line: Our Commodity & Energy Strategy service maintains that oil prices should be higher by year-end.
