Blame my parents. I was raised on a vegetable farm and don’t have much appreciation or need for the finer things in life. I could afford a Mercedes but I prefer a pickup truck, I do most of my shopping at Wal-Mart (WMT) and Costco (COST) , wear a $20 Timex watch, and I’ll take a bottle of...
Did you know that roughly 70% of the U.S. economy is comprised of consumer spending? That is the money that you and I spend at the grocery store, the shopping mall, at car dealerships, and at our favorite restaurants. That's a statistic investors should never forget. Another number to note is how...
1. Sequester: Little Will For Cutting Government 2. Will the Sequester be a Disaster? No! 3. Fed Hints at End of Quantitative Easing, Maybe 4. Special Report: “7 Secrets of Successful Investors” Overview The Pew Research Center released a new national poll on Friday and the results are quite...
You may think of New York City-based Citigroup (C) as an American company. But I’ve traveled the world extensively, and I can say that I have yet to set foot in a country that does NOT have a Citibank branch. Citi truly is a worldwide enterprise, with 200 million customers in 160 countries. This global...
What I like most about Gary Shilling's economic analysis is that it's thorough. In the piece that follows – an excerpt from Gary's monthly INSIGHT – he ranges from the importance of US consumer spending and the unemployment rate, to the actions of the Fed, to business cost cutting...
As my good friend Gary Shilling says, in leading off his piece on 2012 investment themes, which is this week’s OTB, “This year is just the first step in the long-run journey that will continue to be dominated by The Age of Deleveraging” – which also just happens to be the title of Gary’s latest book...