By John Packard I’ll admidt. I am rather a bear these days. I cannot say that I have not been accused fo being a doom and gloomer by my peers. Things are happening right now that are unprecedented in our country’s history. The good thing is that American’s are perennially optimistic. This has gotten us through tough times in the past, and hopefully in the future. There are some interesting statistics which have come out which should be the sound of alarm bells: On Wednesday, an annual survey of Americans […]

BYy Brice Hogan Financial Resource Advisor You are turning 50 and you realize that everything you have done to save for retirement (or not done) is about to come due. Looking at your banking account it doesn’t look promising. In fact it is down right depressing. Your retirement accounts resembles Al Capone’s secret vault, empty and lots of cob webs. . Of course during your working years you had promised yourself that you would diligently put money into your company sponsored plan or open an IRA with Fidelity. Instead life […]

By John Packard Underlying economic and banking system fundamentals rapidly are getting worse, not suddenly better as touted in the media tied into Wallstreet. Another tall tale is of the Fed’s valiant fight against recession, while containing inflation. Now that the economy has been turned, the story goes, the Fed can slowdown or eliminate its easing so as to concentrate on its inflation fight. What nonsense! The Fed’s primary concern remains preventing a systemic financial collapse; everything else is secondary. The Fed has very limited ability at present either to […]

By John Packard NewsWeek just came out with an article describing a man who sold his business and put it into an investment account with a prestigious investment firm in New York. He had what was reasonably a large sum of money. $10 million to be exact. The article then described how he received hardly any attention. The point of the article was to suggest that you are really not financially rich until you have $25 million. $25 million?! You’ve got to be kidding me! Leave it to the media […]