Christianity and Capitalism by Richard Doster It’s been a rough couple of years for free-market capitalism. In Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, theologian Michael Novak wonders if capitalism is “spiritually empty and corrosive of virtue.” The evidence, perhaps now more than at any time in the past 70 years, may tilt [...]

Now that we have passed the Health Care Reform Bill that was scored by the CBO to say it is not going to increase the deficit and over the long  term actually reduce the deficit, Congress is now floating the idea of a VAT, a Value Added Tax, like Europe. To me this is an [...]

April 1, 2010 by Bob Veres Economic forecasters sometimes describe the investment markets as a leading indicator, which means that they believe returns can anticipate good or bad economic news.  Share prices fall when investors expect a recession, and rise when a recovery is expected–and last year’s stock market growth seems to fit that pattern.  [...]

Recent Market Volatility in Perspective The US stock market has taken investors on a bumpy ride in recent years. This volatility has tested investor discipline and prompted some people to question their commitment to equities. While no one knows the future, looking at the past may help you gain a better view of long-term market [...]

Investing, in the final analysis, is a matter of faith. This, I think, is an important fundamental to understand. I am not writing of “blind faith.” Nor, necessarily, religious faith. It is my conviction that there is no such thing as blind faith. If a person acts blindly, it is not out of faith; it [...]

by Bob Veres An article in the December 31 issue of the Wall Street Journal makes a point that many of us in the financial planning world have long suspected.  It says that the CGM Focus fund was the top performing mutual fund, by far, over the past ten years, generating an annualized return of [...]

We are all familiar with the idea of “the wisdom of Solomon” because he figured out how to discern the real mother of an infant by threatening to cut the infant in half and each woman could have half an infant. Of course the real mother said, “No, give it to the other woman” and [...]

Life insurance, yuk! Who wants to talk about life insurance? Generally, nobody but a life insurance agent. However, life insurance exists for a good reason or two. And, the first question you need to answer when contemplating life insurance is, “Why do I need to buy life insurance?” There is one underlying reason for anyone [...]

The National Center for Policy Analysis has just released a report titled, “Ten Ways to Wreck Your Retirement.” I would have to say a big AMEN to their analysis in this paper. I have listed below the Executive Summary of the ten points. If you would like to read the entire 24 page report, you [...]

For the past two decades I have been involved in the Financial Advice business. One thing has held steady the entire time. Every client has asked that “education” be a part of the business relationship. Most of us didn’t have any meaningful real life education about how to invest or how to manage wealth, or [...]