Tue, February 17, 2009
The final version of the 1071-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is due to be signed by President Obama tomorrow. My summary of the bill's key tax items two weeks ago was not far off the mark, but there are a number of nips and tucks in the final version. Read the full article
Fri, February 13, 2009
Yesterday's House Financial Services Committee hearing gave evidence that bank lending is flowing again, but credit is still tight. Read the full article
Tue, February 10, 2009
Just before Christmas of 2008, the president signed the Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008. The bill suspended 2009 Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) for IRAs, 401(k)s and 403(b)s. Read the full article
Thu, February 05, 2009
Last year, one of my clients asked me this question. He was well-educated, but had simply never had an occasion to learn how investments work. It struck me at that moment that if he didn't know, then plenty of other people probably don't, so I decided to prepare a short introduction to the topic. Read the full article
Mon, February 02, 2009
As promised, the House and Senate have been busy working on The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which includes several tax law changes intended to boost the economy. Read the full article
Thu, January 22, 2009
It's now agreed that our nation is in a recession. With increasing frequency, recent media discussions about the economy have turned to the question of whether it will turn into a depression. What's the difference? Read the full article
Wed, January 21, 2009
The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), of which I'm a provisional member, has initiated a letter-writing campaign to urge members of Congress to make fiduciary investment advice the norm as it reforms the financial industry. Read the full article
Wed, January 21, 2009
It's too early to say with certainty what changes will be made in the tax laws this year. But it's possible to make some educated guesses. Read the full article
Fri, January 16, 2009
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (a.k.a. “the Bailout Bill”) changed the reporting requirements for annual tax statements from brokers. Form 1099-B, which formerly had to be sent by January 31, is now due on February 17 this year (the statutory date is February 15, but in 2009 that's a Sunday and the 16th is Presidents' Day). Read the full article
Thu, January 08, 2009
The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards periodically modifies the standards that it sets for the individuals that it certifies. In May 2007, the Board announced the adoption of new Standards of Professional Conduct. The standards took effect July 1, 2008 and began to be enforced as of January 1, 2009. Read the full article
Mon, January 05, 2009
Today the House Financial Services Committee will hear testimony from the SEC inspector general on the Madoff scandal. It promises to be the beginning of what Rep. Paul Kanjorski (chairman of the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises) is calling “the most substantial rewrite of laws governing U.S. financial markets since the Great Depression.” Wall Street could not have escaped congressional scrutiny after the year that we’ve had even if Madoff had never happened, but the failure of regulators to protect the public from his massive fraud has drawn fresh attention to the shortcomings of existing regulatory protections. Expect a cacophony of voices offering opinions as to what should or should not be changed in order to prevent future market crises and protect investors from unscrupulous con artists.
Read the full article
Fri, January 02, 2009
2008 has come and gone. There are a lot of people on Wall Street who are glad it’s gone and hope it stays far away.
Read the full article
Thu, January 01, 2009
Perhaps you've made a resolution to do a better job of dealing with your finances in 2009; if so, this blog can help you.
Read the full article
Wed, December 31, 2008
The Bernard Madoff scandal has been extraordinary. The amount of money lost, the number of years that the scheme went on undetected, and world-wide extent of the fraud are unprecedented. The fact that Madoff’s victims were mostly highly sophisticated investors is unsettling for a lot of people – if experienced investors could be fooled, how can the average investor avoid getting taken by an unscrupulous adviser? Here's how. Read the full article
Thu, December 25, 2008
Christians traditionally celebrate the birth of Christ by giving gifts. I’ve never been able to determine whether this custom originated because of the gifts the wise men brought to the infant Jesus or because Christ’s incarnation was a gift to the world. In either case, I’m taking a break from financial matters in this post to give a gift to my readers: one of my favorite recipes. Read the full article
Tue, December 16, 2008
The news media continue to reverberate with details of Bernard Madoff’s fraudulent investment scheme. Sadly, a number of charitable foundations, including Elie Wiesel's Foundation For Humanity, Steven Speilberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Foundation, and the Robert Lappin Foundation, had most of their funds invested with him. The Lappin Foundation, based on the North Shore of Boston, has had to shut down. Read the full article
Sat, December 13, 2008
2008 has been firmly established as an annus horribilis for the financial world. Yesterday, Wall Street got another big dose of bad news as a well-known stockbroker and former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange was arrested yesterday for swindling investors out of tens of billions of dollars. Read the full article
Wed, December 10, 2008
Back in October, some influential members of the House of Representatives held hearings to discuss overhauling the 401(k) retirement plan system. Soon thereafter, talk radio, the blogosphere, and even the generally-sober Wall Street Journal erupted with dark warnings of a plot afoot to “nationalize” or “confiscate” everyone's 401(k) plans and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Read the full article
Mon, December 08, 2008
With stock markets down precipitously and few asset classes that haven’t declined significantly this year, many investors in 529 college savings plans are wondering what to do. In some situations, it may make sense to make a change in your child’s 529 plan. Read the full article
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