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Europe's unemployment rate increased once more -- now at 12.2 percent.  This is the highest level since data collection on European unemployment began in 1995.  Expect new records ahead. Too bad if you are young and live in Europe.  The unemployment rate is above 25 percent for those under age 25 almost everywhere in Europe and is well above 40 percent in places like Spain and Italy (lets not talk about Greece...their data, at this point, is probably suspect). Meanwhile, the IMF has noticed that taxpayer bailouts mainly enrich hedge funds.  Why?  Because after sovereign debt collapses in price, hedge funds come in and buy it for 20 cents on the dollar and then sit back to wait for the bailout.  So, who wins.  The average taxpayer simply transfers large amounts of private wealth into the coffers of rich hedge fund tycoons.  Great policy! It is now dawning on the IMF that restructuring sovereign debt (meaning a controlled bankruptcy) is a far better...

Chinese food giant Shuanhui  announced the purchase of Smithfield Foods this week.  This is a salient example of a process that has been underway for many years. If one country has a 40 percent savings rate and another country has a zero percent savings rate, the country with the larger savings rate will, in time, buy all of the assets of the country with a zero savings rate.  That process is underway. The US has had no net savings for several decades.  The reason for the absence of savings is twofold: 1) the private sector doesn't save because most Americans see no need; after all, the government guarantees income security and health care into old age (social security, medicare, medicaid); why bother to save (the Obama administration's recent suggestion to begin taxing IRA's provides some additional reasons for Americans to avoid saving); 2) the government sector is a big, big dissaver (that's what fiscal deficits are all about). But America has investment spending....

Would you cut loss? Would you cost averaging? Or, would you accumulate at current level? These are a few questions from Gold investors since March 2013. What a difficult questions to answer... Here is our view on gold prices currently: Our answer is to cost averaging or accumulate now, and hold it at least until September 2013. Why? Let's read on... Lately, there is some good signs which favors gold prices in the short term: Federal Reserve chairman signaled records stimulus will continue until economy improves. Physical gold demand has surged after mid-April drops, especially from Asian consumers and central banks. US debt ceiling issue will be discussed again in September 2013, in which congressman will most likely to increase again, thus, printing more money. If you're a technical guy, then let's look at the chart above. A ' Double Bottom ' pattern was formed and gold prices may rebound very soon. It will be a gain of almost 8% if it surges towards 1,500 level....

We can't deny that everyone of us can't runaway from financial matters, thus, planning it wisely would put you on a better path to achieve financial goals as desired. Does this called "financial planning"? Hmmm...  Many people think that financial planning is for high-income earner and the rich. But is this true? If not, what is it actually? Generally, financial planning is a journey to achieve financial goals set with a comprehensive and systematic step-by-step process . It involves taking a broad view of one's financial affairs covering many areas of wealth management. What's Included in Financial Planning? Cash Flow management: assessing your current financial net worth budgeting debts eliminations building savings Insurance planning ensuring that our assets and family are well protected by having adequate insurance coverage Investment planning this is the wealth accumulation step, whereby investing a portion of your savings with the aim of getting a higher...

There is a chain email spreading about some EPF rules, that makes members worry such as below: If ONE of your nominees in the EPF nominees list dies, automatically the whole arrangement (EPF Nominees list) is VOID . Meaning if, you only put in ONE name & unfortunately he/she dies before you? Automatically EPF will channel your EPF money to trustee of AMANAH RAYA upon your death. Upon surrender to trustee of AMANAH RAYA, your children will have to battle the money through 3 channels; Majlis Agama Pejabat Tanah Mahkamah Is it TRUE ??? According to EPF, if a member has more than one nominee, and one of the nominees dies during the member’s lifetime, ONLY the portion that was bequeathed to the deceased nominee will be invalid . Should the member later dies without updating his nomination, the other nominees will receive their portion accordingly. Only the portion that was bequeathed to the deceased nominee will be subject to procedures under ‘EPF savings without nom...

For the past 100 years, small investors and lower income Americans have been able to invest in public securities and make huge gains.  No one with a diversified portfolio of American stocks today has a loss.  More remarkable, anyone who has held on for twenty years or more has huge, huge gains.  And this same statement is true for nearly all twenty year periods since the 1930s (eighty years ago). The success of the public markets has provided a way for folks without access to financial acumen to take on capital risk and be successful.  You would think such markets would be applauded. Nope. Here comes the left.  First Sarbanes-Oxley was passed to make sure that small companies faces huge hurdles in taking their firms public.  Then along came Dodd-Frank, a creature of the Obama Congress, that continued the process of crushing public companies with mounds of mind-boggling regulations. The final coup d'etat is now underway in the JP Morgan struggle.  If "s...

The tax laws and IRS enforcement efforts are guaranteed to result in political favoritism on a grand scale.  Why?  Because they are complicated and ambiguous. The American people do not understand the tax laws in their own country.  One suspects that tax specialists don't understand these laws either.  That leaves a lot of latitude to regulators.  They can pick and choose, as we now know that they did in recent years. Every so-called tax reform simply puts more complicated things into the tax laws.   The income tax needs to be abolished.  There is no generally agreed way to define income (that's the main reason why tax laws are so complex).  Even value-added tax concepts suffer from problems of definition. Better to go to a uniform national sales tax.  That could be easily understood by all Americans.  The only way a national sales tax could become problematic is if there were exceptions (for food, medicine, etc.).  There shoul...