You Invest, They Win

You can read here about the negative impacts of a Biden administration tax increase on dividends. In summary, a higher tax on dividends motivates companies not to pay them. My take? Stock-rich executives and the largest shareholders don’t want to fork over half the payout in taxes. Pinar Cebi Wilber writes in The Wall Street Journal: The Biden administration has released a flurry of tax proposals, including a headline-grabbing tax hike on capital gains that would apply retroactively from April. Dividends would be subject to the same treatment, according to a recently released Treasury … [Read more...]

It used to be rare that regulators in Washington D.C., and money men on Wall St. would find common cause, but that has changed in an era when the government is so big, its subsidies alone drive the profits of many businesses. Big Wall St. firms like BlackRock have found a way to turn Washington into a profit machine. The Biden administration is loaded with former BlackRock employees. Do you think they left their high-paying jobs on Wall St. to do what's best for the farmers of Iowa or the fishermen of Maine? No, they came to Washington to grease the skids for policies that will make … [Read more...]

You have read about Larry Fink using your money for everything but profit. His use of ESG investing, i.e. using investor funds like a piggy bank to push his environmental and social agenda, hurts Fink's trustworthiness. It's not about investors, it's about Fink's ego. At Real Clear Markets, Peter Flaherty has written a brutal takedown of Fink and his self-promotional behavior. He writes: Last week, Exxon Mobil, one of the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies, lost a critical board fight with Engine No.1, a “woke” small investor group. The win was predictably … [Read more...]

While Joe Biden wants to raise your taxes, even when you're dead, the woke hedge fund and endowment managers are reaping the rewards of their special treatment. They're using your money for everything but what you need, profit. In a lengthy piece at The American Mind, J.D. Vance, (author of Hillbilly Elegy, and probable candidate for Senate in Ohio where he grew up and runs his business) explains how endowments and funds avoid taxes and use that subsidy as ammunition to attack America itself. He writes: Finally, the allocators of capital themselves are going woke. Across our country we have … [Read more...]

You have been telling me about the inflation you're seeing in your life. It's not good. Inflation can throw all the calculations of a well-planned retirement into chaos. Even people who are still working need to readjust in the face of higher prices. When those old dollars you saved after working hard aren't worth as much as you'd thought they'd be, life gets trickier. Now, Roger Bootle, the man who officially declared inflation dead in a 1996 book title The Death of Inflation: Surviving and Thriving in the Zero Era (no relation to my monthly Survive & Thrive newsletter, which you can … [Read more...]

Inflation? Yes. Your Survival Guy paid $19.50 per pound for fresh cod last week. I know you’re seeing inflation too because you’re telling me about it. How about buying a boat? New ones are back-ordered for months because of a shortage of resin and off-the-charts demand for new boats. How about used boats? This is anecdotal evidence, but the for sale listings in the back pages of On the Water magazine are scarce. In the past, there would be several pages worth of listings. The most recent issue? Two pages. You can’t find a boat today. Not to mention a good fishing rod and reel to go with … [Read more...]