If you haven’t vacationed abroad recently, you might be unaware of the U.S. dollar’s sharp decline against many of the world’s major currencies. Most Americans don’t look at the value of the dollar everyday, as they do the stock and bond markets. It’s typically only when you travel to a foreign country that you realize...Read More

I recently spotted an article in Barron’s magazine about the Standard & Poor’s 500 index retracing its losses from March 2000, when the index hit a record high, to May 2007, the so-called breakeven date, when it closed at a new record high. This period included the three-year bear market that began in March of...Read More

The current vogue for hedge funds has caused this once arcane corner of the investment world to grow exponentially, doubling its assets under management in the last five years to about $1.4 trillion spread among 9,200 funds. Hedge funds once required you to be rich and put up big bucks to get in. Due to...Read More

On the last day of August 2007 the U.S. crossed a historic fiscal milestone some would call it a millstone as the national debt topped $9 billion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt at the Treasury Department, prompting Congress to once again raise the federal debt ceiling. The interest paid in 2006 on...Read More