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Posts Tagged ‘tuition’

Inflation Is Rampant in Tuition, Healthcare and Property Taxes

Charles Hugh Smith shows the games played in determining "inflation" levels when not all prices are included in the measurements. It may be worth dispensing with the misleading term all together. When prices for big-ticket items keep rising but the items are not considered in the calculations, we have a clear mismatch between government statistics and household realities. However you define inflation, there is a real problem from real people. And regardless of one’s operative definition of inflation, Inflation Is Rampant in Tuition, Healthcare and Property Taxes - Ilene 

Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds 

Inflatable rubber ring floating in the sea

A number of big-ticket household expenses are skyrocketing: tuition, property taxes and healthcare.

Here is my simple definition of rampant inflation: you’re paying a lot more money for the same item/service but the quality/quantity is the same or lower--and your income is stagnant/declining. We are constantly told that inflation is near-zero, but the basket of goods selected for measurement seems not to include healthcare/ health insurance, college tuition or property taxes.

These costs are skyrocketing, and they are non-trivial expenses, running into the tens of thousands of dollars per year. I have addressed the difference in scale of expenses for the wealthy and the "middle class" before. For instance, $10,000 per year for healthcare insurance is a massive percentage of the after-tax income of a household earning $60,000 a year, while it is a modest percentage roughly equivalent to the sums spent eating out and traveling for a household earning $160,000 a year.

The same scale differences are present in all measures of inflation. Onions might well have declined over the past year, which means that the $30 I spent annually on onions declined to $29--a grand savings of $1.

Even a 10% decline in natural gas costs would only yield a modest $50 reduction in costs for my household. Let’s say another household consumes a lot more natural gas, and their savings would total $200 a year.

Compare these modest reductions due to deflation with the thousands of dollars in increases in big-ticket items like tuition, property taxes and healthcare.

Take property taxes. Nationally, according to the Census Bureau report on state and local tax revenues, total property taxes in the U.S. rose from $225 billion in 1998 to $476 billion in 2009-- an increase of 111% over a time period that saw costs rise 32% (i.e.…
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Chart School

Weighing the Week Ahead: Are You Ready for Some Fedspeak?

Courtesy of Doug Short.

Ready or not, we should expect a week dominated by an even greater focus on Fed policy. There are four reasons:
  1. The economic data calendar is very light;
  2. Earnings season has ended;
  3. Many will be heading for the exits early, anticipating a holiday weekend; and finally
  4. Bernanke testifies on the economy before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. There will also be other Fed speeches and the minutes of the last FOMC meeting.
What should we expect?

Fedspeak is described by former Fed Vice-Chair Alan Blinder as "a turgid dialect of English." In the Greenspan era, the Fed Chair was intentionally ambiguous. (Blinder, who favored a more open exchange, did not last long in the Greenspan era). In the Bernanke era there is supposed to be more transparency....



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Stock World Weekly

Stock World Weekly

NEW: Newsletter writers are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.

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Insider Scoop

Global X to Reverse Split 3 Gold Miners ETFs, 3 Others

Courtesy of Benzinga.

Global X, the New York-based ETF sponsor known for its unique lineup of commodities and emerging markets funds, announced six of its ETFs will be reverse split, including three gold mining-related funds.

The $29.4 million Global X Gold Explorers ETF (NYSE: GLDX) will undergo a 1-for-4 reverse split while the $2.78 million Global X Junior Miners ETF (NYSE: JUNR) will see a 1-for-3 reverse split. The Global X Pure Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: ...



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Phil's Favorites

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz on Toxic Disinformation

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz on Toxic Disinformation

On the Billl Moyers Show

Public health historians discuss thwarted efforts to hold the lead industry accountable for toxic exposure threatening American children.

Science can be a battleground — witness the politics of climate change, the teaching of evolution, the uncharted terrain of genetic modification and stem cell research, among other contentious issues. But when industries release untested chemicals into our environment — putting profits before public health — our children are the first to suffer. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the ongoing story of lead poisoning.

Bill talks with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, public health historians who’ve been taking on the chemical industry for years — writing about the hazards of in...



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Zero Hedge

It’s Official: Gold Is Now The Most Hated Asset Class

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum of Acting-Man blog,

Full Court Press

Not a day passes without the financial media denouncing gold as an investment option and hailing the bureaucrats heading the world's monopolist monetary central planning agencies as superheroes. It began prior to gold's recent breakdown, with widely cited bearish reports on gold published by Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, among others. Never mind that most of their arguments were easily unmasked as spurious. ...



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All About Trends

Mid-Day Update

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To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...

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Sabrient

Sector Detector: Investors stay focused on their Silver Linings Playbook

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics

It seems that every Tuesday in 2013 since January 8 has been positive on the Dow. And this past Tuesday was no exception. Now that sounds like a trend to put money on -- buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) at the close each Monday and close out the position late on Tuesday.

The Dow and S&P 500 both hit new all-time highs once again on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq hit its highest level since November 2000. The “risk on” allocation of new investment capital into cyclicals continues, although Wednesday saw leadership from defensive sectors Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Telecom, along with Financials. Nevertheless, ConvergEx reports that the average correlation of the ten S&P business sectors to the overall index averaged 82% last month. While that is below the 86% averag...



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Option Review

Busy Day For Bristol-Myers Options As Shares Sprint Higher

Options brief will resume May 20th, 2013.

Today’s tickers: BMY, TIBX & WM

BMY - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Shares in drug maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., are ripping higher today, up 6.5% at $44.94, the highest level in more than a decade, ahead of the release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2013 Annual Meeting abstracts tonight. The ASCO Annual Meeting begins on May 31st in Chicago. Options on BMY are far more active than usual today, with overall volume topping 64,000 contracts by 12:25 p.m. ET, versus average daily volume of around 11,400 c...



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Market Montage

SPX Reaching Historical Extremes on Weekly/Monthly Chart

Submitted by Mark Hanna

Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.

We are starting to see some very extreme readings on our monthly and weekly index charts since there has been no correction this year.  I posted below first the monthly chart of the S&P 500 going back 15 years showing bollinger bands – rarely do we get above the upper one, and never have we been this far above.  Then below that I posted (with 4 charts of 4 years each) the weekly data and you can see we are at a rare time we are above the weekly bollinger band as well.  This non stop rally is getting very historical.

Monthly – we've never been this far a...



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OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of May 13th, 2013

Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current  trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).

We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options. 

Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.

To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here

Optrader 

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ETF Selector

Stock Market Gets Big News After Friday’s Close

Courtesy of John Nyaradi.

Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.

Courtesy of NASA

The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...



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Pharmboy

Give Them an Inch, They Will Take a Mile

Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi.  Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward.  So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...



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IRA Strategy/Income Trader

Virtual Portfolios Update - 11/18/2012

FAS Money

$25KPA

$25KPM

AAPL Money

Peter's Strangle Portfolio

Income Portfolio

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