With every new year comes a round of predictions about the financial future. This year, as in many others, the fate of interest rates in 2015 and beyond is the subject of speculation, most of it pessimistic. Financial experts and economists are once again predicting...
Solar Energy: Changing the Balance of Power
The sun is rising on solar energy. After a long stint on the fringes of the alternative energy movement, solar power is hitting the mainstream – and giving conventional utility providers a run for their money. Solar energy was once the darling of the well off...
Is the Fed Finally Ending the Stimulus?
Is it curtains for QE3? The Federal Reserve has announced that Quantitative Easing, round three, better known as QE3, is coming to an end – although key interest rates won’t rise until mid-2015. The end of the stimulus also marks the end of a massive experiment in...
Lower Credit Standards: Economic Boost or Bust?
We’ve always been told that success depends on setting high standards. Lowering your standards, so the conventional wisdom goes, leads to accepting low quality and ultimately bad outcomes. But in a bid to offset a sluggish recovery, the US government is advocating...
The Fed’s Stimulus Strategy: Silencing Skeptics?
In the end, did hard easing work? That contradictory term for Qualitative Easing version 3, the Federal Reserve’s controversial and much disputed stimulus plan, has been in the news and on the minds of economists and financial advisers since it was conceived in 2012...
FICO Score Changes: A Boost For Risky Borrowers?
Fair Isaac is changing his game. And that has some financial experts worried. The nation’s premier credit scoring agency, the Fair Isaac Company, has come to an agreement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to change the way credit scores are calculated....
Can Living Wills Prevent Another Banking Collapse?
People make living wills – and now, so do banks. To prevent a major financial meltdown like the one that hit the country in 2008, major US banks are now required to create a contingency plan for failure and submit it to government regulators. But because those...
Who is the Fed and What Is It Doing With Your Money?
The Fed, aka the Federal Reserve, has been making more headlines since the housing collapse of a few years ago than at any time in its history, thanks largely to its ongoing but fading stimulus program aimed at keeping interest rates low. But the Fed does far more...
Not a Student? Student Loan Debt Still Hits Home
You’re not a college student. You don’t have a child in college. But the escalating crisis of student loan debt still affects you, in ways large and small. In the spring of 2014 the total student debt load in the US had reached $1.1 trillion – and that burden of debt...
The Future May Be Brighter Than You Thought: Here’s Why
In a world of shrinking resources and stagnant salaries, it’s easy to believe we’re living in bad times with no hope of a recovery. But a look at the bigger picture, as revealed in a new book based on research from all over the world, suggests that we’re living in a...