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...
The Bitcoin Bounces Back
After a rough couple of years, the Bitcoin is surging back with a vengeance. Just a year after its fall from grace in the Silk Road drug site scandal, the digital currency’s market value has even beaten gold in the world’s markets. Whether hailed as a welcome...
Looking Ahead: Another Financial Crisis?
As the US economy regains its feet after the massive financial collapse of 2008, economists are turning their gaze to the future: what will trigger the next major economic crisis – not just for the US, but also for the global economy as a whole? And a bigger question:...
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...
A Cash Free Society? Sweden Leads the Way
Hard metal in the hand or virtual numbers on a card, money is what people agree that it is. And now, as Sweden moves quietly toward a cash-free society, the very nature of money – and what it means – could be forever changed. Sweden has long been in the vanguard of...
US Dollar Rides High in World Markets
After the roller coaster ride of recent recession years, the US dollar is on top again – at least for now. And its strong showing against other world currencies may be due to the Federal Reserve’s much-maligned Quantitative Easing plan. According to a recent Business...
Do Borrowers Need Banks?
Banks are an essential part of the financial landscape – or at least, they’d like you to think so. But are they? New banking alternatives may be making the traditional bank loan a thing of the past. The traditional banking model has been around for centuries,...
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...