By Robert Romano On Sept. 10, the House Ways and Means Committee marked up legislation by U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), the Default Prevention Act, which seeks to prioritize payments of principal and interest owed on the $18.1 trillion national debt in the event the statutory debt limit is reached. Conceptually […]

By Robert Romano From 1985 through 2011, an average 11.7 percent of seniors were enrolled in Medicaid, primarily for long-term nursing home or home and community care, according to data compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics . Keep that stat in mind, because if it remains true, as […]

By Dustin Howard Fifty years ago, on Sept. 22, 1965, the Great Society reached its apex with the Senate’s passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Acts of 1965. The Great Society sought to change the way we aided the elderly and the poor — and our […]

By Matthew Kandrach Next to healthcare and medicine, no budget item hits seniors in the pocketbook more than food. While fixed incomes remain fixed, grocery bills do not, and receipts at the checkout counter are getting a lot bigger these days. Take the price of […]

By Rick Manning Is capitalism the “devil’s dung” or is it the only moral choice? There are those who look at income disparity in countries that practice some level of a free market oriented economy and decry that some have more wealth and make more money than […]

By Robert Romano Emerging markets, and not monetary policy, appear to have dictated the rapid expansion of commodities prices since at least the 2000s. As demand rose overseas in China, Brazil and elsewhere, prices of everything from food to oil to metals increased. And now that those […]

By Robert Romano In Tuesday trading, the Shanghai Composite index was off more than 3.5 percent, the Sept. 2015 Empire State Manufacturing Survey showed business activity declined for a second consecutive month for New York manufacturers, and retail sales missed expectations . And so, naturally, U.S. stock markets rallied in anticipation that the bad news might forestall a Federal Reserve interest rate hike on Thursday. Such […]

By Rick Manning Adults set priorities. They make tough choices between things they need as opposed to those they simply want when deciding how to spend their paychecks. When beef goes up in price suddenly more chicken appears on the dinner table. When the cost of gasoline […]

By Robert Romano The national debt has been frozen at about $18.15 trillion for almost six months , according to the U.S. Treasury. Did Congress accidentally balance the budget? No. It is because way back in February 2014 Congress gave President Barack Obama a blank check to borrow as much money as he needed to cover U.S. financing […]

By Robert Romano With its policy interest rate still at near-zero percent, and deficits much smaller than were seen in the wake of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has little room to maneuver when the next recession comes. On interest rates, as a practical matter, the Fed cannot go lower than zero . […]