Financial Sense Newshour

Jim is pleased to welcome back Grant Williams, Portfolio & Strategy Advisor at Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore, and author of the popular investment letter, “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…”. Grant discusses the recent policy change in Japan, which is now printing massive amounts of Yen to raise inflation and weaken the currency. Grant notes that it didn’t work in the 1930’s for Japan, and it won’t work this time. He does see a coming Asian currency war in response however. Grant also speaks in some detail about gold and gold equities. He believes the world is struggling with accepting gold as a currency. But Grant notes that at some point deficits matter and excessive money printing will eventually drive the price of gold significantly higher.

Jim welcomes back Barry Ritholtz, CEO and Director of Equity Research at Fusion IQ, an online quantitative research firm. Barry discusses how the many economic “crises” today are overblown and essentially driven by the media and Washington. Barry sees the vast majority of “news” today as simply gossip. As to stocks, Barry believes they are not as cheap as 3 years ago, but still reasonably priced. He much prefers the dividend theme to stock buy-backs by corporations. Barry also discussed a long term secular trend in demographic changes that will be a negative for employment longer term, as increasingly more productive companies need fewer workers to stay profitable.

This week Jim and Cathlyn discuss how many taxpayers, particularly in California, are getting nasty surprises heading into tax season with retroactive 2012 tax increases and higher estimated Federal taxes for 2013. They discuss tools to reduce taxable income, and the investment and taxation implications of dividend-paying stocks, retirement plans and trusts. This week’s guest is Dr. Wade Pfau of The American College. He will discuss the “4% withdrawal rule” used in traditional retirement planning assumptions, and assess its strengths and weaknesses.

In this week’s first Big Picture topic “Wash, Rinse and Repeat – that was then, this is now” Jim looks at a repeat of the Petro Business Cycle pattern for the fourth year in a row. The familiar economic scenario features a strong start to the year, then the LEI’s roll over and the economy starts to slow, which is followed by more Federal Reserve stimulus, which leads to a strong finish to the year. Wash, rinse and repeat. The next topic, “Has the glitter faded? Why gold prices can go higher” is in response to the weak precious metals market. Jim continues his thesis that you don’t need a Doomsday scenario to see rising gold prices in the future. This topic also leads into Jim’s in-depth conversation with John Kaiser on gold in the next segment of the program. Jim also answers some of your Q-calls in this segment.