Daniel Amerman CFA's Contributions

Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans was interviewed on CNBC on Monday, and he indicated that he was in favor of continuing asset purchases at a rate of $85 billion per month all the way through 2013.

There is a Great Game being played at the highest levels of our monetary system. The Game has two halves: going long the real, and short the symbol. That is, going long real assets by owning them, and going short the dollar and the financial system by selective and advantageous borrowing.

The Federal Reserve is indeed using QE3 to attack the problem of unemployment - but not through the method stated. The cover story is that QE3 will be used to increase the money available for lending and to lower interest rates.

If you have savings, if you rely on a pension, if you are a retiree or Boomer with retirement accounts - any one of these five fundamental motivations is by itself a grave peril to your future standard of living.

Everything from the ability to pay for Social Security, to projected federal deficits, to retirement planning and stock market valuations is based upon assumptions that the United States and other nations will emerge from crisis and return to "normal" long-term growth rates.

“Crowding out” is an obscure term if you're not an economist – but this replacement of the private sector economy with government spending may end up being one of the largest determinants of your standard of living during retirement.

With more than $1 trillion outstanding and growing at a rate of over $100 billion a year, student loans have leaped past the credit card and auto loan markets in size. The students will not be the only ones paying...

Forget the anemic latest US jobs report - the world is in play, and the election of Francois Hollande as the President of France may do more to determine US unemployment rates (and global investment results) in the next year than anything that Ben Bernanke and US government policies will accomplish.

The public is often told that the question is whether we will experience inflation or deflation. This is a gross oversimplification, however, that can be quite dangerous for investors who believe it to be true. Implicit in the assumption that it must be one or another, is that you can't have both together.

When we look at broad measures of jobs and population, then the beginning of 2012 was one of the worst months in US history, with a total of 2.3 million people losing jobs or leaving the workforce in a single month. Yet, the official unemployment rate showed a decline from 8.5% to 8.3% in January - and was such cheering news that it set off a stock rally.

By forcing interest rates to record low levels, the Federal Reserve has effectively vaporized most interest income along with most of the ability to benefit from compound interest, with devastating results for many retirees, retirement investors and pension funds.

To demonstrate why Dow 36,000 could be a nightmare scenario, we will begin with a review of how 70% of stock investor wealth was annihilated the last time the US endured the combination of sustained high unemployment and high rates of monetary inflation.

Standard & Poor's missed the point when they "only" put 15 Eurozone nations on credit watch for possible near term downgrades. In this highly interconnected world - most of Europe can't be put on credit watch without putting much of the world on credit watch, with the United States being particularly vulnerable to global "contagion" risks.

There is a hidden and deeply unfair "tax" that is costing US savers in excess of $500 billion per year. Through forcing interest rates far below the rate of inflation, the government has effectively created a tax on savings that not only takes all real interest income, but quite deliberately confiscates wealth from tens of millions of savers every year - for the direct benefit of the government.

In gold terms, an average single family home in the United States can now be purchased for only 18% of its pre-bubble price in 2001. The term "pre-bubble" merits emphasis: the average house can be purchased at an 82% discount (in ounces of gold) not from the peak real estate values of 2006, but the much lower home prices of 2001, before the real estate bubble began.

There is a common but mistaken belief that the children and grandchildren of older Americans will be the ones who will be paying for today's massive government deficits. In this article we will look at six different layers of the deficit and unfunded government promises and put them into personal, per household terms in order to get to the truth of the matter.

The US dollar could soar in value. Gasoline could return to under $2 a gallon, possibly even $1.75, and filling up a near empty tank could once again be done for under $30. The prices of clothes, shoes and a shopping trip to Wal-Mart could drop significantly, providing much needed relief to retirees on fixed-incomes.

The Federal Reserve's "Operation Twist" represents a $400 billion assault on retirement investment portfolios, pension funds, corporate stock valuations and the financial viability of state and local governments.

There is a significant chance that the Euro itself will collapse in the coming weeks or months. Although the highly likely Greek government default may act as the trigger, the collapse of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and its currency is a quite different event from a single minor member defaulting on its debts.

Financial Repression is the academic term for how governments can pay down enormous debts by forcing interest rates below the rate of inflation, and then systematically confiscate the purchasing power of their citizens' savings over time, while keeping people from being able to escape or defend themselves.