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Slick TV ads often make financial planning and wealth management sound simple, but it’s usually not. Managing wealth requires knowing a lot about highly technical topics, like taxes, government regulations, and finance as well as history, psychology and how to communicate with loved ones about sensitive issues. This article highlights some of the knowledge needed to manage wealth and why it’s often so daunting without the help of an independent personal financial advisor who is familiar with your situation.
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Understanding The Federal Reserve Mandate To End Inflation
The Federal Reserve System, the nation’s central bank, has a dual mandate to pursue maximum employment and maintain price stability. These two priorities are currently treated equally, but that was not always the case. In fact, the Fed’s bias toward maximizing employment was a critical driver of the stagflation that plagued the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s. Recognizing the need to balance price stability and maximum employment, in 1977, Congress revised the Federal Reserve Act.
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Fed Governor Kugler Details Inflation And Economic Outlook
The 12-month inflation rate, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, was 2.6% in December, down from its peak of 7.1% in June 2022, and the six-month rate for PCE inflation was even lower, at 2%, which is the target rate set by the Federal Reserve.
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Why Rates May Not Be Cut Until June
The cost of a loan to buy a home, car, college education, and achieve the American Dream is staying the same for now. As expected, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank did not lower loan rates following the Fed’s Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024, policy meeting.
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Practical Suggestions For Achieving Your 2024 Resolutions
New Year’s resolutions usually fail because they‘re often too hard to achieve. After six months, only 10% of people who make resolutions achieve them or remain committed to them, , according to a study by Dr. Mark Griffiths, a Chartered Psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Behavioral Addiction at the Nottingham Trent University. What can you do to make financial, medical, or other personal resolutions more likely to be achieved?
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A Sign Of Progress In Solving U.S. Economic Problems
The Federal Reserve appears to be pulling off a feat most experts did not believe it could: ending its aggressive inflation-fighting campaign of 11 interest rate hikes without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.
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Fed Keeps Rates Unchanged; Expects Easing In 2024
To promote transparency and free markets, the Federal Reserve System began publishing the opinions of the 19 U.S. central bankers that decide interest rate policy.
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Have You Logged Into Your Social Security Account?
Have you logged in to your Social Security account? Creating an online account at SSA.gov is an important first step in understanding your retirement income situation. However, only about 60 million of the 160 million individuals in the U.S. labor force who have Social Security accounts have created a way to access the Social Security Administration’s website.
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The Great Fake Out Of 2023 Is Poised To Extend Into 2024
All year long, the economy and stock prices have fooled experts and consumers, outperforming expectations month after month.
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Test Your Financial Planning IQ
The five questions below are a challenge meant to allow you to assess your knowledge of investing, tax and financial planning. If you have been following our news stream, this quiz draws on familiar ground. The answers are below.
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Planning Briefs
Investor Note: Post Pandemic Inflation Crisis Highlights U.S. Exceptionalism
Published Wednesday, December 7, 2022 at: 8:26 AM EST
Despite six hikes in interest rates in the past eight months by the nation’s central bankers to end a vicious cycle of inflation, the U.S. economy created 263,000 new jobs in November. To be clear, after one of the most aggressive monetary tightening campaigns in over a century, the U.S. experienced above average job growth in November.
The 263,000 new jobs, 30% more than expected by economists, leaves U.S. central bankers little choice but to announce yet another rate hike following the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday, Dec. 14. Moreover, it’s prudent to expect another rate hike after the FOMC’s first meeting of 2023, on Wed., Feb. 1.
The nation’s central bank has no choice but to put the kybosh on job growth because it’s pushing up wages to make inflation worse, and inflation ruins economies. Its elimination is job No. 1 right now for the FOMC. But there is a complication. The main cause of post-pandemic inflation was supply chain disruption of goods – until now. Just as supply chain problems have settled down, a burst of wage inflation suddenly is the main inflation threat.
Fixing the wage inflation problem is not so easy. Nor is it in the hands of the Fed. It will require action by elected policymakers. The crux of the problem is illustrated in the unusual gap between job openings nationwide and job seekers. The 10 million job openings vastly outnumber the six million job seekers.
The shortfall of available workers is the result of a combination of pandemic-related anomalies. The most significant is that the pandemic led a larger-than-expected number of Americans in their 60s to retire. A larger proportion of Americans in their 60s suddenly decided to call it quits when Covid-19 hit. They left the workforce permanently. In addition, more Americans in their 30s, 40s, and 50s also dropped out of the U.S. labor force.
Another anomalous factor: from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 till late 2021, international immigration flows to the US decreased significantly. Changes in international immigration into the U.S, are likely driving wage increases and adding to inflation, according to a newly released study co-authored by Giovanni Peri, Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis, and Director of the Global Migration Center. The authors of the study warn that wage increases can temporarily help attenuate the wage-inflation problem but say it eventually may trigger a negative cycle of lower growth in the U.S..
Also concerned is Fed Chair Jerome Powell. In a speech Weds., Nov. 30, he said that the U.S. labor force is short about 3.5 million workers, and that two million of those are individuals who retired earlier than expected and would not be returning to work. While the Fed chair identified and defined the labor shortage as a problem confronting the economy, he pointedly added that making policies to support labor supply are not the domain of the Fed.
For the near term, the Fed chair indicated the shortage of qualified job applicants will be moderated by forcing employers to pay higher wages and, quite appropriately, left the long-term structural problem behind the labor shortage to elected leaders to resolve.
Whether by Congressional legislation or Executive action, the thorny policy issues seem likely to be resolved in 2023 if wage inflation continues to be an obstacle to growth. In a time of political polarization, the dynamic pragmatism about to be exhibited by the United States in the face of the labor shortage highlights what makes America exceptional among the world’s nations.
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