If you think today’s heated debates about Social Security entitlements presage conflict between the generations, Juan Carlos Cantú’s Age Warfare presents a future demographic nightmare in which the old use their collective power at the ballot box to keep younger generations in a state of low-wage, low-opportunity economic slavery. Cantú’s novel is fiction, of course....Read More

Two weeks ago, I highlighted two REITs with large insider buying, American Realty Capital Properties (ARCP) and Annaly Capital (NLY).  Today, I’m going to continue this theme with a quick discussion of MLP general partner Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI). The “Kinder Morgan companies” refer to Kinder Morgan Energy Partner (KMP), one of the largest and...Read More

Master limited partnerships have become wildly popular over the past decade, and it’s easy enough to see why. Collectively, they are the highest yielding major asset class available, and the 10-year cumulative total returns are an eye popping 328%, as measured by the Alerian MLP Index. (And yes, those returns include the carnage of 2008...Read More

We all knew that the Fed’s quantitative easing programs wouldn’t last forever, yet when the Fed first started to discuss the possibility of tapering in May, it took the market by surprise. As a result, income investments had a less-than-spectacular summer. The price of the 10-year Treasury note slid by more than 12%, and the...Read More

“Tokyo 2020 Olympics could be shot in the arm for struggling Japan.” —NBC News “The successful 2020 Olympic bid signals new hope for Japan.” —Time Magazine So, that’s all it took.  Twenty years of economic stagnation and all Japan needed to get back on its feet was that the summer Olympics be hosted in its...Read More