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I was on Neil Cavuto’s show yesterday for an update of what’s happening with the economy. On the whole I’m feeling much better than a year ago. They did the right thing with the banks or we’d be in a major depression now. One problem is that the banks won’t lend any money. Fortunately I’m using my own money. But the banks need to lend to fix unemployment. In that sense, the situation is worse now than a few months ago. The banks are probably building up their balance sheets, but it isn’t doing the economy or the people any good. Regarding the stimulus, more...

On Wednesday I was interviewed by Neil Cavuto and we discussed issues pertaining to the economy. I said that things seemed to be looking better, and that very importantly, people seemed to be confident that the economy is improving. Considering the situation awhile back, there are indications that the market is coming back and along with that we see confidence returning. That’s a very good sign in itself. Neil asked me what I thought about the idea of raising taxes. I think that’s a dangerous thing to do. This is a fragile time, we have a delicate economy and it wouldn’t take more...

Last week I spoke with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, and we covered topics that included the economy, President Obama, the banks, health care, and OPEC. OPEC deserves our attention because it’s a situation that is too often overlooked, and it has had serious impact on our country and our economy. OPEC openly laughs at the stupidity of our country as they raise oil prices. They are draining and sucking the life blood out of this country. They like to blame it on speculators. The speculators are peanuts compared to the power of OPEC. OPEC hires lobbyists in Washington and they more...

The first part of the title of this blog is also the name of a book Robert Kiyosaki and I wrote back in 2006. We were trying to warn people of the necessity for financial literacy. We could see there were problems on the horizon in the government as well as in the financial markets, nationally and globally. Unfortunately, we were very right about that. The seismic shock we experienced doesn’t just even itself out right away, and we experienced--and are still experiencing--aftershocks. It’s a good idea to be prepared to ride this out for awhile longer. My theory has always been more...

Today, which is April 15th, the New York Daily News has an article called Donald, yer hired!  in their paper. The subtitle is Trump tops nationwide Web poll on whom we’d like to prepare our tax returns. I didn’t know about the poll so this came as a surprise. The article, written by Sarah Kaufman and Bill Hutchinson, says: What do Donald Trump and CNN newsman Anderson Cooper have in common? They’re the celebrities Americans feel most comfortable doing their taxes. In a nationwide survey by WalletPop.com, The Donald edged out The Coop, 32% to 27%, as the most trusted tax preparer. Apparently over more...

What’s happened to the economy has been likened to a tsunami as well as an implosion. When the undersea earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit in Indonesia in 2004, the world was stunned by the devastation that took place. It triggered earthquakes around the globe as far away as Alaska. It happened in a very short amount of time. This kind of event takes shape over a period of time and then erupts with incredible force. What happened this past year is similar in that respect--it’d been brewing for some time. When it hit, it was like a tsunami which caused other economies more...

The sea gets sick but never dies. This is a well known Greek motto that I think is pertinent to today’s economic situation. The Greeks have been around for a long time and they’ve watched the ebb and flow of history for many centuries. Their saying is based on observation, and we’d do well to give it some thought. If someone or something is sick, it means it has to be allowed to get better. That can take some time. It also takes care and a proactive commitment to a return to health. Here we are in 2009 and we need to more...

We always hear so much about spouses cheating, it just becomes commonplace. But in today’s economic times, more and more couples are guilty of financial infidelity where they hide their spending from each other. A Harris Interactive survey of nearly 2,000 people in a committed relationship found that 29 percent of them admitted to lying to their partner about their spending habits. Women were a little more apt to lie than men, but it was close. That’s obviously very dangerous for the health of a relationship. Keeping secrets of any kind is damaging, of course, but financial cheating is like writing a business more...

A few months ago, a citizen in Canada sent me a copy of her local newspaper from Kamloops, British Columbia. There was a photograph of a homeless man who was surrounded by his belongings, and he was reading a copy of my first book, The Art of the Deal, which came out in 1987. The reporter who saw him spoke to him, and a photograph was taken. I was very taken with the story and photo and decided to send the man a check for $1,000.00 via the reporter from the Kamloops newspaper.  I was impressed that, despite his situation, he more...

Thomas Barrack Jr. is a friend of mine who happens to be a brilliant guy. We’ve partnered on ventures and he’s the CEO of Colony Capital. He’s been following the financial crisis and occasionally sends me his thoughts about what is going on. He makes such good sense that I’d like to quote a few paragraphs from what he sent me a few days ago: Why Can’t Anybody Find the Bottom? It all boils down to trust! The mantra of the country is “In God We Trust--but not counterparties.” No buyer trusts any seller, banker, insurer or intermediary. No investor trusts any depository, more...

On a recent interview on CNBC, I was asked a few questions about the current situation with the banks and the market. Here are the questions (summarized) and my answers: Q: What do you think about the economy after we get through this credit mess. A: The economy is really driven by oil, and every time something good happens, oil goes up. Oil is the thing that killed the economies of many nations in the first place. OPEC is probably sitting down right now to raise the hell out of oil, and it’s going to take all of the good out of the more...

What transpired yesterday on Wall Street is one day for the history books. I had predicted this would happen about a year and a half ago, and again about eight months ago when I appeared on Neal Cavuto’s show. That the landscape of Wall Street could be altered this rapidly is something we should think about. Yesterday was the worst day on Wall Street since right after the 9/11 attacks, with a fallout of some financial giants that we thought were untouchable. Here’s my view of this situation. We survived and prospered after 9/11, and we will do the same this time more...

There’s too much oil in the world to justify the current high market prices. I’ve heard there are tankers all over the world that are loaded up to the gills with oil. They have so much oil they don’t know what to do with it. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with OPEC and all of that. I blame the major oil producing countries for the current recession and I think the large oil companies are doing a major number on everyone.  The price of oil has dropped recently, but it should drop a lot more. The price of oil should be no more...

So much of the nation is so dependent on gas that there’s certainly been a collective sigh of relief over the past few weeks as the price at the pump has slowly started slipping. The last I read, the national average price for a gallon of gas was around $3.80. Less than a dozen states had prices hovering at more than $4 a gallon. A year ago, those figures would’ve seemed astronomical, but today, we’re hopeful that this is a sign of good things. Reports are that worldwide demand for petroleum products is finally slowing down so, as you learned in economics more...

Maybe I am a bit biased and am so because I did my homework and researched the pros and cons of the “captive” agencies versus the” independent” ones.   As an independent insurance agent, I feel good about having the ability to shop for the best possible product and price for my clients. I keep the carriers honest by doing the exact same each renewal. As a captive agent, I would have only one basic product available to offer my client and if we weren’t competitive with that particular client’s set of risks, I would have to reject them and send them down the street more...

I have to admit I wasn’t so sure the government’s economic stimulus plan was going to be the perfect solution to all our nation’s woes. I still don’t think it’s much more than a temporary Band-Aid, but at least it seems to be helping. The Commerce Department reports that the millions of economic stimulus payments sent out in the first wave gave a huge boost to household finances in May, boosting consumer spending by the largest amount in six months and sending after-tax incomes up by the largest amount in more than three decades. The Bush administration hopes that the $106.7 billion in more...

I’m all for divorce if a marriage becomes unbearable. But I also believe that a couple should at least try to see if their relationship is salvageable instead of immediately heading to court at the first sign of trouble. Apparently it’s not just a personal thing; it’s a financial burden on the entire country. According to a new study, divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion each year. That’s based on the assumption that households headed by single women unfortunately have high poverty rates which mean higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice, and eventually education for children more...

Would you like to know how much money your co-workers make? If you could sneak a look at their paychecks, I bet you would.  There was a lot of outrage in Italy recently after the government published every citizen’s income on the Internet. The tax authority’s website was swamped with people snooping to see how much their neighbors and co-workers and celebrities earned. Within hours of the site going up, it was so overwhelmed that it was nearly impossible to access. But the site stayed up for nearly 24 hours until it was suspended after a formal complaint was filed. Although critics complained more...

Sure, the economy is bad and I definitely believe we’re in a recession, but I’m convinced we shouldn’t really start panicking. That’s why I was a little surprised to read a recent column in the Wall Street Journal by Brett Arends. He suggested that maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food. His reason is that food prices are rising much faster than the returns you are likely to get by keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. He said that if you keep standby cash in a money-market fund, you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5 percent interest rate more...

Did you receive a tax rebate check yet? The U.S. Treasury began mailing out the checks earlier than expected. Many people had them by late April, but everyone should have them by the end of June. The purpose of the rebates is to pump more than $100 billion dollars into the U.S. economy. That is, if people spend the money when they get it. So, if you’re eligible for a check and receive that unexpected windfall of anywhere from $600 to $1,200 or more, what will you do with it. Spend it or save it? For the economic stimulus plan to work, people must spend more...

As gas prices climb higher and higher, the costs hurt people in more places than just their wallets. The more people pay at the pump, the more employees get stressed - even on the job - which results in lower productivity. People who are concerned about high gas prices let that stress carry over into their work lives. Researchers say they are significantly less attentive when they’re on the job. They’re less excited about going to work, less passionate and conscientious and more tense. All that combined equals overall lower productivity. Of course, higher gas prices have all kinds of other trickle-down effects. For more...

Since the Ethanol Mandate went into effect a couple of years ago, our price at the pump has nearly doubled. Special interest groups like the corn farmers lobbied hard to get this administration to impose the mandate promising that ethanol will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Let’s break this claim down to see just how much and who is reaping the benefits of this so-called benefit to Americans.  Of the approximate 140 billions of gallons of gasoline we use each year in this country, the mandate called for 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol to be infused. The problem is that ethanol is not as more...

Have you noticed the ridiculous price of diesel fuel lately? It’s more than $4/ gallon at my gas station and I am frankly baffled as to why. It is cheaper to manufacture than any of the other grades of auto gasoline and I am predicting additional potentially severe macroeconomic effects this will have on the goods we buy.  At first glance you may not pay attention to the price tag but I assure you, it is affecting you more than you realize. The reason is because of how our goods are distributed. We know all those big trucks carry the vital consumer commodities necessary to sustain more...

I never like to assume that consumers know the best strategies when it comes to structuring their real estate holdings, so when publishing a generic blog article I will assume that my readers have no knowledge. It’s no news flash that one can itemize expenses associated with owning a second home such as interest, taxes, PMI etc.  There are a few gray areas, however, that the IRS wants to be sure you are clear of before filing that return. Are you perfectly clear on what is considered a second home and what is an investment property? If you have tenants renting this property for a more...

With the current state of the market, everyone keeps asking me what to do with their money. My biggest advice is to do nothing if you can. If you don’t need money from your investments over the next couple of years, then don’t sell anything right now. Sit tight and wait it out. If you leave every time things get bad, you miss the point of owning stocks in the first place. The market goes up and it goes down. Right now it’s not looking very pretty, but it’ll get better. The point is to ride out the bad times so you more...

Today I got to hear Fed Reserve chairman Bernanke tell Congress the hard truth about our economy and the direction things could be heading. With GNP being virtually flat and consumer confidence at tremendously low levels, that lovely 3 syllable word called “recession” was uttered as a distinct possibility as to what could be in store. The definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of zero to negative economic growth and I think we just banked the first one.  Bernanke further explained that until the effects of the economic stimulus package could be felt and measured, we could possibly have a more...

Unless you live under a rock, by now you are aware that “lower and middle class” Americans will soon be receiving some free money in the mail after filing their 2007 returns.  The amount of the checks will vary depending on marital status, number of dependents and current income level.  (exact parameters can be found at http://www.house.gov/fossella/Constituent/stimulus.htm).  What I want to address today are some of the macro-economic effects associated with this type of “stimulus”. The purpose of this move proposed by the Bush administration and approved by Congress is to give consumers some spending money in hopes they will do what more...

It wasn’t that long ago that parents pushed their kids out of the nest and watched them live their lives on their own. But today’s tough job market has changed everything. These days, nine out of ten parents give money to their grown kids for major expenses such as credit card balances, car insurance, and student loans. Plus, there’s been a huge increase in the number of adult children who move back in with their parents when the real world gets too tough. Have today’s parents raised a generation of spoiled young people who don’t know how to live within their means? Or more...

As of the close of business on Friday last week, the price of gold had risen to a record high $1015 per ounce! A look at the chart of this commodities 5 year history and you might wish you bought some bullion bricks for yourself back then. Gold has more than tripled in value in the past 60 months and it may be all by accident.  It seems that since banks quit using gold to back up their monetary supply, the uses and demand for gold has greatly diminished. It’s not used all that much for jewelry either as other metals such as silver and more...

Donald J. Trump is the most self-reliant, rugged individual I have ever known. Yet he often says that he could never have reached the pinnacle of success without the support of a great team.   Here’s just one instance of that philosophy, quoted from his book Trump 101: The Way to Success: “Good leaders determine the teams they assemble. If you pick the best players and set the example, many good seasons should follow . . . Assemble a core group around you; create a great team. Fill in the group with people who will excel in their roles.” If Donald J. Trump needs a good more...

“In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich,” an article in Sunday’s New York Times, profiles a millionaire named Hal Steger. Mr. Steger, a marketing executive, seems to have it made. He and his wife own their $1.3 million house free and clear. They have more than $2 million in savings. Yet Mr. Steger still goes to his office every day, where he usually puts in 12-hour days. He’s betting on the start-up company where he works to hit it big so he can make some real money. And you know what? Mr. Steger is a very, very smart guy. He told the more...

When I first began buying rental houses and apartment buildings, I could easily find properties that offered net unleveraged rental yields* of 10 to 16 percent. In some areas of the country, such as the Midwest, you can still achieve such favorable results. More typically, today’s rental properties yield four to eight percent. You might tell me that four to eight percent doesn’t seem like a great rate of return. But relative to stocks and bonds, properties win hands down. Let me explain why. Why Rental Properties Outperform Stocks At present, the annual dividend (income) yield on the S&P 500 stock index barely reaches more...

A new book, The Number, by has some pretty unsettling news for people who didn’t get a massive inheritance from their parents. The eye-opening news is that $1 million, $5 million, $8 million or more might not be enough to assure you a comfortable retirement. A chronic illness can wipe out $1 million a year. Even a common extravagant lifestyle, like owning one house more than you really should, can quickly reduce that $8 million to a puddle if you have no new money coming in. You are getting the idea. If you fly blind into retirement without working the numbers - and often, without more...

This morning, it is my pleasure to invite you to become a Charter Member of The Trump Advantage Club. Like everything we offer at Trump University, it is unique, new, and extremely high in value. We started developing the idea for The Trump Advantage Club more than a year ago when Donald J. Trump challenged us to build an exclusive club where members could learn the secrets of accruing significant wealth - but without restrictive membership fees or other obstacles that would keep people out. Would the business model work? As we crunched the numbers and refined the concept, we discovered that it more...