Many of us are saying “Good Riddance” to 2011 – but it’s not at all clear what 2012 has in store for us.

Predictions are all over the map. Sometimes it seems as though analysts are determined to make the future better by predicting it will be so, even if the odds are slim. On the other end of the spectrum are those who predict that economics won’t matter, since the world is going to end in 2012. In the end, it’s up to you…

Beef prices rose more than 10 percent over last year and the Department of Agriculture reports at least another 5 percent increase in 2012. In spite of official White House news that inflation stands at under 2 percent, that isn’t the reality consumers are seeing in the supermarket or at the gas pump. A major
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Do you want real financial security? Would you like to go to bed at night knowing that when you wake up in the morning, your job hasn’t been packed up and shipped overseas to some call center in India or to some factory floor in China? While there is a place for a saving program
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Interest in alternative financing methods is accelerating all over America.  This is no accident.  It is a direct reaction to the way banks seem to have shut their doors for good.  If you’re not trying to borrow a million bucks, they don’t want to talk to you.  Even if they do “open a dialogue” with
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American debt woes have most of us focused on the drama within our own borders, but it pays to look overseas. Europe’s debt crisis is turning into a grand game of posturing leaders and symbolic gestures by central bankers. However, underneath all the showmanship are some nasty, nasty numbers that just won’t go away. There’s
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The Occupy Wall Street movement started without much fanfare.  Early on, protesters were more or less mocked as a giant joke.  Who were these yahoos sitting out in Zuccotti Park thinking they were going to change the way this worked? Nearly two months later, the questions are much less mocking.  The Occupy Wall Street movement
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Though anyone who can do simple math should have seen it coming decades ago, both the media and many in Washington are wringing their hands as though the current economic crisis was unexpected. A prime example is what we are now being told about the fragility of the Social Security’s disability program. Claims for disability
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Just a couple of days after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time in history, everyone was joining in the blame game on the Sunday morning news circuit. Democrats pointed a weak finger at S&P itself but saved most of its accusing finger wagging for the Tea Party. Former Vermont
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If everyone else were jumping off the edge of the Grand Canyon expecting to fly, would you do it too? The answer seems obvious (we hope), but our modern economy is actually built on the assumption that everyone will follow each other off the cliff of mindless consumerism without giving it a second thought. Getting
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Every generation has to deal to some extent with the challenge of reminding the next generation of its roots. It has been so as long as man has walked this planet. Take for example, Moses after he had led the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land. Listen to his first State of the
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