New Money Update! Read for important market news! February 15, 2015

 

 

Marc's Notes:

People just keep voting for more taxes. Berkeley voted in a tax on soda and a city near me voted to tax campers at local campgrounds.

Berkeley constituents who supported the tax amounted to nearly three quarters of those voting and the campground tax was unanimously supported by all members of the city council.

Let’s see now, we get up from our bed which we paid tax on, and hit the alarm clock which we also paid a tax on, step on our taxed carpet attached to the house we paid tax on and turn on the water and flush the toilet which is also taxed. We turn on the heat which has its own tax on the fuel it uses, and fix breakfast using appliances that were also taxed.

We dress, shave and use hair spray which all had a tax, then get in our car that had a sales tax, a registration fee and yearly tax. If its a foreign car we own, we also paid more for it because of the tariff taxes.

We close the electric garage door which was taxed when you bought it and pay tax on the electricity to shut the darn thing.

You drive down the road paying a road tax and gasoline tax and go to work where you pay income tax on what you earn. You then pay a variety of taxes to support people that don’t work, then pay a social security deduction and incur even more taxes levied by the city, county and state you work in.

Your investments have taxes of all sorts on them whether you know it or not and you basically pay taxes on just about everything you do, buy or use.

You also pay taxes on your home phone, your internet usage and your television through a plethora of cable taxes.

You even pay taxes on the air you breathe and water you drink through clean air levies and water taxes on property bills and through a variety of corporate taxes that they pay to the EPA to keep things clean.

You eventually get tired of working to pay all those taxes so you call up your travel agent on your cell phone which was taxed when you bought it and is taxed monthly and when you use the thing.

You decide to fly somewhere for your vacation and you then pay an airport tax, a parking tax and your flight is taxed.

The hotel you stay in taxes you and the boat trip you might take to go fishing then hits you up for its own special fuel surcharge tax.

All the things you buy are taxed by the truck, plane or train that delivered all your stuff and then when you have a heart attack because of all the taxes you paid, the hospital taxes you for the pacemaker you need through a special medical device tax.

If you die, there’s a variety of taxes to put you away and then whatever money you might have left over is taxed again when your kids inherit it.

Now with all those taxes we pay not counting the taxes I forgot to mention in this news piece because listing them all would have taken hours, some people still vote for even more taxes.

Now I ask you, is it me that’s crazy for shouting no more taxes or are the people that vote for even more taxes the crazy ones?

I really don’t know anymore but one thing I do know, this whole tax thing is very taxing.

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Big beer is faltering.  For as long as I can remember the large beer brewers have dominated the suds markets.  Beer drinkers in mass flocked to the Budweiser’s and Coors of the beer world in sales numbers that squashed those beer companies known as the micro brews.

When I was a beer drinking college student, the micro brews of the time were beers like Heineken and Dos Equis. St Pauli girl was a favorite of mine and you wouldn’t catch me dead with a Hamm’s beer or Coors Lite.

But I was a rarity among college students as most quaffed the Buds and Millers of the world and subsequently those beer companies got even larger, until they were the mega-goliaths they are now and everyone else were mere pimples on the Buds behind.

But recent statistics fly in the face of beer history as what used to be the ritual of the initiation of drinking age, trying a Bud kegger at the first frat party, has radically changed. Now almost half of all mid-twenty something’s claim to have never sampled an ice cold Bud.

That’s a whopping wad of market Bud and the other macro brewers are missing out on and the goliaths are taking notice and acting upon it.

Although recent ads by the monster brewers poke fun at microbrewers, the mass marketers of brew like Budweiser are buying up back alley micro beers by the six pack.

Much like McDonalds, the burger god of the shake world, the mass brewers are losing a battle of mindsets where consumers are flocking to healthier and tastier alternatives.

McDonalds is losing sales to the Chipotle grills of the world while Bud is losing its head over Boston lagers and some fruit ale brewed in some hippy town in the Northwest Territories.

A Bob Dylan once said, the times they are a changing and apparently so are our tastes.

These old stalwart companies catering to our palates are losing the battle to consumers who are losing the taste for the wares of the mass marketers of culinary delights.   

The Coca Colas, McDonalds, Budweiser’s and Millers of the world are now competing with and even buying the little mom and pop stores where it all started and isn’t that a surprise. Stay thirsty my friends, the giant brewers of the world are counting on it.

 

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Greece problems persist and I am not talking about fires in restaurant chimneys but the five year long story of a country whose Greek Gods ruled the world in fairy tale but now the country’s finances are more of a nightmare.

Billions in debt and on their third bailout, Greece has debt up the yen yang and its economy is in shambles.

Greece is highly socialistic in that it offers lucrative retirement plans and oodles of social safety nets yet has paid for these things only by going into hock.

Greece is part of the Euro currency so it has to borrow from the European Central Bank (ECB) and it has done that in spades. The problem is debts have to be paid and their interest serviced and Greece can apparently do neither.

With more loans coming due and running out of money again, there is no chance of Greece making its payments and in fact needs even more money just to survive.

The new political party has threatened to default on its debt if not at least write some of it down and many an analyst, including this one, have come to the conclusion Greece will eventually opt out of the Euro and go back to printing up its own currency or cobble together some hodge-podge semi- currency perhaps tying it partially to the US dollar or some other measure of value.

No matter what Greece and the ECB decide to do it won’t be an easy pill to swallow for somebody.

The fact is Greece owes a lot of money and can’t pay. A few if not many money entities are now going to eat some Greek debt. The entities I refer to are large banks, hedge funds and investor groups like pension plans and the like.

Only time will tell if the consumers of that bad debt will need a bailout themselves, and that depends on how much Greek debt they gorged on since Greece’s problems surfaced so many years ago.

I don’t know about you but I smell another bailout. Not of Greece mind you but of the big banks and hedge funds that bet on Greek debt to make a buck knowing Greece was on shaky ground.

There is no doubt people who gamble on such things should reap their just rewards and suffer whatever consequences befall them from a Greek default, but odds are they will pony up once again to the central banks of the world, claiming their too big to fail and need their debt paid off by somebody in order to survive, and that means bailout in every sense of the word. This Greek tragedy has yet to make its final curtain call and what the ramifications will be but trust me, we will find out soon enough.

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Markets:

Up towards Dow 18,000 again and this is the third time we have flirted with this level.

Will the Dow bust through 18,000 again and continue or will it test the level and fall again? As mentioned in recent newsletters, a warning light is flashing and I recommend being very careful in adding even more money into the markets at this time. Adding gold and silver miners might be prudent but only small amounts as we don’t know if the gold rout is finally over and ready to make a new ascent. Some of our Super Dividend Payers are skyrocketing almost daily so stay the course if you own these.

I added gold stocks recently and if you sign up for a 3 year subscription to the website I will email you my GOLD LIST of what I added and what I am considering adding in the weeks to come. With your subscription you also get unlimited access to my Super Dividend Payers List, Dream Portfolio and Conservative Portfolio- the best of my opinions of what to hold and what not to in these turbulent markets. Just order on the website. We will see your order and email you the list! It is that easy!

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All for now!

Marc

 

 

 

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