Reminds me of a Morrissey song, that goes like this if shoplifters are replaced by bartenders "bartenders of the world, unite and take over." The change hardly changes the meaning of the song. Anyways, I guess the Fed's not happy about more bartenders causing inflation, lol.

This is one of the saddest statistics which gets buried amidst the hyperbole about how wonderful the economy is. The drumbeat of wonderful recoveries have been going year after year as this number gets worse and worse. Reality must be dealt with sooner or later or else things just keep getting worse as it has been despite the occasional fanfare.

Don't lose money. Don't forget the previous rule is kind of like Fight Club's rules in investing. Don't talk about fight club and the second rule is don't talk about fight club. Sadly because of the Federal Reserves low rate and stock market bubble pumping using banks, it is much harder not to lose market since almost everyone who knows the markets know that the risks in the broader market far outweight the return. Go lighter stocks going into the 7th year of a market cycle for your own safety.

It is good to see solar surviving well in the lower cost energy markets. This could be partially because energy companies aren't passing on their lower costs to homeowners. Hopefully, solar like electric car companies can get off government subsidies because that does not prove the technology or staying power of solar.

Sadly in California electric companies are dead set to kill solar demanding the right to charge people putting them in place added fees because they cost the electric company money for not using them. PG and E wants to penalize them with a flat fee regardless of whether they use their power on top of the cost for using power. At first they wanted to charge all customers the flat fee for the privilege of getting access to power, but apparently it was shot down by the government watchdog that oversees their little monopoly. Needless to say, solar will have troubles with such utilities that hate them competing with their monopoly.

Capitalism isn't the word that is put into my mind, maybe we need to coin the word debtism where making money and saving is a liability. No wonder wealthy people get out of dodge and the Euro Union goes nowhere. Sadly, this is also becoming a reality in the US where TBTF banks don't need or want your deposits because they get all the money they want interest free from the Federal Reserve bent on punishing those with capital with rates lower than the risk they incur. In such a world, only the bank printing the money has power. There is nothing you can do but wail as you lose your money which becomes lass as it also becomes worthless. Just hope that negative rates don't add insult to injury and cost you money as well.

Yawn, when a tech company uses gold as a selling point for their product it always means sell. Sadly this phenomenon tends to be Asian companies trying to enter into the tech market, not someone like Apple even though I understand their desperation to make a next tech product move from Jobs' legacy which they seem to be unable to do since his departure. Ooops I forgot the giant grounded saucer... Oh Jobs thought of that too. Oh, did I mention the Apple car, oh Jobs thought up that one too. Gee, did I make my point?

I would be careful to bet a lot on this predictor. The general public, besides buying mutual funds has become a very small player in the stock market and the banks thanks to Federal Reserve prodding have become humongous players all betting the Fed will prop things up and possibly notify them when things melt down. Is this much like a fixed game or insider trading. Maybe not, but it certainly isn't in the average person's interest and people have been voting with their feet ever since they started priming the market.

True, however, Apple for good reason doesn't acquire companies that don't like to be taken over. I have yet to recall any instance of it. For one thing it would be terribly expensive given their market cap. For another, technology wise they would tend to lose all the people they probably want. Also, usually they create bad blood for a good reason and acquiring them would be an admission of defeat. And last, in Adobe's case they would not just lose their existing business but get swatted with anti-trust investigations which would preclude from buying them even if they wanted to.

LOL I'm betting the Fed will be so soft as to not raise rates right up until the cycle is completely over and they need to lower rates. Ooops, then they can't lower rates so they need more QE even though it hasn't helped the economy besides saving the bankers which is exactly why they will demand lots more QE. This central bank is the most classic example of what happens when you give monetary power to kids that pathetically failed every economics class they ever took which is probably 1.

LOL, great Monty Python. You have a fan here. The good news is the economy isn't dying. The bad news is that the economy is more like a plague victim in the Walking Dead. The scary part is when the flat to slightly uppish cycle is over. Given the Federal Reserve thinks the up cycle is so bad they need to inject us with constant morphine to not keel over I hate to see what the downside has in store for us. Sadly, there is no more morphine left to give when that time occurs. Although there is that glowing red vile that says warning, to use this is a blatant admission you don't just reject capitalism but you are a full fledged socialist economy, do not touch,