Free Republic

A Mexican drug cartel known for gruesome public slaughtering drained $40 million from Americans, and stole many elderly victims’ life savings without a drop of blood in 2022, according to FBI stats. It’s part of a rapidly evolving timeshare scam run by the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) that is becoming more intricate, and is now estimated to be stealing hundreds of millions from Americans each year. It started as a small operation in the Puerto Vallarta area and expanded to popular tourist spots like Cancun, according to the U.S. Treasury, which issued sanctions against seven fugitives and 19 Mexican...

It’s a pretty terrible sign of the times when a record number of Americans are forced to plunder their 401(k)s. “A record share of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals from their accounts last year for financial emergencies,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Overall, 3.6% of its plan participants did so last year, up from 2.8% in 2022 and a pre-pandemic average of about 2%.” The whole point of a 401(k) is to keep that money out of reach until you reach age 59 ½ or above. Removing that money earlier is about the worst financial move anyone can make....

Nearly half of Americans have $500 or less in their savings accounts, an amount that leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, according to a GOBankingRates survey of 1,063 U.S. adults conducted in November 2023. About 29% of respondents have between $501 and $5,000 in their savings accounts, while the remaining 21% of Americans have $5,001 or more. Few hold much cash in their checking accounts as well. Of those surveyed, 60% report having $500 or less in their checking accounts, while only about 12% have $2,001 or more. The lack of cash in either savings or checking accounts suggests that...

Florida earned its reputation as the retirement capital of the US.. A fixed income in retirement can go a lot further in some states than others .. ... To make the most of your retirement savings, you should retire in a state where the cost of living and tax rates are friendly to retirees, if you have the resources to. You should also consider factors like the quality of the state's healthcare system and the abundance of activities that you enjoy.' Colorado, which ranked second for the best state to retire in 2024, offers similarly taxpayer-friendly conditions, with no estate...

[…]Small banks, the underdogs of the financial ecosystem, have been hit particularly hard. Rising interest rates, which should spell prosperity for these institutions, have instead become harbingers of doom. Take the sad tale of Iowa-based Citizens Bank. Once a pillar of its community, now the fifth to fall this year, it has been declared insolvent.Regulators from the Iowa Division of Banking have unearthed significant loan losses, ones that had slithered undetected beneath the bank’s watch. Triggered by a spate of bankruptcies in the trucking sector, amidst a nationwide freight recession, the bank’s collapse is but a symptom of a much...

As Biden sleeps through the Hamas invasion of Israel, that is nothing new. Biden is sleeping through a disastrous downturn in the economy and pretending that Bidenomics is working. It isn’t Joe! The IBD/TIPP U.S. Economic Optimism Index sank to a 12-year low in October as confidence in the near-term economic outlook crashed to the lowest level in the poll’s history. The survey casts doubt on the Federal Reserve’s justification for turning more hawkish last month: robust consumer spending. The overall IBD/TIPP U.S. Economic Optimism Index dived 6.9 points to 36.3, the lowest since August 2011. Readings below the neutral...

Wasting away again with Bidenomics, code for massive Federal subsidies to green energy donors. And incentives to buy impractical EVs. Imagine in an emergency and your car only goes 200 miles (and then you have to wait for an available charger to come open). Well, the top 1% are doing fine. But the bottom 80% of households by income are seeing rapid deplection of savings to cope with the rising costs of Bidenomics. And then we have shrinking home affordability, now at a record low.

US personal savings are being exhausted as The Fed raises rates to fight inflation. I call this phenomenon “low riding” where consumers are being punished by The Federal Reserve and Biden Administration. Meanwhile, large bank loan volumes are shrinking. With money-market fund assets hitting new highs, and banks’ usage of The Fed’s emergency funds facility at record highs, we wonder how much longer The Fed can keep the dream of rising deposits alive (after last week’s massive NSA inflows). On a seasonally-adjusted basis, The Fed says that total deposits dropped $11BN last week (the first decline in 4 weeks). We...

In a study earlier this year (Abdelrahman and Oliveira 2023), we examined household saving patterns since the onset of the pandemic recession. Our study showed that households rapidly accumulated unprecedented levels of excess savings—defined as the difference between actual savings and the pre-recession trend—relative to previous recessions. Our analysis suggested that some $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion in total accumulated excess savings remained in the aggregate economy by March 2023. Since then, data revisions show noticeable changes in household disposable income and consumption, while new data releases indicate that consumer spending picked up in the second quarter. Our updated...

The NY Times has published a series of articles today about the transition to renewable energy. The articles (there are three of them) are interesting both for what they say and also for what they reveal about certain assumptions made by the NY Times itself.In an article titled “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think” the authors reveal that red states are embracing new technology, not because they are desperate for AOC’s approval but because it makes sense financially.Tulsa, a former boomtown once known as the “Oil Capital of the World” where the minor league baseball team...

Investors throughout the U.S. “are being held hostage by those who … don’t want to maximize retirement profits, but rather seek to push a far left social and political agenda,” according to Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich. “Forcing lower returns on Americans who are trying to build a securer financial future is wrong,” Huizenga said on Wednesday at a House Financial Services Committee hearing titled “Protecting Investor Interests: Examining Environmental and Social Policy in Financial Regulation.” “This approach undermines traditional and, frankly, legal government structures and has turned our financial system into a political battlefield.” “But I’m here to tell you...

There's something about statistics that gets me energized, even on a weekday! I particularly enjoy comparing myself to others and understanding how I measure up. It's only natural to want to know if you're average or above average. This knowledge helps you gauge your position and serves as a valuable reminder of what the future may hold. As a financial planner, understanding retirement averages like these can truly assist both you and me in planning for the future. So, let me share with you my thoughts on some intriguing figures I recently came across in a Wall Street Journal article...

When Sam Dogen retired at age 34 with a net worth of $3million he vowed never to return to his grueling job in investment banking. As a pioneer of the FIRE - financial independence, retire early - movement, he had meticulously planned for 13 years to ensure he had a passive income of $80,000 a year in retirement. But a decade later, Dogen, now 45, is being forced to join the ranks of the unretired. Amid soaring inflation and rising costs, he needs to go back to work to be able to afford his kids' college tuition, which he has...

My questions: 1--Can you direct deposit checks? 2--Is there regulation "D" applied? 3--How do you get cash? 4--Can you pay bills from there? Apple Card Savings Account, a new integration for the Wallet app first announced back in October, is now available with an impressive 4.15% annual percentage rate. Head below for all the details you need to know. In a press release on Monday, Apple announced that Apple Card Savings Account is now available via the Wallet app. It offers a high-yield APY of 4.15%, which is “more than 10 times the national average. There are no fees, no...

Progressive Democrats pushing the ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda are focused on controlling the private decisions and beliefs of millions of Americans. Worse, they are increasingly willing to lie about what ESG is in order to gaslight Americans into compliance, or at least apathy toward this massive scheme. Take Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who recently penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed with this headline, "Republicans Ought to Be All for ESG." Schumer was expressing his support for a recent Labor Department rule allowing retirement fund managers to use workers’ savings to advance leftist political goals. Before rounding...

As we are painfully aware, inflation is still high at 7.1% Year-over-year (YoY). To cope with inflation, consumers have been gutting their savings and increasing their use of credit. In November, consumer credit increased 7.9% YoY while personal savings fell -64.8% YoY. The good news? Inflation month-over-month is expected to be 0% tomorrow. So, inflation will be gone in November?

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates to a higher level and hold them there for longer in order to successfully moderate consumer demand and bring down high inflation given the amount of spare savings households still hold since the pandemic, Kansas City Fed President Esther George said on Tuesday. "The dynamics of this excess saving and the distribution...is a key factor shaping the outlook for output, inflation and certainly for interest rates," George said during an economics conference hosted by the Central Bank of Chile in Santiago. "Higher saving of course can lessen a precautionary...

It seems the strong consumer demand born out of a stay-at-home stimulus-laden pandemic environment is continuing into the end of 2022, and probably 2023 as Federal Reserve data issued Tuesday shows a sharp rise in household debt during the third quarter. What happened: Due to significant increases in credit card usage and mortgage balances, American households increased their debt at the fastest rate in 15 years. Total debt increased by $351 billion for the period of July to September, the largest nominal quarterly increase in 2007, suggesting that the "excess savings" the Fed believed Americans possess has already been spent....

How bad is inflation under Biden? Consumer credit outstanding soared by 8.1% YoY in August as the inflation rate soared to 8.2%. Meanwhile, the personal savings rate YoY cratered to -59.3%. Of course, Biden is his tone-deaf manner told Americans to buy a cheaper brand of bran cereal. What a complete and utter mess under Inflation Joe and Foul Powell (on the prowl).

In addition to the 54% of survey respondents who say they’ve cut back putting money toward their nest egg, 43% have dipped into their retirement savings due to high inflation.