For those that are interested about political thought, economics, and what role government should play in our lives, Learnliberty.org has an excellent video series on all sorts of topics. Some are only a few minutes long and easy to digest. I highly recommend them. http://www.learnliberty.org/ BIG ...

I would definitely expect money market funds to be unsafe. I can't imagine preferring one to a high-yield savings account to hold cash in, if I had no other choices. If you're going to take that kind of risk, at least avoid the expense ratios, capital gains taxation, and lower interest rates of MM f...

I'm getting ready to add some more money to my fledgling PP and thinking about what my monthly contribution strategy will look like. It's all in a taxable account, but 3 out of four of the ETFs are commission-free. I'm considering putting everything into whichever asset is lagging when I make the co...

FWIW, my opinion on this used to be pretty close to moda's, but I'm far more skeptical now. My view of the trustworthiness of people with power can be summarized in a quote from Dr. Cox in Scrubs: "People aren't chocolates. Do you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard coated bastards wi...

MT, Given that observation what's your opinion on the following two matters: 1) Should we, as a population, try to get our government to pursue ever-more deadly & "sneaky" weaponry as a defensive tool, given your view that it eventually could & likely will be used on us?  At what ...

Use it and love it. I feel like it's better for tracking credit and debit card transactions since its investment module is pretty basic, but it's definitely an excellent tool to add to your toolbox.

Finally, the dialogue's conclusion echos a worry I have myself; that the current system requires prudent regulations, but that such things are impossible in the real world due to the nature of politicians. I sometimes feel like MMR is a bit naive in its call for "good government". The cyn...

Sometimes I wonder when doctors are going to stop accepting Medicare or even insurance at all. I'd imagine any clinic that offered up a big table of prices for every service so that people knew what they were going to pay would do fairly well for themselves. They could cut out the entire billing, in...

Nobody should have to labor under the delusion that we have anything approximating a free-market in health care, and articles like this are great for pointing it out.

Gumby's dialogue is hilarious and totally on-point, but as a former Austrian myself, I don't think we need to throw it all out. Austrian economics still has a number of very important observations, such as the importance of real production and the destabilizing effects of excessive debt. It also mak...

At the risk of having my libertarian card seized and shredded I agree with both the preceding suggestions. The really huge banks need to be broken up and Glass Steagal should be reinstated. I too am a Libertarian, but reinstating Glass-Steagall would only be an affront to liberty if we actually had...

It's not just millionaires, even very small accounts which use to be easy to setup at an overseas bank has become very difficult for Americans domiciled in the US especially. Swiss banks won't even talk to you any more and account minimums have gone through the roof for Swiss intermediary services ...

Honestly, if you want to prepare for an economic collapse, what you need is food, water, fuel, guns, ammunition, solar panels, a small farm, a house with thick bulletproof earthen walls, and close-by family and neighbors you trust. I'm not sure how useful I'd see silver being. I think that in a tota...

I find it difficult to believe that other PP investors do not experience similar visceral emotions when the portfolio declines over a time period (2-5 days or more). Have others bought into the PP philosophy enough to see declines and not have any doubt? I realize that I have an emotional tie to mo...

Or is the advantage instead that in a rising interest rate environment, the LTTs would let you take advantage of the higher rates faster due to the shorter maturity dates? I'd imagine that a fund of STTs would recover the hit to NAV caused by the rising rates faster than an LTTs fund, and it would a...

EDV is a lot more volatile than TLT, which is what I'm using. A long-term graph of TLT against SHY actually doesn't look quite so bad. It's rarely underperforming SHY, and TLT currently has a dividend yield five times higher, which I'd imagine helps to offset the possible short-term losses you could...

So we know that in a debt-based monetary system bonds are cash... why bother holding short-term treasuries in the cash portion; why not just go with the long-term treasuries instead? The markets for both are highly liquid and you shouldn't have any trouble selling your bonds to redeem them for actua...

Ouch. Do they describe the reason for these poor returns?

Okay, so I've finally started my PP! The balance is pretty small right now, so I opted to go with ETFs for the time being until I can afford to directly own a decent quantity of actual bonds and physical gold. So far I've gone for the standard 25% mix with TLT, IAU, and SHY (I feel like I understand...

Quite simply, tax money flowed into the Treasury's account at the Fed and then right back out again as expenditures.  So I repeat my extremely simple request -- explain how this is a "deletion". You have still not supported your assertion that the Treasury "spends money into existenc...

Okay, so base money is just printed dollars (or conjured-up electronic funds)? And if base money and government-debt-money both serve as a means for the private sector to save, what's the point of the government selling bonds, other than to give the banks (and people like us) seemingly risk-free ass...

Okay, so I have some more questions about MMT/how the world actually works: 1. (probably an easy one) If a sovereign government that can print its own currency sells bonds instead of creating unbacked currency, isn't it a net wash for the supply of base money since a corresponding liability has been...

In a non-government setting, what happens to the "wealth gap"?  Would this not lead to revolutions and a more intense version of Occupy Wall Street?  Would we now have a plutocracy (or do we already have that?)? I have a hard time seeing how a society can function without a leadership gro...

MG, You still haven't convinced me that ANY government whatsoever is legitimate given the reasoning that our current government is not legitimate because coercion is involved.  If a democracy isn't legitimate, how the hell is a bunch of rich white men coming together deciding what the gov't should ...

No government can devise chains strong enough to bind its own hands in the future. This elusive quest for a constitution powerful enough to restrain a government can only end in failure. The constitution is just a piece of paper. We can be outraged all we want when judges interpret it in ways we don...