I wanted to provide a forum dedicated specifically to the interaction between increasing energy prices (whether by unrest in the Middle East or the phenomenon of "peak oil"), exponential world population growth at some point reaching the carrying capacity governed by our energy (and hence ...

One final thing, without any guns, all above supplies will soon belong to your neighbors (or others who DO have guns) in a crisis, likely just about the time they are needed most. Well hell yeah! And even better, with enough guns and ammo you don't even need emergency food supplies. You could just ...

Bear Bones, I know you find mentions of MMT stuff anoying but I think it is worth sticking to bonds from currencies that are free floating and in the countries own currency. So avoid Euro and avoid USD denominated government bonds from EM countries as that is where default risk comes in. There are ...

Better to just focus on that when you're giving to charity, in my opinion. The most profound negative impacts that many of us have on the world are through the market signals generated by our consumption (and ownership, in this example), IMO.  Unless you are creating a Bill and Melinda Gates type f...

In such a situation, it's obviously possible to get inflation if the government suddenly starts printing gazillion dollar bills like Zimbabwe did, but when you have financial interests as deeply entrenched in the political process and in setting monetary policy as we do, I just don't see that happe...

I'm not saying that we are definitely going to get a long period of deflation.  What I'm saying is that the conditions that would be necessary for sustained high inflation in the U.S. are more farfetched than many believe. The argument that there will be a general shortage of all commodities in the...

The fact is the world has the oil spigot wide open and what is currently being produced is about all we can do.  New supplies will come online, but the new supplies must outpace the decline rates of existing fields, and this is the race we have been losing for several years in the conventional oil ...

Bearbones, I think the point is that for an advanced wealthy country such as the USA, commodity prices actually do not make up much of final consumer prices. The cost of milling, baking, transporting and selling bread means that the international price of wheat has much less impact on the bread pri...

The question that inflationists always must answer is "where will the consumers get the money to pay higher prices if wages are not rising in lockstep with prices?" In the U.S. there is almost no upward wage pressure across the whole economy because so many other international labor marke...

Two other things:
This is in a taxable account.
The primary goal of a bond fund would be to add volatility uncorrelated with the other asset classes, just as bonds do in the HB PP.

In addition to a US-based HB PP, I am implementing a separate VP with international exposure. Don't ask me why. Just a gut feeling that I should have assets in more than my home country.  This VP is a bit PPesque in that it has cash (some in foreign bank), metals, and some international equity ETFs....

Here's a breakdown of what I'd do if I only wanted to use funds: Stock - VTI, IWV, SPY or IVV Thanks, Craig. Here's more info on the equity ETFs:           ER    Vol VTI    .06  1.9k IWV    .2    .4k SPY    .09  197k  IVV    .09  3.7k So, for me, IWV is out, I guess. How to sort out if the higher t...

When in doubt, always check the literature.  From BLS: Common Misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index: Questions and Answers When the cost of food rises, does the CPI assume that consumers switch to less desired foods, such as substituting hamburger for steak? No. In January 1999, the BLS beg...

Cowboyhat, I realize that things are a bit different in the UK as compared to the US with regard to both higher education costs and healthcare. You've undoubtedly got some fat that could be trimmed, but perhaps not as much as the US.

With regard to health care costs, the question I ask myself is what else should we spend our money on as a society? I can see being interested in getting more value from a health care dollar, or spending health care money more rationally (instead of in the last week of life), but being educated and...

Got your point, TripleB. And I totally agree. I do not think that the average investor can beat the market by picking companies individually, hence indexing. But it is very difficult for the average investor to do socially conscious investing with low costs and low risk of major market deviation. In...

craigr wrote: Honestly, I try to avoid high dividend stocks and funds.

Sounds good. How does one do that and stay with an unadulterated HB PP?

To follow up on Craig's thought, to me prices are not really comparable over more than perhaps a decade. For example, how do you compare prices before and after the invention of telephones, or automobiles, or frozen food, or personal computers? There are periods of incremental change that are somew...

I don't put much validity in the shadow stats stuff. That big of a difference would be obvious to everyone. Its just a graph of the same basket of goods measured in the way it was in 1980, isn't it. And that big a difference may be obvious to quite a few, actually. Unless the CPI heavily weights it...

The shadowstats article says CPI is understated by 7%. I can't help but think this is a gross exaggeration. Could be. But why not exaggerate the last few years too while the author was at it? When I first saw it, I was surprised how flat both lines were. My experience has been one of even more exag...

I like to split my Equities 50-50 between US and International. In doing so, I essentially have 37.25% of my portfolio in non-US assets. Otherwise, I'd only have 25% in non-US Assets (i.e. gold). I'm with you, TripleB, in that I am bullish on international in the long run, particularly the Pacific ...

Interesting. Actually looks like the 2 graphs may be diverging, but too short a period of time to tell much. Here is CPI calculated as it was in 1980. The greatest divergence occurred when the Clinton administration introduced "hedonics," substitution, and "geometric weighting" t...

Sorry if that seemed like kind of a non-answer... we're really playing with a lot of weird what-ifs at this point, and trying to hedge in 8 different directions. Appreciate your time, Moda. That's helpful, and I don't expect an absolute answer. That would be like telling me how each asset class wil...

I think, though, that as long as you 1) shove as much as you can into these accounts, with a healthy dose of Roth for tax-diversification and liquidity, 2) properly diversify those accounts to avoid large losses in the Roth, and 3) keep a heavy weighting of LTT's in tax-deferred accounts in todays ...

The more I am sitting on this, the more I am moving in your direction, Tyler. It may be best not to asymmetrically divide the PP among the accounts but rather to replicate the 4x25 in each. Problem is that if there are unbalanced assets in the tax-deferred account, there could be a draw down to the ...