Let’s say you need someone to help you do something really important. Would you settle for someone who just Googled it? Would you look for someone with the right professional license? Or would you hold out for the guy who literally wrote the book on whatever it is you need to do? Expertise doesn’t guarantee success: great… Read More

Back in 1621, a group of hardy Pilgrims sat down for a three-day festival of thanksgiving to celebrate surviving plague, starvation, cold, scurvy, Indian attack, and all the other obstacles that made life in the “new world” so delightful. They feasted on game birds, flint corn, venison, eels, shellfish, and native vegetables including beans, turnips,… Read More

Next week brings us the most quintessentially American of all holidays. It’s the one we wait for all year, the one that truly captures those ideals that bind us together as a nation, and the one that bridges the cultural and political gaps that threaten to tear us apart. We’re talking, of course, about Black… Read More

An Outsider’s Perspective Financial services professionals enjoy debating all sorts of technical questions in the course of their business. Can active management add alpha? Which custodian offers the best service? Which target market offers the best long-term business opportunity? For the most part, these are friendly debates, like what you’d hear at your college roommate’s… Read More

On Monday, Veterans Day commemorated those brave and selfless Americans who’ve served in our military. We honor them with History Channel specials, parades, and one-day-only sales on chicken sandwiches and big-screen TVs. Occasionally, we even let the occasion guilt us into trying to do a better job of taking care of them in more tangible… Read More

Turn the dial on the Wayback Machine to 1849, and join us in California, where “there’s gold in them thar hills!” Two kinds of people are getting fabulously rich. Obviously, there are the prospectors, grabbing their shovels and racing for the latest strike. Then there are the shovel sellers getting rich on the prospector’s dreams.… Read More

Twenty years ago, sci-fi fans geeked out to a new thriller called The Matrix following a dystopian vein established in Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Terminator. It starred Keanu Reeves as “Neo” and Laurence Fishburne as “Morpheus”: freedom fighters in a world where machines have trapped humanity in a computer-generated dreamscape called the Matrix,… Read More

October is chock-full of obscure holidays and commemorations. October 3 is National Boyfriend Day. October 15 — the real personal tax filing deadline — is National Grouch Day. (Coincidence? We think not.) October 19 serves up National Seafood Bisque Day (which sounds a lot tastier than October 25, National Greasy Food Day). Then there’s October 21, National… Read More

In the criminal justice system, tax-based offenses aren’t considered especially heinous . . . but they still cost the government a ton of money. In field offices throughout the country, the dedicated Special Agents who investigate these expensive felonies are members of an elite squad known as IRS Criminal Investigation. (They’re also the only IRS… Read More

Last weekend, Hollywood made history. Disney’s three-hour popcorn epic, Avengers: Endgame sent box-office records scrambling in panic, grossing $350 million here in the U.S. And $330 million in China. And $600 million more in another 43 countries. It’s the first movie to top a billion dollars in its opening weekend. Endgame still has a long way to go before… Read More