Link: John Michaelson: The High Costs of Very Low Interest Rates – WSJ.com Article’s about 3 wks old, but worth reading and thinking about.  When rates are low as a form of stimulus, it’s worth considering who’s paying for that stimulus and what their behavior is likely to be.

Link: Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, By Year – Major Provisions in Chronological Order The government’s Healthcare.gov site is very helpful.  There’s some great information and they’ve been working hard on making it easy to navigate and useful.

Link: John C. Bogle: On Mutual Funds, Cheaper Is Better – WSJ.com In mutual funds – and investing – costs matter.  They matter a lot.  Bogle’s been saying so for decades.  Lots of other folks, myself included, have been saying so for many years.  Even Morningstar now says that costs are a better indicator than […]

Link: Arnold Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future – WSJ.com Should be required reading.  A keyword, however, which wasn’t highlighted enough in my opinion is *unfunded*.  There’s nothing wrong with us giving generous benefits or pensions to employees — but they must be paid for at the time they are promised or earned.  This […]

Link: Ross Devol: The Case for Economic Optimism – WSJ.com Some important observations on the state of our economy, and the cycle of recovery. I don’t necessarily agree with all his policy prescriptions, but they are all worth reading and considering.

Link: WSJ – Unfunded Public Pensions – the Next Quagmire

Link: U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff – Bloomberg

This isn’t really news to anyone who’s been following funds or the literature.  But it’s nice that there’s a recent study which reassures us that the common-sense idea that you get to keep more if you pay less is, in fact, true. From Morningstar: http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=347327 How Expense Ratios and Star Ratings Predict Success We test […]

Link: NYTimes – photos on the web may reveal your location Cameras may now have GPS and embed geotags in photos. For privacy purposes you may sometimes want to disable that. Mainly a potential issue for users of iPhones.

Link: Daring Fireball: An Ode to DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox One of the first News and Notes articles I wrote for MeyersMoney.com was a reminder to everyone to back up their computer hard drives.  It’s not strictly financial advice, but it’s important advice nonetheless.  Just do it.  Find a backup solution which works for the […]