Obamacare rolls on

Adjunct professors, always a leftie Obamunist bunch, find their hours cut due to Obamacare.

Former Dem staffer who helped inflict Obamacare on America finds herself victim of... Obamacare!

The Schadenfreude alone almost makes Obamacare worth it.

Is Dave Ramsey right?

I'm a regular listener of the Dave Ramsey Show, the radio advice show that's all about getting out of debt.

Ramsey's recurring spiel is to live on rice and beans until you have all your debt paid off, then pay cash for everything, invest in growth mutual funds, and give generously to charity. So far, so good.

But there are a few details with which I take issue:

1) 401(k) match: Ramsey recommends not saving or investing at all beyond a $1000 emergency reserve until you have paid off all of your non-mortgage debt. This includes 401(k)s. This is horrible advice to forgo maximizing your 401(k) up to the company match amount. You're giving up free money, an instant 100% return. You'd even be better off taking the match, then doing an early withdrawal of your contribution and paying taxes and penalties, and using that money to pay down your debt. Not that I'd recommend that.

2) Mortgages: Ramsey recommends only using 15-year fixed-rate mortgages with payments equal to or less than 25% of take-home pay, if not paying cash outright. While a noble goal, this is highly unrealistic in a world where house prices are set by other buyers paying 40% or more of income on 30-year mortgages. I'm all for paying cash for a house in San Diego where median home prices are over $400,000, but then I'm all for regular guys getting laid by supermodels too.

Let's say you have a household income of $100,000, far above the San Diego median of $60,000. Your take-home pay after taxes and other deductions is about $5600 a month, if you don't contribute anything at all to a 401(k). 25% of that is $1400 a month, which will service a $200,000 loan for 15 years at 3.25%. You've got a well above average income, but you can afford only half of an average house. Most Ramsey followers in expensive markets like California would have to be permanent renters at least until late in their careers, even though early home ownership has historically been a pretty significant contributor to household wealth.

3) Gold: Ramsey has been saying for years, since gold was way below $1000, not to buy gold. That's horrible advice, as gold has equity-like returns with great diversification properties because it is generally uncorrelated with equities and bonds. It is financial malpractice not to have at least a small allocation to gold, especially now with stocks at record highs and gold far below its Fed balance sheet fair value.

Obamacare Web 2.0: latest iteration lies to public about cost of Obamacare

CBS News:

CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's website costs $360, more than 50 percent higher. The difference: Blue Cross and Blue Shield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.

The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634.

Gold for the long run

In an otherwise sensible post, Graham Summers' Phoenix Capital Research makes this erroneous claim.

By the way, I continue to hear how great the Fed is for stocks. However, since we were taken off the Gold standard Gold has outperformed stocks dramatically. In fact the only period in which stocks outperformed Gold as an asset class was the Tech Bubble.

They are flat wrong. President Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971. Prior to that event, gold averaged $41 in July 1971. Gold closed September 2013 at $1332. That's an 8.6% annualized return.

The S&P 500 returned 10.2% or 10.3% compounded over that time through September 2013, depending what day you mark the beginning, clearly beating gold. What is Graham Summers missing? I'd guess he's looking only at price return, and forgetting dividends. Price returns were about 7% over that period, and dividends made up the difference.

As for the second part about "the only period in which stocks outperformed Gold as an asset class was the Tech Bubble," well, that's just sheer nonsense. Stocks outperformed gold by a large margin in 2012, and are delivering another thumping this year. There were obviously many other periods over the past 42 years when stocks outperformed gold, often substantially.

Still, gold is an essential part of any nutritious portfolio, providing equity-like returns with great diversification because it is generally uncorrelated with stocks and bonds. Get thee to your dealer.

Gold is happy

The opposition party has just been vanquished. We'll have permanent deficits and a continually growing entitlement-class majority. The media will eviscerate anyone who even suggests a modicum of fiscal responsibility. And Zimbabwe Janet will be at the printing presses, monetizing as much debt as she needs to keep the Ponzi going.

Gold is happy.

Taste so real...

... you'd swear that vegetables had lips and assholes.

I'm selling my copy of "How Our Laws Are Made," free to all .gov "employees"

If anyone with a .gov needs a copy of "How Our Laws Are Made," published by the Government Printing Office, contact me and I will scan it for you.

57 pages, staple-bound, full of typical government BS that you tools can't seem to understand. I received this for attending the 2011 Spring meeting of Council with the American Institute of CPAs, when thousands of CPAs around the country attacked the Hill to rub elbows with Senators and Representatives for the greater good of the profession.

This edition is 2007, revised and updated from the John V. Sullivan version.

Get it while it's hot, clearly some of you dillweeds in Washington need it!