Remember Beanie Babies? In the late 1990s, Beanie Baby mania swept the country, with amateur collectors searching frantically at every card shop and kids store to find the latest beanie. Many turned to online stores and eBay, looking for the Beanie Baby that would make them enough money to retire or send their kids to college.
In This Issue:
"History never repeats itself, but the kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends." Mark Twain in the introduction to The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.
Created as a result of the Great Depression, The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt in 1935; mainly due to the rise in poverty of the nation’s elderly population. The act was designed to provide retired workers ages 65 and older with a continuing income after retirement.
The annual meeting is rescheduled to sometime later this quarter and the family reunion is sometime next summer, but like certain holidays and your birthday you know you can always count on a few specific dates. It’s reassuring. One such day is Tax Day, AKA April 15. Yet, unlike a birthday this looming deadline tends to sneak up on you in the least enjoyable way.
We all have our own unique way of handling our finances. While some of us are natural born savers, others may have a hard time making it to the next pay cheque. Fortunately, most of us fall somewhere in-between, putting away money at times, while making frivolous purchases at other times.
In yesterday’s note (click here to review) we examined the Census Bureau’s data on Retail Sales. In short, they were weak. The headline tally declined 1.2 percent (the largest drop in nine years), and minus signs accompanied most of the components.
As you probably know, the longest government shutdown in the history of the United States recently ended.1 During the shutdown, many government employees were furloughed or required to work without pay, with some government services temporarily halted or scaled back.
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