John T. Reed’s news blog

WSJ has another article on protecting your net worth from inflation. It is as dumb as the prior ones. . 1. WSJ seems to have a policy against mentioning the word hyperinflation. The only inflation that they acknowledge is possible is the 1970s-1980s rates in the teens. This may be because they are afraid of being thought kooky or afraid of being blamed for it as a result of having mentioned it. If you SEE the problem, you ARE the problem. 2. WSJ seems incapable of thinking outside the securities-Social Security-treasurys box. Since Social Security and Treasurys are USD-denominated, recommending...

One of the big disconnects between me and the various experts in the book In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio is I take an INSURANCE approach, NOT a yield-optimization approach.  (Those experts are Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Eugene Fama, John Bogle, Myron Scholes, Fischer Black, Robert Merton, Martin Leibowitz, Robert Schiller, Charles Ellis, Jeremy Siegel.) . In insurance, your COSTS are LOW (like a homeowners insurance premium) and your RISK of losing money is very LOW. For example, if you buy gold to hedge against inflation, it will do fine until the inflation ends, which it always does. At that time,...

Every year, I get inquiries about when my next edition of Aggressive Tax Avoidance for Real Estate Investors will come out. It is now in its 20th edition.  . I don’t know. General tax books come out annually because there are always court decisions and new regulations, letter rulings and inflation adjustments to parts of the Internal Revenue Code. I originally thought my book would come out annually and it did for a number of years after it first came out at the beginning of the Reagan Administration. . However, there came a year when there were no new real estate...

In my recent book An American Principal Residence is the Most Advantaged Investment on Earth: Maximize Yours!, I said the CA homestead bankruptcy exemption was $175,000 for 65 or older. To my surprise, I recently learned that it is now $600,000 for all ages.  California's System 1 homestead exemption in the California Code of Civil Procedure § § 704.710, 704.720, and 704.730. CA’s new homestead bankruptcy exemption is the HIGHEST IN THE NATION other than the seven states and DC that have no dollar limit at all. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homestead-exemptions-by-state  State homestead bankruptcy exemption A homestead bankruptcy exemption says if you go...

Today's WSJ has an article titled "Finding New Ways To Beat Inflation." I'll save you the trouble of reading it. It says to scrimp. . I wrote a whole book on that subject without ever advising readers to simply cut back on consumption. The average Venezuelan has lost 24 pounds due to hyperinflation there. That is the precise definition of scrimping. People die from scrimping. . My advice roughly speaking is to convert USD into non-USD assets like real estate, coins, foreign currency, long-shelf food, milder climate location to minimize heating and air-conditioning inflation, borrow mortgages. The last one enables...