Things you should know – Consolidated best-practice tips that should be part of your common knowledge

by yes_its_him A higher tax bracket due to a raise doesn’t offset the whole raise, since the higher rate applies only to the amount in the new bracket. (You might lose some income-limited deductions, though.) Likewise, all employment income goes in one bucket to determine tax liability. Your overtime / bonus is taxed the same … Read more

Student Loan Interest Reduction

For the first time in three years, the interest rates on Federal student loans will decrease anywhere from seven to ten percent depending on the loan type. This will take effect for new Federal student loan borrowers after July 1, 2019. Federal student loans are typically the lowest cost borrowing option for students, and these interest … Read more

Was Blue Apron the worst IPO ever?

Shares of meal-kit delivery company Blue Apron declined below $1 this week for the first time, making it one of the worst well-known IPOs of recent years. The company went public in a deal that valued the start-up at $10 per share and close to $2 billion in June 2017. There were warning signs: the … Read more

Chart of tech companies’ valuations from seed to IPO, dot-com boom to now

Chart: https://imgur.com/iEhmmxd Source with a lot of interesting charts: Uber Is Going Public: How Today’s Tech I.P.O.s Differ From the Dot-Com Boom Not since the dot-com boom have so many richly valued tech companies gone public in such short succession: Lyft and Pinterest are now trading shares, and soon Slack, WeWork and Palantir are expected to follow. … Read more

In July, I Stuck My Neck Out to See a Housing Market Turning Point in San Francisco Bay Area’s Sonoma County: Here’s an Update on My Neck

Wolf Richter wolfstreet.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter Now even the surface of the market has softened, not just the underlying dynamics. Back in August 2018, I stuck my neck out and said that the housing market in Sonoma County in the San Francisco Bay Area had experienced a turning point in July, based on data and boots-on-the-ground observations by … Read more

New Housing Data Warns The Era Of Double-Digit Home Price Gains Is Over

via Zerohedge: Following last month’s disastrous starts and permits data, Tuesday’s release of the S&P/Case–Shiller US National Home Price Index hinted at a nasty slowdown in all 20 metropolitan regions the index tracks, indicating that the era of double-digit growth is coming to an end. Case-Shiller’s 20-City Composite expanded at just 3.00% YoY in January (just … Read more

Unrealistically Great Expectations

by Charles Hugh-Smith Our expectations have continued ever higher even as the pie is shrinking.. Let’s see if we can tie together four social dynamics: the elite college admissions scandal, the decline in social mobility, the rising sense of entitlement and the unrealistically ‘great expectations’ of many Americans. As many have noted, the nation’s financial and … Read more

Why The US Has No High-Speed Rail

China has the world’s fastest and largest high-speed rail network — more than 19,000 miles, the vast majority of which was built in the past decade. Japan’s bullet trains can reach nearly 200 miles per hour and date to the 1960s. They have moved more than 9 billion people without a single passenger causality. casualty … Read more

These Infectious Diseases From Animals Are Serious Health Threats

By Dagny Taggart Every year, tens of thousands of Americans get sick from zoonotic diseases. Also known as zoonoses, these are infectious diseases that are spread between animals and people. Zoonotic diseases are caused by harmful microbes like viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi. They can cause many different types of illnesses in people and animals … Read more

RADICAL BREXIT SOLUTION: Ignore the euros, fire May, set a General Election date

by John Ward Force the responsibility for a clear Brexit decision back where it belongs: onto a reconfigured Parliament. ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ Since 2016, we have had a Parliament based on lies: about how David Cameron departed, about why Theresa May called the last Election, about honouring a Referendum, about a Withdrawal Agreement dictated by the Unelected State, … Read more

Tyson Foods now has to use X-ray metal detectors to screen for ‘fragments’ in its processed chicken

Have Tyson’s chicken strips jumped the shard? Tyson Foods Inc. TSN, +0.44% the producer of processed meats, will recall nearly 12 million pounds of frozen, ready-to-eat chicken strip products due to metal contamination concerns, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said over the weekend. The recall was expanded from a recall of 70,000 pounds (or 35 tons) of chicken … Read more