On July 18, 2013, the City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It is the largest municipality in the U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. The filing also significant because its debt estimated at $18 to 20 billion, way more than the bankruptcy filing by the Jefferson County, Alabama in 2011 at $4 billion. […]

In July 2013, Croatia is celebrating its entry into the European Union (EU). It will be the 28th EU member and the third poorest country in the EU after Bulgaria and Romania. It will also be the EU expansion since 2007 when it last admitted Bulgaria and Romania. Croatia became an independent country in 1991 […]

After serving as the Chairman of the President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, Ben Shalom Bernanke became the Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve on February 1, 2006 replacing four-term Fed Chair Alan Greenspan who served for four Presidents. Before joining the Feds, Bernanke was a tenured professor and the Chair of […]

On May 10, 2013, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued an apology for closely scrutinizing of those applications that included “Tea Party” and other conservative search terms for tax-exempt status four years ago. The news dominated the newspapers, the Internet and the U.S. politics. The U.S. Congress held a televised hearing on the subject of […]

More than 30-years old but hardly used by the masses, 3D printing technology dominated the Internet as well as news media recently due to a group known as Defense Distributed publishing a blue print online to make a gun. According to the news media and the Internet, one person even fired a shot using a […]

The Congress and the President were quick to fix the furlough of Air Traffic Controllers which caused flight delays for travelling public for a short period of time. However, much larger issue still remains due to the sequestration that went into effect as of March 1, 2013. Much larger impacts due to across-the-board spending cuts […]

The across-the-board U.S. Federal budget cuts better known as sequester took place on March 1, 2013.  It didn’t take too long for people to notice and feel the effect.  From airports to border crossings, impact will spread into many parts of our daily lives in coming months. Some worry that the impact will affect the […]

Many who turn 62 are eager to apply for Social Security benefits because it will pay for rest of your life.  Many think that total lifetime benefits will be the same whether you start at age 62 or delay until 70.  Not so fast.  Consider some of the pitfalls of starting Social Security early and […]

By now we all have heard about the looming “Fiscal Cliff”.  If President Obama and the Congress failed to act, a series of serious budget provisions including tax increases and spending cuts will go into effect as of January 1, 2013.  The Bush era tax cuts will expire and every one’s tax rates will go […]

The Palo Alto, California based hardware giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) just announced that it is taking an $8.8 billion accounting write-off for the acquisition of British software giant Autonomy they bought in the summer of 2011 for $10.3 billion.  Due to the size of the acquisition two lawyers and several financial institutions assisted HP to make […]