March 20, 2023 - You may not have noticed it but the FED just blinked on interest rate hikes. Actually, they just panicked. No matter what happens at the FED meeting Wednesday - and they are likely to raise rates again by 25 basis points - their action to stem a massive bank collapse will ensure that inflation continues to rise. So what are they doing? In simple terms, they're going to print more money.

March 17, 2023 - About ten days ago, Silicon Valley Bank experienced a bank run. $42 Billion was withdrawn from the bank in less than 48 hours, causing the bank to become insolvent and forcing regulators to take the bank over one week ago today. For most of last weekend, it was unknown whether or not remaining depositors would be made whole by the government or lose most of their funds. But late last Sunday, it was made clear that depositors would be able to get their money and the White House, the FED and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen all announced that taxpayers wouldn't be footing the bill. That may not be the largest lie ever told but it certainly ranks among them.

March 11, 2023 - There is a very good chance that you had never heard about Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) until yesterday. After all, they only had 18 branches in the United States and most of their business was in the tech industry. But a series of events that began early this week resulted in a run on what was the 16th largest bank in the country based on value. Depositors withdrew roughly $42 Billion in funds over a two-day time frame, leaving the bank insolvent. And on Friday morning the federal government was forced to take the bank over and close its doors. It is the 2nd largest bank failure in US history. It's created a financial mess for companies here in the United States and abroad, and it could lead to some significant layoffs in the next few days.

March 9, 2023 - US household credit card debt has hit a record high of nearly $931 Billion according to a new report from TransUnion. That's an increase of 18.5% when compared to 2021. At the present rate of debt increase, Americans will owe more than $1 Trillion dollars of credit card debt by the end of this year.

February 27, 2023 - There is no doubt that technology can add a lot of convenience to our lives, but at what cost? This has been a debate for many years now and it has been complicated by a lack of clarity on the part of US regulators. For instance, you buy a new cell phone and while you may own the phone, you don't own all of the data that it is generating. That's something that regulators should have put an end to in the early 2000's.Addressing it today would be much more complicated because it isn't just your phone that is tracking you.

February 21, 2023 - Over the past couple of months we've run a number of stories on the chatbot ChatGPT. In the event you unfamiliar with the platform, ChatGPT is an AI (artificial intelligence) powered chatbot that has the ability to answer questions asked of it in a concise manner; much like having a conversation with another person. Most recently, we conducted a short interview with the bot on matters of privacy, and I've personally made no secret of the fact that I've begun using the service on a fairly regular basis. So I wasn't really surprised that I started getting solicitations to download an app that appeared to be from ChatGPT. But when I took a closer look at the app, it was actually from China.

February 18, 2023 - In case you haven't been paying attention, ChatGPT has become all the rage. It's an AI based application that can take a question that you ask it and construct an answer that you would think came from another human being. The technology behind it is also now being used by Microsoft's Bing search engine. And while AI holds a lot of promise at this point, it also has a dark side. And part of that includes the erosion of personal privacy. So we decided to conduct an interview with ChatGPT to find out how it thinks privacy will be impacted.

February 15, 2023 - A new study from Duke University states that people's mental health data is being sold to pretty much anyone who wants it. Moreover, the way that the data is being collected and sold appears to be perfectly legal. The data includes conditions and prescribed drug information. How can that be?