Savers and investors alike need to begin to prepare their portfolios for interest rate rises against a backdrop of crisis-triggering debt levels and unproductive economies. Here's how.

The media is full of stories claiming that lower tax rates will cause a huge and damaging increase in the federal deficit and will fail to stimulate the economy. Here are 10 charts which show that those claims are not backed by historical experience.

The Federal Reserve has decided to leave its target interest rate unchanged at a range of 0.25% - 0.5% while suggesting that a hike later in the year was very likely. This article presents the differing points of view of two former Fed officials as to whether it was the right call or not.

Although low to negative interest rates could persist for years, odds are the current low-yield craze won’t last a full 30 years. Therefore, at some point down the road, today’s buyers of 30-year bonds will likely wish they had parked some of their savings in physical precious metals instead.

A number of officials from the central bank have already suggested that two rate rises are possible this year, and now economists and investors assessing the economic data are also leaning in favor of two hikes. The quid pro quo for rising interest rates is a strengthening US Dollar Index and if that does indeed happen then it would really hammer Wall Street equities – especially high-yielding dividend stocks.

This week the Bank of England cut its interest rate and introduced a package of measures designed to provide additional monetary stimulus. What does it imply for the gold market?

The idea is to create the mother or grandfather of all bubbles. When the masses decide to speculate there will be so much money flowing into the markets that all assets including gold will fly; some will soar to the moon, some to the sun and some possibly to the next galaxy.

Differences in U.S. state taxes result in residents paying considerably more or less than their neighbors in other states. Here is a ranking of the most & least burdensome tax rates by state and the District of Columbia.

The US Federal Reserve has been increasingly hinting that it would raise its policy rate at its next meeting, which is scheduled for December but their communications have been sloppy, erratic and contradictory. To get a sense of where the Fed might go a closer look at some of the key underlying economic forces, however, it is clear that there are 5 key reasons that the Fed is unlikely to raise rates anytime soon.

This article addresses what the mainstream press has been ignoring, and why the Fed is reluctant to raise interest rates.