Juggling Dynamite

13 years into a secular bear in the stock market, with interest rates at 100 year lows–poor saving rates, stubborn debt and reckless financial advice–all have taken their toll on the longevity of retirement income just as drugs are keeping people alive well into their 80’s. This man thinks he should have gotten financial advice earlier…given the sales-driven focus of most financial advisers and investment firms…it is unlikely that would have helped him.

At the height of his corporate career Tom Palome was a vice president at Oral-B Laboratories, earning a salary in the low six-figures. Today the 77-year-old works two part-time jobs, at about $10 an hour, to support his retired lifestyle. Bloomberg’s Emmitt Henry reports.Here is a direct video link.

Markets that see volume of transactions evaporate on up days and surge on down days have traditionally offered a warning sign to invested capital. The price action on Friday for the Canadian TSX 60 (here captured in the XIU) is just one of several red flags to anyone who is paying attention to downside risk. Red bars at bottom of this chart (in red oval) denote selling pressure and should be compared with the grey bars of buying pressure shown here on the other trading days year to date.

Source: Cory Venable, CMT, Venable Park Investment Counsel Inc.

When Dateline visited China’s vast empty cities in 2011, it became one of our most popular stories ever with over three million views online.

So are the uninhabited towns now bustling with residents? And is the building of unwanted homes and businesses still continuing?

Adrian Brown returns to China for Dateline to answer those questions… and finds 20 new cities are taking shape in this year alone.

There’s already a near deserted replica of Paris complete with its own Eiffel Tower and Champs Elysees, while even levelling a range of 700 mountains can’t stand in the way of another vast new conurbation…all good urban forward planning or an economic bubble that’s about to burst? Here is a direct video link.