Greetings once again from beautiful downtown New Berlin! I suppose we’re still 8 to 10 weeks away from signs of Spring, so we may as well enjoy the Winter – it’s not like we have much choice! So scoot up close to the fire, tune in the basketball game on the old Philco, and pop some corn. Get out a good book, and while away the evening, listening outside to “the sweep of easy wind on downy flake”.
Here we are, halfway through January of this new year of 2009, we still haven’t seen any relevant direction for the markets – it seems like just when things start to improve, the next day we give all our gains back. Unfortunately, we may be in for just such a market for a little while to come. The good news is that this sort of market doesn’t regularly precipitate the kind of free fall that we saw last quarter, and participation in the market does bring about the benefit of dividend earnings, so it’s not all bad.
This month’s article is about what we can learn from the Madoff Ponzi scheme that was unearthed last month. Hopefully you’ll never have to know what to do when confronted by such a scam, but if you do, maybe the lessons from the article can help to guide you.
Following up on my article from last month, another thing you can do online is to read this newsletter, along with back issues and lots of other online articles I’ve written. Just click on this link to access the articles. And you can still follow me at twitter.com/BlankenshipFP if you like!
Click the link to pick up a copy of An IRA Owner's Manual or if you'd prefer the Kindle version (and let's face it, ALL the cool kids do!), you can find that at this Kindle version link.
I can learn from you, you can learn from me - please leave your comments and links!Jim Blankenship, CFP®, EA, is an expert in personal retirement, IRAs, and tax issues, with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. Read more from this author
My other book, 
And if you've come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed "advisor's advisor".