How can you construct a financial investment strategy to protect yourself … yet still get the growth to ensure a solid financial future and comfortable retirement during these turbulent times? By building an investing safety net that gives you the gains needed for growth – though more modest than those of past years – but protection against the downside. So when turbulence strikes again – and it will – you won’t re-live the financial nightmares of recent years when portfolios and 401Ks were devastated. Jim Glassman provides the specifics you need for shrewd asset allocation, specifically: Reduce stock ownership. For those stocks you do own, ensure they meet one of these criteria: pay dividends; are low-priced and from industries of the future; or companies based in aspiring nations such as India, Brazil and China. Make a substantial investment in bonds, especially US Treasury TIPS bonds and corporate bonds Hedge against decline by owning a bear fund that shorts the US economy. Own funds based on other currencies, thus protecting yourself against the potential declining value of the US dollar. And consider derivatives. Yes, derivatives! Specific stock, bond and fund recommendations and ample portfolios then provide the starter ideas for properly balancing a portfolio. And the 5 principles and 18 specific rules of “the new rule book” help keep “animal spirits” in check when fads and news flashes provide the temptation to make rash investing decisions that will be quickly regretted.

At the center of a terrorized society buttressed by oppressive police protection and surveillance is the Tolm family, Fritz, the father, the elected head of the Association, and the children, part of the counter-culture.

The new novel in the transporting New York Times bestselling Inspector Montalbano mystery series Vigàta is bustling as the new filming location for a Swedish television series set in 1950. In the production frenzy, the director asks the locals to track down movies and vintage photos to faithfully recreate the air of Vigata in that time. Engineer Ernesto Sabatello, while rummaging in the attic of his house, finds some films shot by his father from 1958 to 1963, always on the same day, March 27 and always the same shot; the outside wall of a country house. Montalbano hears the story, and intrigued by the mystery of it, begins to investigate its meaning. Meanwhile, a middle school is threatened by a group of armed men, and a closer look at the situation finds Montalbano looking into the students themselves and finally delving into the world of social media.

The advent of the internet has been one of the most significant technological developments in history. In this thought-provoking and ground-breaking work David Eagleman, author of international bestseller Sum, presents six ways in which the net saves us from major existential threats: pandemics, poor information flow, natural disasters, political corruption, resource depletion and economic meltdown.

America's Health Care Safety Net explains how competition and cost issues in today's health care marketplace are posing major challenges to continued access to care for America's poor and uninsured. At a time when policymakers and providers are urgently seeking guidance, the committee recommends concrete strategies for maintaining the viability of the safety netâ€"with innovative approaches to building public attention, developing better tools for tracking the problem, and designing effective interventions. This book examines the health care safety net from the perspectives of key providers and the populations they serve, including: Components of the safety netâ€"public hospitals, community clinics, local health departments, and federal and state programs. Mounting pressures on the systemâ€"rising numbers of uninsured patients, decline in Medicaid eligibility due to welfare reform, increasing health care access barriers for minority and immigrant populations, and more. Specific consequences for providers and their patients from the competitive, managed care environmentâ€"detailing the evolution and impact of Medicaid managed care. Key issues highlighted in four populationsâ€"children with special needs, people with serious mental illness, people with HIV/AIDS, and the homeless.

A contemporary master of short fiction dives into the undercurrents of middle-class American life in these eleven arresting, often mesmerizing stories.

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An overview of the role played by federalism in anti-poverty policy and in poverty law.

This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.

In one of the most provocative books ever published on America's social welfare system, economist Janet Currie argues that the modern social safety net is under attack. Unlike most books about antipoverty programs, Currie trains her focus not on cash welfare, which accounts for a small and shrinking share of federal expenditures on poor families with children, but on the staples of today's American welfare system: Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, WIC, and public housing. These programs, Currie maintains, form an effective, if largely invisible and haphazard safety net, and yet they are the very programs most vulnerable to political attack and misunderstanding. This book highlights both the importance and the fragility of this safety net, arguing that, while not perfect, it is essential to fighting poverty. Currie demonstrates how America's safety net is threatened by growing budget deficits and by an erroneous public belief that antipoverty programs for children do not work and are riddled with fraud. By unearthing new empirical data, Currie makes the case that social programs for families with children are actually remarkably effective. She takes her argument one step further by offering specific reforms--detailed in each chapter--for improving these programs even more. The book concludes with an overview of an integrated safety net that would fight poverty more effectively and prevent children from slipping through holes in the net. (For example, Currie recommends the implementation of a benefit "debit card" that would provide benefits with less administrative burden on the recipient.) A complement to books such as Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling Nickel and Dimed, which document the personal struggles of the working poor, The Invisible Safety Net provides a big-picture look at the kind of programs and solutions that would help ease those struggles. Comprehensive and authoritative, it will prompt a major reexamination of the current thinking on improving the lives of needy Americans.