Investors have long known that December and January are among the best months for stocks. Most investors know why, too: late in the year, it's possible to sell losing stocks in order to shelter profits from the rest of the year. For example, if you've lost $1000 on GE, and made $1000 on IBM, you can sell both, take both losses—and pay not capital gains taxes on your profit. Because of this, it makes sense to sell at the end of the year. (The IRS will let you buy the stocks back after 30 days and still give you the tax penalty.) And if people are selling stocks they still like, they're going to buy them back later. All this trading gets other traders excited; it's fun to try to guess which hammered stocks will be sold for the tax loss—and then to chase them back up when their owners buy them back. This year, the S&P 500 was up 3% during December. But if you're expecting Santa to swing by again in January, you might be in for some disappointment. Compared to previous years, this stock market is a lot less interesting. In the late 90's, you could pick tech stocks or ...

A few years ago, PBS put together a special called "Tax Me if you Can". And, regardless of how you feel about paying taxes, it's clearly a big issue: they estimate that companies avoid up to $50 billion in taxes every year through tax shelters. The number may be high, but the idea is spot on: there is a lot of money sloshing into corporate treasuries that could be sloshing into the US treasury, instead. But that's a superficial way to look at it. There are some important questions that tax shelters bring up, and not all of them can be answered by soaking the rich: Should people be penalized for following the rules? The tax code is designed to make good behavior more rewarding, and bad behavior less rewarding. But laws can't just argue about "good" and "bad"—they have to allow specific things. If tax rules are designed to encourage companies to invest in new equipment, they can't just ask nicely—they have to give companies a tax break based on the depreciating assets they own. And if companies use that depreciation to reduce their tax burden, is it really their moral problem? They just exist to make as much money as ...

"The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge, but all economies know that the only sensible long term way of developing is to do it on a sustainable basis." —Tony Blair "We know that evidence based policy is window dressing, and now, when they want us to believe them on climate science, to justify Stern's paltry 1% of global GDP [over $600 billion]to mitigate a global horror, we doubt." —Dr. Ben Goldacre " A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." —Senator Everett Dirksen Climate change! As we shiver through another cold winter day, we often wonder: why did they stop calling it "Global warming," again? But climate change is a serious issue. If you squint through the smoggy haze put out by 1200 limos and 140 private jets, you can see the serious faces of politicians trying to decide just how fast they can get away with spending your money. But perhaps you've wondered which money pits we're going to be filling up first. With that in mind, I'd like to present the Taxrascal Climate Change Spending Guide.