We’ve noted the hard times facing lower-risk tolerance investors – times that just got a little bit harder now that the 10-year Treasury bond yield has sunk back below 1.50%. Today, any funds with low interest rate risk (the risk of losing money if rates go up) and low default risk (the risk of borrowers not paying you back) is yielding less than 2%, often much less. Between retiring baby boomers and disappointment in a market that seems to slide 50% every few years, there are more lower-risk investors now than ever. But what about the poor multi-trillion dollar mutual fund industrial complex?

There 's good deal of concern in the markets that Europe's slow collapse will turn into something a little more 2008-ish. Remember 2008? The year Lehman, along with most of the financial services industrial complex, imploded? At least until governments near and far propped up the poor pinstriped saps and halted the panic. Free markets until markets free fall. The worry this time around centers on the governments themselves – governments that have increased spending to support weakening  economies while simultaneously moving the debts of a global real estate bubble to their own tattered balance sheet The buck has to stop somewhere. 

The popular term from about a half-decade ago was "decouple" — a scenario in which the global economy and stock market would lose the weight of the United States and no longer be dependent on U.S. demand to spur growth. This would lead to wild riches for those smart enough to focus abroad. This strategy, of course, is reminiscent of another popular investment concept, the “New Economy” versus the “Old Economy," because in 1999, tech stocks were leaving value stocks in the dust, and the smart move was to own a bunch of tech and growth funds.

It’s tax time, everyone’s least favorite time of year. Even those receiving refunds are pretty grumpy about the whole endeavor. But since the average tax rate Americans pay  will be one of the lowest in the last fifty-plus years, we should be celebrating.