For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation. The Boskin Commission... was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can't afford it.

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple.

For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation. The Boskin Commission... was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can't afford it.

The market is going to love it. The market always seems to applaud major mergers, even though the vast majority of them don't work out and don't increase shareholder value.

This ugly duckling investment will likely need time - quarters, or even years - to blossom into a beautiful swan.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.