Big Ben opened his big mouth again today, and it seems his outlook on the economy is getting a bit more bearish each time his voice hits the airwaves.

Testifying today at the Senate Banking Committee, he said he now expects “sluggish growth” in the economy but predicted a “somewhat stronger pace” later in the year. He went on to attribute his stronger pace forecast to rate cuts and fiscal stimulus.

He threw in the caveat that housing and labor markets could deteriorate more than anticipated, emphasizing that “downside risks to growth remain.”

It seems that Bernanke is drawing criticism from Washington from both Republicans and Democrats, arguing that the recent efforts …

I made a valiant effort to organize my taxes today. I sat down and pulled out the file folder marked “2007 Taxes” that seems to swell towards the end of the year, on the verge of bursting open and creating a mess of receipts, forms, letters and other documents whose sole purpose in life is to create a lot of organizational hassle for me, and to keep me in the good graces with the IRS.

In expanding on last years method to organize my taxes as best I can before heading to my CPA, I pulled out three yellow letter-sized envelopes. Personal tax information will go in one, rental …

Today Provident Energy (PVX: chart, web, Y!) announced that the February cash distribution will remain at $0.12 USD per share payable on March 14th.

In addition, they announced the characterization of dividends for 2007 distributions as 97.58 percent qualified dividend and 2.42 percent tax deferred return of capital. The tax deferred portion is treated as an adjustment to the cost base of the shares.

This characterization is the last piece of information I need to finish up organizing my 2007 tax information.

It’s good to see the return of capital is so low. Fundamentally it means that the company has been able …

It’s been rather entertaining watching the fear spread over the stock markets for the last couple weeks, and I’ve been rampantly sifting through daily data and charts trying to come up with a diamond in the rough. That strong company whose stock price has been dragged down by the falling markets for no better reason than peer pressure.

I find it interesting that Microsoft (MSFT: chart, web, Y!) wrote up an unsolicited take-over offer for Yahoo (YHOO: chart, web, Y!) to the tune of $45 billion (that Yahoo has now rejected). Obviously they saw …

Just put the noise canceling headphones on and ignore the crashing sound of the stock market…

It should all be over by the time the batteries run out.

Congress finally got an economic stimulation bill passed today that will supposedly prop up the economy by shelling out cash to tax payers as a tax “rebate”.

Over 130 million households will get tax rebate checks starting this spring progressing through the summer. The Senate tacked on additional rebates to President Bush’s original tax plan, adding 20 million senior citizens and 250,000 disabled veterans to the package.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the Internal Revenue Service will get to work immediately, but it will take two to four months for the rebate checks to arrive. Of course, they want to process your …

An easy way to fix our political system? Vote more. Not for people, but for issues.

If we voted on issues at the federal level rather than just for people, would our government get more done? From my standpoint, people have become so removed from the political system due to the fact that we elect people to make decisions and vote on our behalf. The problem is that most people don’t trust that their elected officials will represent them based on their own beliefs. After all, when was the last time my representative called me up and said: “Hey Grant, what do you think about abortion? …