Peter Myers' Blog

All Set Up - or All Screwed Up?

I attended my wife's company picnic on Sunday and, as often happens when people learn what I do, the conversation drifted to an estate issue.  Bob (not his real name) had "it all set up."  He was agent (under a power of attorney) over his 90+ year-old Aunt's modest middle-class estate: a home (owned outright), and two $100K CDs.  Easy enough.  Aunt needed some in-home care and one of the CDs (at Washington Mutual)was about the expire.  His issue (hint: not the issue):  whether to roll the CD from WAMU to Wells Fargo or another bank because of the problems he had been hearing about WAMU.  So how does one respond?

Fear and Loathing on Wall Street

If you, like me, are scratching your head over the last two months, I think we have a lot of company.  Some sort of economic untethering has occurred as our economy groans to deleverage itself.  The old school thinking was that interest rates, and federal manipulation of same through targets, discount rates and fed funds rates, could control the money supply.  But recent evidence suggests that, at least on a macroeconomic level, default risk (or the perception of such risk by the underwriter) can shut down the money supply like a spigot on a leaky garden hose.

Driving Lake Tahoe Video & North Tahoe in General

One of my clients sent me a link to the North Tahoe Bonanza's article about his new video, "Driving Lake Tahoe."  If you are a Lake Tahoe buff, then you will want to read the article, located on opage B1 in the Living Section of the paper. 

As many of you know, the reason I have a newfound interest in Lake Tahoe is because we recently opened an office in Incline Village, Nevada.  Why?  I passed the Nevada Bar and am now cross-licensed in both California and Nevada!  As a consequence, I needed an office in Nevada, and longtime colleague Jim Burau offered me use of his.  Now, "Why do I need a Nevada license?"

Estate Planning in one lesson

A tip of the cap on this video to Mark Merenda of Smart Marketing: