Obamacare is first and foremost a health insurance regulation, but investors would be mistaken if they believe it won't affect them if they don't invest in that sector and they already have health insurance. One of the major features of the regulation that has not been discussed much is the tax on investment income that is being levied to pay for the regulation. This tax is likely to be particularly important to retirees.

The tax I am referring to, which took effect starting January 1, 2013, is a flat 3.8% tax on "net investment income" (i.e. all income from investments) for investors with $200,000 a year in total income ($250,000 for couples). This tax is a flat tax, which is levied in addition to other taxes owed by the investor (e.g. capital gains taxes, federal income taxes, etc). So if you make $200K a year total from capital gains, dividends

Josh Barro had a strong column Wednesday on the confusion and hypocrisy in Rhode Island; he gets equally strong support for his position from Ted Nesi.

The argument here is pretty simple. The state of Rhode Island has various obligations; among those obligations are pension obligations, general obligation bonds, and moral obligation bonds. The legislature and governor of the state are happy defaulting on their pension obligations, which are contractually obliged to rise in line with the cost of living: by freezing the pensions instead, some retirees will see their incomes slashed by a third.

Yet at the same time Rhode Island is determined to pay out the holders of moral obligation bonds in full.

Rhode Island’s pensioners would seem to be more deserving than the moral obligation bondholders, who sought out those bonds precisely because they carried an excess yield. The market priced in the fact that

Over the past month, I've been getting a lot of questions from clients regarding specific credit events in the municipal bond market. Recent credit downgrades and bankruptcies clearly have some muni investors on edge.

The past few months have certainly been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the municipal market. In December, I wrote about the fear of a potential loss of the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds, which drove a sell-off in the muni market. After the Fiscal Cliff was resolved and it was clear munis would remain exempt from federal taxes, investors flocked back to the sector and bond prices rose. Then in March we saw another pullback, potentially driven by high net worth investors selling their munis and using the proceeds to pay 2012 tax bills.

On top of all of this is news about the credit worthiness of specific municipal issuers.