A major demographic transition is under way in the U.S., with the baby boom generation aging into retirement as the millennials (or echo boomers) start to enter their prime earning and spending years. This is a well-known story, but lately I’ve been thinking about a worrying new take on it.

This will be a short post, as I’m headed out for jury duty this morning. It’s been some time since I last reported, and I have to admit I’m not very excited. It is a civic duty, though, so off I go.

The question is, Will the eurozone show up for its own version of jury duty?

Today, I want to revisit a post I wrote just over two years ago. I’ve updated some of the data, but the concerns and the conclusions remain timely. In keeping with one of my recurring themes, this is also an example of how rising interest rates won’t mark the end of the world but, rather, a return to a more normal environment.

I closed yesterday’s post with the thought that, based on positive U.S. economic trends, we should now be planning for the problems of success. Sure enough, the economic data released yesterday highlighted a big one: inflation, with the monthly increase in the Consumer Price Index topping 0.4 percent.

The market rally on Thursday begs the question, how much higher can we go? I shared my thoughts on earnings expectations and what sectors may provide continued growth opportunities for investors in an appearance on CNBC's Power Lunch program. 

Both Greece and yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting are in the news today, but nothing particularly new or significant is happening in either case. The Fed will or won’t raise rates in September, and Greece will or won’t default at the end of the month. There’s not much else to discuss right now.

Instead, let’s raise our eyes a bit and look at the big picture. The ongoing narrative about the U.S. economy is that it continues to struggle, and the future is uncertain. I’m becoming increasingly dissatisfied with that view, as it doesn’t capture the good news and trends we’re now seeing.

Yesterday, I talked about several major trends that are poised to at least pause (and quite possibly reverse) over the next couple of decades. One major area we didn’t discuss is Europe, which is likely to see more change in the next 5 years than it has in the past 20.

As we discussed yesterday, the next 30 years are likely to be very different from the last 30 as interest rates start to rise again. But beyond interest rates, what other large-scale changes can we expect, and how might they affect our investments?

My post last week on this topic generated a fair amount of attention and quite a bit of comment, both positive and negative. I stand behind my argument, but one excellent question came up that’s worth addressing: what does the data show during a period of rising rates, such as the 30 years before 1985 (the starting point for the data in my previous post)?

Reading about the Greek debt crisis this morning, I think it’s high time to resurrect the once-ubiquitous “cliff” metaphor from the U.S. budget negotiations.

The faceoff between Greece and its creditors continues to intensify and is now worse than the confrontation between Republicans and Democrats ever was. There are very real and substantial divides between the two sides, and the parties involved are running out of room to agree to disagree.