Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Hat tip Westcoaster
In yet another cops are above the law incident Watch U.S. Marshal Crush Camera.
Nosy neighbors caught a video of a law enforcement officer in California snatching a bystander’s phone and smashing it after U.S. Marshals realized she was recording their bust of a biker gang meeting. The 53-second video, taken from across the street, shows a gun-toting marshal grabbing the woman’s phone out of her hand, throwing it to the ground, and finally kicking it. According to a spokesperson for the marshals, the video “is being reviewed.”
How to Stop “I am Above the Law” Mentality
The only way to stop this kind of “above the law” mentality is to immediately suspend, without pay, any police officer guilty of such behavior. A second offense is grounds for dismissal. As an added incentive, fired officers should lose 100% of all accrued benefits.
And in this case, repayment for the phone should come directly out of the suspended officer’s paycheck (at say a 500% of damages rate).
I am open to negotiation on the terms mentioned above. But the terms must be severe enough to cause an immediate attitude change.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot
In the investment world, there’s no such thing as a sure thing, and if anyone tells you they have such an investment, you should run the other way. Fast. But sometimes, the odds are so clearly stacked in one direction that it comes pretty close.
How can one be so sure? Due diligence, of course; the devil is in the details—and so is the profit.
It’s impossible to illustrate this without tooting my own horn a bit, so please bear with me on that. The point of the story is critical to investments in all sectors and should help you with your own.
My sector—my specialty—is mining. I’ve been kicking rocks around the world for more than a decade now, learning geology and engineering and metallurgy from world-class experts in their fields. But the point is to make money, not just to figure out nature’s geological puzzles, so I’ve also immersed myself in the world of legendary investors, learning all I can from their successes and failures.
The result is that I now have an encyclopedia of mineral exploration and exploitation projects in my head, as well as experience with thousands of companies in the field—and the outcomes of their efforts. This enables me to very quickly sort the wheat from the chaff.
Continue reading “No Such Thing As a Sure Thing–But Sometimes It’s Close”
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.”—John Salter
We have entered into a particularly dismal chapter in the American narrative, one that shifts us from a swashbuckling tale of adventure into a bone-chilling horror story.
As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” have now come full circle, from being held captive by the British police state to being held captive by the American police state. In between, we have charted a course from revolutionaries fighting for our independence and a free people establishing a new nation to pioneers and explorers, braving the wilderness and expanding into new territories.
Where we went wrong, however, was in allowing ourselves to become enthralled with and then held hostage by a military empire in bondage to a corporate state (the very definition of fascism). No longer would America hold the moral high ground as a champion of freedom and human rights. Instead, in the pursuit of profit, our overlords succumbed to greed, took pleasure in inflicting pain, exported torture, and imported the machinery of war, transforming the American landscape into a battlefield, complete with military personnel, tactics and weaponry.
To our dismay, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no longer can we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the police to protect us from wrongdoing.
Indeed, they have come to embody all that is wrong with America.
Continue reading “Battlefield America: The War On The American People”
I can sense a growing unease as I talk with investors and other friends, from professional market watchers and traders to casual observers. What in the Wide World of Sports is going on? It is not just that markets are behaving in an unusual and volatile manner (see chart below showing multiple double-digit moves in the last few months); it’s that the data seems to be so conflicting. One day we get data that shows the economies of the developed world to be slowing, and the next day we get positive numbers. The ship of the economy seems to be drifting rudderless.
My dad used to say about a situation that just didn’t seem quite right that things were “about a half a bubble off dead center.” (This was back in the days when we used bubble levels to determine whether something was level or plumb – before today’s fancy digital gadgets.)
There is a reason, I think, that everything seems just a little out of kilter. I believe that central banks, in their valiant, unceasing efforts to restore liquidity and growth, have unleashed numerous unintended consequences that are beginning to show up in earnest. Today we are going to review the well-meaning behavior of central banks for clues about our near future.
Continue reading “Thoughts from the Frontline: Half a Bubble Off Dead Center”
Guest Post by
Graeber’s argument is similar to one he made in a 2013 article called “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”, in which he argued that, in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century technology would have advanced sufficiently that in countries such as the UK and the US we’d be on 15-hour weeks. “In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.”
But what happened between the Apollo moon landing and now? Graeber’s theory is that in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was mounting fear about a society of hippie proles with too much time on their hands. “The ruling class had a freak out about robots replacing all the workers. There was a general feeling that ‘My God, if it’s bad now with the hippies, imagine what it’ll be like if the entire working class becomes unemployed.’ You never know how conscious it was but decisions were made about research priorities.” Consider, he suggests, medicine and the life sciences since the late 1960s. “Cancer? No, that’s still here.” Instead, the most dramatic breakthroughs have been with drugs such as Ritalin, Zoloft and Prozac – all of which, Graeber writes, are “tailor-made, one might say, so that these new professional demands don’t drive us completely, dysfunctionally, crazy”
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer
“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.”
Omar Nelson Bradley
“In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet.”
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
“No, it wasn’t an accident, I didn’t say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake.”
John Paxton, On the Beach
“What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can’t get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.”
Martin Amis, Einstein’s Monsters
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/21/2015 21:20 -0400
Over the past several years, there has been an alarming escalation of two very disturbing trends: an increasing preponderance of cyberattacks on complex infrastructure (whether domestic or abroad and whether instigated by external sources or internally, in a false falg attempt to evolve the issue to the benefit of various military-industrial complex benficiaries) as well as around the globe, and a largely unexpected return to a Cold War footing, one catalyzed by the violent US-sponsored overthrow of the former Kiev government and the eagerness to escalate the resultant conflict exhibited by the Kremlin.
If one extends said trends, one would arrive at a very unpleasant conclusion: due to the porous nature of modern technology and the increasing prevalence of cyberattacks, coupled with Cold War-era nuclear doctrines and rising tensions between the two superpowers who are now back to a Cold War regime, a nuclear war has suddenly emerged yet again as a very real threat.
At least such is the opinion of two high-ranking military commanders, American James E. Cartwright, a former Marine Corps general, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of the United States Strategic Command, and Russian Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired major general who headed the research institute of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces. Both are members of the Global Zero Commission on Nuclear Risk Reduction, and both are very concerned about the future of the world if the current nuclear status quo between the US and Russia is left unchanged.
The two express their joint concern in a NYT Op-Ed, in which they warns of the dangers of old nuclear strike doctrines at a time when relations between the two superpowers are at such a low point. As a result, they call on Moscow and Washington to prevent possible provocations.
Continue reading “Why An American And A Russian General Are Suddenly Very Worried About Nuclear War”
The event below, one of the very best known Jesus stories, appears in all three Synoptic Gospels. I would guess that 98% of Christianity interprets the story thusly; Christians, as well as all people, should pay their taxes to the government. I believe this is an incorrect application of the story. I believe the opposite is true; that Jesus in a round-about way instructed his followers to NOT pay taxes to Rome.
Let’s look at the full text from Matthew 22: 15-22 (New King James Version)
“Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher [Rabbi], we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the tax money.” So they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left Him and went their way.”
THE PLAYERS
The Pharisees: The Pharisees wanted to do more than just “entangle” Jesus. They wanted to see him killed for his response. But, they were cowards and didn’t go. Perhaps they were afraid of yet again being called hypocritical vipers and filthy rotten corpses. So, they sent “their disciples” and the Herodians. The Pharisees despised Rome, but would cooperate with them whenever it suited their devious purposes.
The Herodians: The Herodians held political power and they supported the Herods, and therefore, indirectly, Rome. To the Pharisees, this compromised the idea of Jewish independence. So, the two groups hated each other. The Gospels state that even Jesus avoided when possible the territory of Herod’s rule. But, the two groups were united in their hatred of Jesus. The Romans wouldn’t believe the Pharisee accusation of Jesus, because the Romans knew the Pharisees hated them. They needed pro-Roman witnesses to testify that Jesus was an insurrectionist. The Herodians were more than happy to go along.
Guest Post by Jesse
The frenzy of the US elites to pass the ‘trade deals’ with Asia and Europe is indicative of their concerns that the progress of their plans is reaching a critical impasse. These deals will fortify the corporatist control over North America, a prerequisite before intensifying their plans for Europe and Asia. I suspect that, when push comes to shove, Asia will be little more than Japan, Australia, and a few other client states. China will almost certainly choose its own say more fitting to its domestic situation which may become more precarious.
Gold is of obvious strategic importance in this struggle since it is a means of settling international payments that does not as easily fall into the financial controls of one faction or another, as is the case with a fiat currency which is, at the end of the day, an instrument of highly discretionary power.
The discussions of these topics on US media is interesting to watch. I fully expect for the propaganda to reach ever more ridiculous levels, and for any domestic dissent to be crushed before it can gain any momentum.
The differences between the Wall St. Democrats and the Corporatist Republicans will continue to become increasingly cosmetic and more factional and social than substantial, in the manner of two competing gangs seeking their own enrichment rather than elected representatives of a diverse population. Big money is steadily disenfranchising the electorate, and the credibility trap chokes off meaningful reform.
Greece may in turn become more pivotal in this struggle between the West and Europe. The difference in treatment between the people of Greece and the government of the Ukraine should be more obvious to the Western observer. The lesson is certainly not lost on the rest of the world. The US-Europe may court you, but once they entwine their fingers through your hands, you are theirs to dispose of as they please.
That is a failing of the winner’s curse. They start overreaching in their belief that they will simply move from victory to victory, no matter how clumsy and brutal their tactics may become.
Hat tip Robmu1
WTF are they teaching kids in school today? The fact that only 25% of those answering these questions got all three right makes me sick to my stomach. If you don’t graduate high school with the knowledge to get these three questions correct, then our educational system is a complete and utter failure. No wonder the government and bankers can get away with blatant fraud. The average person can’t add 3 + 6.
A new study finds that young Americans could use some help when it comes to managing their money.
Just in time for financial literacy month, a new San Diego State University study of young Americans has found that they are lacking when it comes to financial knowledge and behavior.
Out of these three questions measuring basic financial knowledge, the average respondent could answer only 1.8 correctly—and only a quarter got all three right. (Answers are at the bottom of this story.)
(1) Do you think that the following statement is true or false? Buying a single company stock usually provides a safer return than a stock mutual fund.
(2) Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2% per year. After 5 years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow: More than $102, exactly $102, or less than $102?
(3) Imagine that the interest rate on your savings account was 1% per year and inflation was 2% per year. After 1 year, would you be able to buy more than, exactly the same as, or less than today with the money in this account?
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” ― Benjamin Franklin
You’re likely thinking that a discussion of “sound banking” will be a bit boring. Well, banking should be boring. And we’re sure officials at central banks all over the world today—many of whom have trouble sleeping—wish it were.
This brief article will explain why the world’s banking system is unsound, and what differentiates a sound from an unsound bank. I suspect not one person in 1,000 actually understands the difference. As a result, the world’s economy is now based upon unsound banks dealing in unsound currencies. Both have degenerated considerably from their origins.
Modern banking emerged from the goldsmithing trade of the Middle Ages. Being a goldsmith required a working inventory of precious metal, and managing that inventory profitably required expertise in buying and selling metal and storing it securely. Those capacities segued easily into the business of lending and borrowing gold, which is to say the business of lending and borrowing money.
Most people today are only dimly aware that until the early 1930s, gold coins were used in everyday commerce by the general public. In addition, gold backed most national currencies at a fixed rate of convertibility. Banks were just another business—nothing special. They were distinguished from other enterprises only by the fact they stored, lent, and borrowed gold coins, not as a sideline but as a primary business. Bankers had become goldsmiths without the hammers.
Bank deposits, until quite recently, fell strictly into two classes, depending on the preference of the depositor and the terms offered by banks: time deposits, and demand deposits. Although the distinction between them has been lost in recent years, respecting the difference is a critical element of sound banking practice.
Continue reading “Unsound Banking: Why Most of the World’s Banks Are Headed for Collapse”
When I graduated from college in 1986 it was easy to get a job. The economy was booming and 82% of college graduates had a job. The other 18% were probably raising kids because their college educated spouse made enough to raise a family. The mantra for my entire life has been – go to college and you’ll get a good paying job. It seems something went wrong on the road to riches. The percentage of college graduates with jobs has been falling for the last 30 years and has been plummeting since 2008. It is now at an all-time low of 74.3%. Shouldn’t these people have obtained jobs since the government tells us the unemployment rate has dramatically dropped from 10% to 5.5% since 2009?
Not only is college graduate labor participation at record lows, but those getting jobs didn’t need a college degree in the first place to get that job, in the majority of cases. A new Careerbuilder survey indicates that though the majority of Class of 2014 college graduates are currently working, 51% of that group are in jobs that don’t require a degree. This is up dramatically from the 38% found in the 2010 US Census survey. The Careerbuilder survey also found that only 36% of 2014 college graduates had obtained full-time permanent jobs. The findings are as follows: