“Hillary Clinton’s net worth is forty five million dollars; Bill Clinton’s is eighty million. Measured by family wealth, this puts the couple in the top 1% of American households by a factor of 16. (and they claim to have left the White House ‘broke’)”
Richard W. Behan
AIKEN, South Carolina – Aiken is battened down. The wind is blowing hard… dark clouds race across the sky… trash bags tumble down the main street. “This is tornado weather,” said a local resident. “You better be ready to run.”
From poor to rich and back? Read on …
Photo credit: Enrique Ramos Lopez
No cyclone appeared. Meanwhile, in the stock market, prices went down and then back up, ending the day up 53 on the Dow. Commentators in the press said the turnaround was the result of news from the oil industry.
“Oil pulls out of dive…” was the start of a headline in USA Today. Last year, when oil was in the $50 range and diving, rising oil prices would have been regarded like a visit from Count Dracula on a stormy night.
Expensive fuel sucked the blood out of the consumer economy, said the experts. Now, by some magic, oil is only half of last year’s level, but the rising price of oil is considered good news.
In this day and age, almost everything is done using electricity. It has become such a constant and integral part in our lives that we use it without a second thought. But what if one day, something happens of catastrophic proportions that we lose power for good? How would that affect each and every one of us?
If you think life without electricity is impossible, then here are some few facts to make you think otherwise:
Yup, you read it right. That’s almost 20% of the world’s total population. The majority of them are found in Africa, with 85% of the population living without electricity. In contrast, almost everyone in Europe, North America, Eastern Asia, and Japan are enjoying electricity right in their homes. Below is a map and a graphical representation taken from worldmapper.org to illustrate this point.
Continue reading “What It’s Like to Live Without Electricity”
Who woulda thunk that loaning serial defaulters living on EBT cards $35,000 to temporarily use a Cadillac Escalade wouldn’t work out in the long run. But at least the MSM and Obama could claim auto “sales” are booming. So it goes.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/27/2016 18:55 -0500
Back in August 2012, when negative interest rates were still merely viewed as sheer monetary lunacy instead of pervasive global monetary reality that has pushed over $6 trillion in global bonds into negative yield territory, the NY Fed mused hypothetically about negative rates and wrote “Be Careful What You Wish For” saying that “if rates go negative, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing will likely be called upon to print a lot more currency as individuals and small businesses substitute cash for at least some of their bank balances.”
Well, maybe not… especially if physical currency is gradually phased out in favor of some digital currency “equivalent” as so many “erudite economists” and corporate media have suggested recently, for the simple reason that in a world of negative rates, physical currency – just like physical gold – provides a convenient loophole to the financial repression of keeping one’s savings in digital form in a bank where said savings are taxed at -0.1%, or -1% or -10% or more per year by a central bank and government both hoping to force consumers to spend instead of save.
For now cash is still legal, and NIRP – while a reality for the banks – has yet to be fully passed on to depositors.
The bigger problem is that in all countries that have launched NIRP, instead of forcing spending precisely the opposite has happened: as we showed last October, when Bank of America looked at savings patterns in European nations with NIRP, instead of facilitating spending, what has happened is precisely the opposite: “as the BIS have highlighted, ultra-low rates may perversely be driving a greater propensity for consumers to save as retirement income becomes more uncertain.”
Call it another massive error on behalf of Keynesian central planners who once again fail to appreciate the nuances of the common sense and the liquidity preference of ordinary consumers.
Continue reading “The Global Run On Physical Cash Has Begun: Why It Pays To Panic First”
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like.”
Will Rogers
“There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
Will Rogers
“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.”
Will Rogers
“Common sense ain’t common.”
Will Rogers
“Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
Will Rogers
“When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.”
Will Rogers
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
You probably had no idea, but representatives from Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the U.S. government came together earlier this week to privately discuss how they could jointly fight ISIS propaganda online. Never mind the fact that ISIS is the child of reckless and inhumane preemptive wars of aggression perpetrated by the U.S. government. Such introspection naturally never crosses the mind of government bureaucrats ostensibly attempting to understand the epic disasters they created in the first place.
So who attended the meeting? We don’t know for sure because the plebes aren’t entitled to know such things. Fortunately, we have become privy to some information thanks to Buzzfeed News. Here’s what we learned:
Why is India preparing for war?
You will find more statistics at Statista
Guest Post by David Stockman
America will need the Almighty’s unstinting favor if Donald Trump becomes our 45th President. Still, blessed be The Donald for running a demolition derby in the Republican primaries.
There is no hope for the future of capitalist prosperity and a free society at home and world peace abroad unless the Republican Party is destroyed. And, by golly, Trump may well accomplish the deed.
We need to be clear. There is no longer a Republican Party rooted in the main street highways and byways of America. What’s left of it is not really even the xenophobic, nativist, crypto-racist flotsam and jetsam of the populist right that Trump is successfully calling to political arms.
The fact is, the GOP has mutated into the Warfare State party. Nestled comfortably in the Imperial City, it operates a plethora of special interest rackets which underwrite its incumbents’ bi-annual electoral campaigns out in the provinces.
In the interim, GOP politicians idle their time in the capital and on foreign junkets conjuring and embellishing scary stories about terrorist threats and hostile regimes. So doing, they perceive enemies of the American Imperium to be stalking the planet everywhere and even creeping onto these exceptional shores.
In a word, as the party of the Warfare State, the GOP’s main business has become promoting the agenda, campaigns, machinations and glory of the Imperial City. Whenever its pro forma rhetoric about small government and fiscal prudence becomes inconvenient to the needs of the military/industrial/surveillance complex or the fund-raising requirements of its special interest rackets, the GOP’s putative conservative economics platform quickly becomes “inoperative” in the Nixonian vernacular.
There is no better prototype for the new GOP than Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain. Their agenda consists exclusively of promoting and superintending Washington’s foreign projects, occupations, alliances and maneuvers. Cycling through Tel Aviv on a regular basis, showing up on the battlements of Kiev and lecturing the Chinese about maritime law in international waters, for example, they comically imitate the first century Roman Senators they fancy themselves to actually be.
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
As the Apple vs. FBI battle rages in the court system and throughout the halls of Congress, Obama decides to do what he does best. Using “his pen” to make consequential decisions unilaterally.
Just another day in the American banana republic.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
Continue reading “Obama To Expand Surveillance State Powers By Signing A 21 Page Memo”
