American Ruling Class

Berkeley: What We Didn’t Know

"California investigative journalist Seth Rosenfeld adds significantly more in Subversives, which is based on some 300,000 pages of FBI documents, pried out of the resistant agency over more than two decades in a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. I thought I knew all that was going on, but it turns out there was much that none of us knew, from the fact that the FBI secretly jammed the walkie-talkies of monitors directing a huge 1965 anti-war march I covered to the agency’s decade-long vendetta against Clark Kerr, the man who was first chancellor at Berkeley and then president of the University of California system." Continue reading →

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The Case for Fed Tapering Sooner Rather Than Later

"The best way to (ahem) get the attention of the political class is to taper now, trigger a stock market decline and speak directly to the elected leadership's need to put the fiscal house in order. This is the only way the Fed can escape taking the bullet during the next financial crisis. 'We told you so' is much better than 'we did everything we could and it still fell apart.' Better to engineer a mini-crisis while you're still in control than let a crisis you can't control run away from you, and better to pass the ticking time-bomb to the elected leadership while you still can." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: The worst candidate to replace Ben Bernanke

"Ben Bernanke is leaving the Fed at the end of the year. The leading candidates to replace him are all fully committed to continuing his policies, which consist of providing as much credit rope as you need to hang yourself. People come to think what they need to think when they need to think it. When they approach the 'end of their rope' phase of a financial catastrophe they need to believe that they have no choice but to play out a little more line. Doubts give way to desperate faith. Reflection is abandoned for action. All of the announced candidates for Bernanke's job -- Yellen, Summers and Kohn - are believers." Continue reading →

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Bernanke, Coolidge, and Buchanan: On Timing Your Departure

"Under him, the country suffered the worst economic setback since the Great Depression. He used the printing press to bail out some large banks and a few over-leveraged investment firms. He served as Hank Paulson's silent potted plant. He addicted the American economy to what amounts to hyperinflation of the monetary base. The commercial banks are not lending. The recovery is barely functioning. The economy has sustained its worst performance since the Great Depression. He has been in charge the entire time. He is trying to get out with his reputation intact. He is likely to make it, and whoever follows him will likely not make it." Continue reading →

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Obama Narrows Field for Fed Chairman to 3

"The proof that none of them deserve the job is that they all want the job. Given that interest rates are climbing, that price inflation is not far behind, that we are likely headed for stagflation and that there is $2 trillion in excess reserves overhanging the economy, you really have to be clueless to want the job. There is no way the next Fed chair is going to look like anything other than a bumbling incompetent. It is dumb to want the position." Continue reading →

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Bernanke: A Tenure of Failure

"Can Fed policy get worse under the leadership of either Dr. Yellen or Dr. Summers? Most definitely YES. Unfortunately leadership of the Fed is not the only problem. An institution that relies on good leadership to avoid harm to the economy and the nation is not a good institution. If banks and other financial institutions should not be too big to fail, neither should the Fed. While in the perception of too many, the Fed is both too big and too important to fail, it is an institution that not only could be, but has been, a complete failure." Continue reading →

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CNN Says Bradley Manning ‘Betrayed’ America

"From simply complaining about our tap water to being political activists, we now have on the record admission from both state and federal officials that the DHS’ classification of a ‘terrorist’ is broad enough to apply to 100% of the population. In fact, all we have to do to see the true extent of this is to go back to the bombshell report out of a recent German newspaper. The article reveals that the United States military is actually targeting those who oppose genetically modified organisms in the food supply. So, with these numbers, that means at least 93-96% of the US population can now be classified as terrorists under this factor alone." Continue reading →

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John Kerry hopes drone strikes end ‘soon,’ State Dept thinks otherwise

"After nearly two years of rocky relations, Secretary of State John Kerry went to Pakistan to begin to repair ties between the US and its ally. Pakistani officials were outraged over the impunity of US drone strikes in the Muslim nation and RT's Erin Ade has more Kerry's comments regarding the matter." Continue reading →

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Pentagon Papers Leaker Daniel Ellsberg Praises Snowden, Manning

"Ellsberg, then an analyst with the RAND Corporation, leaked a study of U.S.-Vietnam relations from 1945-1967, known colloquially as the Pentagon Papers, handing over the document to newspapers. The release of the Pentagon Papers proved politically embarrassing for President Richard Nixon and the Watergate break-in, which eventually led to Nixon's resignation, was part of a broader White House effort to identify the source of such leaks. Ellsberg was eventually charged with espionage, theft and conspiracy, but the charges were later dismissed, unlike the case of Army Private Bradley Manning." Continue reading →

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Why So Much Faith in Supreme Court Justices?

"A quick reading of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) should cause any reasonable person to question the assumption of judicial infallibility, and the wisdom of granting judges the definitive and final say in all cases. In essence, the Supreme Court declared black people inferior and that even free blacks were not citizens under the Constitution. The court reasoned that since black people – even those not held in slavery – were not citizens and possessed no rights, Scott had no standing to sue in court." Continue reading →

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