Big Lie

Everything Created Digitally Is Nearly Free–Including Money

"The key feature of digitally creating credit/money is this: it is immeasurably easier to digitally create claims on real-world assets than it is to create real-world assets. This is why the digital creation of trillions of dollars in credit/money is distorting and disrupting the real economy of real-world assets: the claims on those assets keep expanding while the actual assets remain stubbornly tied to the real world. This widening disconnect between rapidly multiplying digitally created claims on real assets and the actual assets has spawned a multitude of pernicious consequences." Continue reading →

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Yippee! More Bank Runs in Our Future

"The recent financial crisis was not initiated by bank depositors scrambling to withdraw their funds. Rather it was precipitated by a 'run' among short-term lenders who had purchased banks’ commercial paper or lent money to banks through 'repos' (repurchase agreements). When these lenders suddenly tried to liquidate these assets by selling them or not renewing the loans, their actions deprived banks of the short-term funds that the banks had been using to finance their long-term lending and investments. In other words, federal deposit insurance no longer works to discourage or mitigate bank runs, because it does not cover short-term lenders." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: The NSA’s mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians

"The NSA has, for years, systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunication network and indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the email and telephone records of millions of Brazilians. All of this bulk, indiscriminate surveillance aimed at populations of friendly foreign nations is part of the NSA's 'FAIRVIEW' program. Under that program, the NSA partners with a large US telecommunications company, and that US company then partners with telecoms in the foreign countries. Those partnerships allow the US company access to those countries' telecommunications systems, and that access is then exploited to direct traffic to the NSA's repositories." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald: The NSA’s mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians

Can You Pass The Terrorism Quiz? (Updated June 2013)

"It should be banal to read in the mainstream media that the US not only engages in terrorism but often aggravates it; that if the current crop of terrorists in, say, the Middle East were killed, new terrorists would simply arise if the underlying political and economic conditions remained unchanged; and, that if a particular country is perceived as actively supporting dysfunctional political and economic conditions in a part of the world, it will become the target of anger and, possibly, violence. Yet, instead of such obvious conclusions about terrorism, we are daily exposed to much bias and distortion. To counter such inadequate journalism, I have prepared the following quiz." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCan You Pass The Terrorism Quiz? (Updated June 2013)

Whole milk may be better for kids than skim milk

"'We just don't see any benefit for focusing on reducing fat,' Ludwig said. 'We think it's a holdover from a paradigm that evolved in the late 20th century based on the relatively simplistic idea that fat has the most calories per gram and that eliminating fat will reduce weight gain.' Another study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in March echoed the JAMA study and showed that children who drank lower-fat milk were more likely to be overweight later in life." Continue reading →

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The Real National Security Interest of America

"McCain thinks that our common good rests in deeply expanding U.S. government involvements in dozens of foreign countries. How such an indirect, tortuous, and demonstably dangerous path achieves the common good of Americans is a deep mystery. It is beyond belief that the McCains in the Senate think they can improve other countries when they cannot even identify America's common good and take steps domestically to improve that good. Can Senator McCain explain how the U.S. involvements in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan have furthered the common good of Americans?" Continue reading →

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Why the ‘War on Drugs’ has been made redundant

"Professional but clandestine labs are rifling the scientific literature for new psychoactive drugs and synthesising them as fast as the law changes. Despite the free availability of substances as pleasurable as already banned drugs, we have not seen a massive increase in problem users and drug mortality rates have been falling. Even with the newly introduced 'instant bans', drug laws are simply not able to keep up. It has long been clear that the drug war approach of criminalising possession rather than treating problem drug-users has been futile. The war on drugs has not been lost, it has been made obsolete." Continue reading →

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Historical Opportunity for 21st Century Economics

"Who are people turning to nowadays for business advice? Celebrity economists. Big-name experts on the economy like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Porter, Robert Reich and Muhammad Yunus feature prominently in a new ranking of influential business thinkers compiled for The Wall Street Journal. The findings – based on Google hits, media mentions and academic citations – show just how much the business-guru landscape has changed since 2008, when a previous ranking was conducted using similar methodology. Author and consultant Gary Hamel ranked No. 1 at the time, a spot now occupied by Krugman." Continue reading →

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George Clooney Arrives at the Bank of England

"We wrote just yesterday about Mark Carney, the central banker from Canada who has arrived on the scene in Britain to take over the reins of England's central bank. The adulatory press coverage has been just what we expected, and even more so. We've already been treated to reports of how Carney took the 'tube' to work and in this video we learn that he arrived a full hour early to work. We are reminded once more that central banking is as much a public spectacle as an exercise of monetary power. Carney has obviously been picked because he is a man who seems relaxed even under the glare of publicity and comes across as confident but levelheaded." Continue reading →

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Happy Endings in China?

"Couple potential (and ongoing) unrest regarding further urbanization with a lagging economy, an unbalanced banking sector and dwindling exports and you have a recipe for further questions about the Chinese Miracle. The biggest gamble of all may be the ChiComs' recent announcement that they intend to allow yet more free-market activity to take place. At what point do market forces begin to overwhelm ChiCom command-and-control facilities, especially when it comes to high-end monetary economy where the power resides? For all these reasons, we would imagine that even if China escapes a hard landing for now, there is one in store sooner or later ..." Continue reading →

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