History Repeating

The FED’s Money Trap

"The Federal Reserve, and therefore the economy, is caught on the horns of a dilemma of our own making. ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and the aggressive pumping of money (upwards of $85 billion a month) into the financial system have tripled our money supply. Housing is perhaps the canary in the coal mine telling us that things are not going well and danger is close by. Even with 3% 30-year mortgages and no money down, we have to go back to 1997 to see such such low levels of home ownership in America." Continue reading →

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Meet Liberty’s Exiles – The Loyalists in the Revolution

“On November 25, 1783, the last British troops pulled out of New York City, bringing the American Revolution to an end. But for tens of thousands of American loyalists, the British evacuation spelled worry, not jubilation. What would happen to them in the new United States? Would they and their families be safe? Facing grave doubts about their futures, some sixty thousand loyalists—one in forty members of the American population—decided to leave their homes and become refugees elsewhere in the British Empire. They sailed for Britain, for Canada, for Jamaica, and for the Bahamas; some ventured as far as Sierra Leone and India." Continue reading →

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Why “Tapering” Will Not Go Smoothly — and What That Means for Bonds and Stocks

"If you buy the party line that Wall Street and the Federal Reserve is pushing, the process of 'tapering' back on Quantitative Easing (QE) will be relatively painless. All the Fed has to do is gradually, slowly, predictably, and gently ease back on its bond purchases and, they say, it will have minimal market impact. My take? Fuhgeddaboudit … it will be anything but smooth. And this week, I’ll use the Fed’s own comments — and a shocking Fed chart — to show you why." Continue reading →

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China Tests Japan on Senkaku Island Claims After Philippine Success

"China deployed ships to waters near islands disputed with Japan for a record 28 hours, drawing a formal protest as it repeated a strategy of pressing its territorial claims through bolder projections of maritime power. Ships from China’s newly formed coast guard remained in the Japanese-controlled waters for the longest time since Japan bought the islands last year, Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said. Japan’s Foreign Ministry summoned a Chinese diplomat and 'sternly protested,' he said. The Chinese action around the islands comes two days after Japan unveiled the largest military ship it has produced since World War II." Continue reading →

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How to Use Public Health to Control Everything

"The early focus on a holistic public led to the movement of 'racial hygiene' which appeared in 19th century Germany. A historian of public health, Dorothy Porter, explains that the movement considered 'the health, not only of individuals, but of the race as a whole.' The trend was also called 'social hygiene,' and spread to other countries. It reached its zenith under the Nazis. In his fascinating book, The Nazi War on Cancer, Robert Proctor mentions some Nazi slogans: 'You have the duty to be healthy,' 'Food is not a private matter,' 'Your body belongs to the nation.'" Continue reading →

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Veteran civil rights leader: Snowden acted in tradition of civil disobedience

"John Lewis, a 73-year-old congressman and one of the last surviving lieutenants of Martin Luther King, said Snowden could claim he was appealing to 'a higher law' when he disclosed top secret documents showing the extent of NSA surveillance of both Americans and foreigners. When it was pointed out to Lewis that many in Washington believed that Snowden was simply a criminal, he replied: 'Some people say criminality or treason or whatever. He could say he was acting because he was appealing to a higher law. Many of us have some real, real, problems with how the government has been spying on people.'" Continue reading →

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Four Centuries of Surveillance: From Privy Councils to FISA Courts

"Letters to or from England were carried by private ship captains, who often hung a bag in the local coffeehouse to receive letters for shipment. The price was generally a penny for a single letter and two pence for a double letter or parcel. In 1591 the Crown had issued a proclamation granting itself the monopoly of all foreign mail, and in 1609 the Crown’s proclamation extended its own monopoly to all mail foreign or domestic. The purpose of this postal monopoly was quite simple: to enable governmental officials to read the letters of private citizens in order to discover and suppress 'treason' and 'sedition.'" Continue reading →

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America’s Emerging Police State: A Brief History

"As Congress and the American people grapple with the fallout from Edward Snowden’s stunning revelations, we are hearing a kind of defense coming from the authoritarians in our midst: none of this is new, they argue, so what’s all the fuss about? In a sense, they are right: the 'legal' and political outlines of an American police state have been emerging from the fulcrum of war and the turbulence of our domestic politics since World War II. The only difference now is the technology, which has developed far beyond the imagination of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director, who widely deployed the earliest wiretapping capabilities of government snoops." Continue reading →

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U.S. government tried to aggressively punish ‘leaker’ journalist in World War II

"The U.S. government attempted to aggressively prosecute a journalist who revealed early in World War II that American intelligence agencies had cracked the Japanese military’s secret code language. According to the Wall Street Journal, recently disclosed Justice Department documents show that government prosecutors contemplated not only punishing the reporter who wrote the story, but staff and editors at the newspaper that printed it, too. It is worth noting that the Tribune at that juncture was published by interests unfriendly to the Roosevelt administration. A grand jury dismissed all charges against Johnston." Continue reading →

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