News Commentary

Everything’s Fixed, Everything’s Great

"Much to the amazement of doom-and-gloomers, everything's been fixed and as a result, everything's great. The list is impressive: China: fixed. Japan: fixed. Europe: fixed. U.S. healthcare: fixed. Africa: fixed. Mideast: well, not fixed, but no worse than a month ago, and that qualifies as fixed. Everything's fixed, because everybody that can create their own money can do so without limit or consequence. It's a perpetual money machine, and that fuels a perpetual growth machine. No limits on credit and debt means no limit on spending. Free money for everyone and everything--it's unbelievably easy. The solution to every problem is at hand: create more money and credit, in ever larger sums." Continue reading →

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Peter Schiff: The Taper That Wasn’t

"The Fed's failure today to announce some sort of tapering of its QE program, despite the consensus of an overwhelming percentage of economists who expected action, once again reveals the degree to which mainstream analysts have overestimated the strength of our current economy. The Fed understands, as the market seems not to, that the current 'recovery' could not survive without continuation of massive monetary stimulus. Mainstream economists have mistaken the symptoms of the Fed's monetary expansion, most notably rising stock and real estate prices, as signs of real and sustainable growth. But the current asset price bubbles have nothing to do with the real economy." Continue reading →

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‘HELP: Detroit is Waiting to be Rescued!’

"If I believe the sensationalist media, the city where I have spent my half-century on earth is barely recognizable to me anymore, thanks to the fourth estate bobbleheads who have either never step foot here, or, they take a moment to zip through the city via their hired limousines just long enough to have their camera crew photograph some background ruin porn while they spin their melodramatic tales of Detroit’s long, slow, harrowing demise due to bankruptcy woes, oodles of $100 houses falling into disrepair, dead bodies percolating from the ground, and lastly, angry packs of feral dogs (in gangs of 20) roaming the streets and eating humans as appetizers." Continue reading →

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100 to 115 SWAT raids per day in the US

"We are talking 100 to 115 SWAT raid per day in the U.S., and if we are going to continue to fight the drug war we need to go after these low and mid level offenders. There’s just not enough police man power, there’s just not enough creative non-violent ways to come up with to get them to turn themselves in. This has become the default way to carry out the drug war…bashing into somebody’s home at night. It’s born from just an overwhelming case flows, and also a lack of creativity. You also have a lot of incentives coming from the federal government that encourage warrants to be served this way." Continue reading →

Continue Reading100 to 115 SWAT raids per day in the US

Criminals do not need guns

"Even if gun-control laws could actually succeed in keeping firearms from the hands of criminals - a goal they are notoriously ineffective at accomplishing - the reduction to the offensive ability of predators is far less than the loss of defensive capability among the law-abiding. People who devote themselves to a life of crime don't have much trouble becoming far more physically dangerous than the folks they like to victimize. Ordinary people don't have the experience or aptitude for violence that criminals usually bring to the table. Also, the victim is often outnumbered during criminal encounters." Continue reading →

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The Left’s New Attack on Self Insurance: Obamacare Sleaze?

"It starts with a brief description of the ERISA law that allows self insurance – including the fact that those who self insure escape the costly and corrupt state-level mandates that cause regular insurance policies to be needlessly expensive. While ERISA traditionally was something that only big firms could utilize, many small employers are now looking at self insurance as a way of providing health insurance to their employees without getting dragged into the costly swamp of Obamacare. Needless to say, the left is unhappy about this development because Obamacare only 'works' if a large amount of people are forced to join the infamous exchanges." Continue reading →

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Can the Internet Tax Be Stopped Just Like the Attack On Syria?

"This time we would be stopping a direct attack on us. A new national comprehensive survey commissioned by National Taxpayers Union and the R Street Institute finds that Americans overwhelmingly oppose new legislation, like the Marketplace Fairness Act, that lets states force tax collection obligations on Internet purchases made from businesses outside their borders. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in recent polls opposed changes to Internet sales tax policies like those provided in the Marketplace Fairness Act. Will Rand Paul, Justin Amash and 'Leader' Mitch McConnell take up this cause?" Continue reading →

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Bruce Schneier: Surreptitiously Tampering with Computer Chips

"The paper talks about several uses for this type of sabotage, but the most interesting -- and devastating -- is to modify a chip's random number generator. This technique could, for example, reduce the amount of entropy in Intel's hardware random number generator from 128 bits to 32 bits. This could be done without triggering any of the built-in self-tests, without disabling any of the built-in self-tests, and without failing any randomness tests. I have no idea if the NSA convinced Intel to do this with the hardware random number generator it embedded into its CPU chips, but I do know that it could. Yes, this is a conspiracy theory. But I'm not willing to discount such things anymore." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Ike’s Warning

"In a modern context, America’s wars seem silly, stupid and counterproductive. But they are as popular as the Super Bowl. Both of those explanations have merit. But Ike understood it differently. He saw how powerful internal forces drive a military machine to become an empire… and to make war. An educator will try to aggrandize himself by insisting on more education. A butcher will want more meat on the menu. And a man with a gun in his hands will declare – with a straight face and in solemn sincerity – that we need to kill someone in Syria to protect our manhood!" Continue reading →

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Why Do They Need FATCA When They Have SWIFT?

"Given the growing ease with which people conduct transactions that don’t involve physical cash, or even leaving your house, one should wonder just how much financial data Uncle Sam’s spy network has, and why it feels entitled to it. What does this all mean? Hard to say. These days the American government is fairly cagey about its reasons for anything, but on the surface it appears as though the United States government will happily steal whatever information on the finances of ordinary people and financial institutions of other countries that it can’t coerce out of them through extra territorial law making schemes like FATCA. Whatever is going on, it’s not about taxes." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhy Do They Need FATCA When They Have SWIFT?