News Commentary

Why John McCain Wants to Aid Lung-Eating Syrian Terrorists

"He told us the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be 'fairly easy.' He pontificated that the anthrax attacks were delivered by the Iraqis. His preferred policy for Afghanistan: we should 'muddle through,' rather than withdraw. When the North Koreans started acting out, he averred we ought to threaten them with 'extinction.' And when Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia got into an armed conflict over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, McCain announced 'Today, We Are All Georgians' and demanded we go to war with Moscow. He thinks Iran is training Al Qaeda: he also thinks Iraq shares a border with Pakistan." Continue reading →

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Will Canada’s hard line on Eritrea’s ‘diaspora’ tax apply to the U.S.?

"There are only two countries in the world that levy income tax based on citizenship rather than residence; one is Eritrea and the other is the United States. But while Canada fulminates and threatens mayhem against Eritrea, it says nothing about the U.S. Even worse, it is actively negotiating with the U.S. to implement an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) that would have Canada Revenue Agency help the U.S. IRS track down its citizens in Canada and bring them into the U.S. tax fold. Could it be the power gap?" Continue reading →

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Understanding Gold Market Dynamics

"While the big institutions are driven by momentum into gold, they also relied on fears related to inflation and economic uncertainty. However, many have now abandoned these concerns. In reaching its bearish conclusion on gold, Goldman Sachs cited low global inflation, and surging equity markets in the U.S. and Japan as reasons to believe that the bull run in gold had come and gone. However, their conclusions are hasty." Continue reading →

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What happened in West, Texas?

"Five weeks after the massive explosion that leveled vast portions of the heavily Czech community of West, Texas, there is no clear explanation of what took place that day. Instead of producing answers, the renamed ATF, now known as the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE for the purpose of this article) is spending its time obstructing a federal investigation." Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: The Real Meaning of President Obama’s National Security Speeches

"This past Thursday and Friday, President Obama delivered two speeches designed to outline his new thinking on national security and counter-terrorism. While much was made in the media of the president’s statements at the National Defense University and the US Naval Academy suggesting that the most active phase of US military action overseas was coming to an end, this 'new' approach is but the same old policy wrapped in new packaging. In these addresses, the president panders to the progressives, while continually expanding and solidifying the 'enabling act' principle." Continue reading →

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As the market panic demonstrates, central banks are stuck on a treadmill of money printing

"Last night's panic in Tokyo, where the Nikkei dropped a stomach churning 7 per cent, demonstrates just how difficult it's going to be for the world's central banks to exit their loose money policies. It's not even as if Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, said he was planning to exit; in fact, initially he said the reverse in testimony to Congress. What the subsequent violent gyrations in markets indicate is that any hint of applying the brakes risks generating a fresh financial crisis, which in turn would render the economic recovery still born. Both financial markets and the real economy have become addicted to 'quantitative easing', such that they can't do without it." Continue reading →

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The Bank of Japan must crush all resistance, and will do so

"Kudos to Kyle Bass at Hayman Advisers for warning that the Bank of Japan would lose control of its ¥70 trillion bond buying blitz. The spike in the 10-year yield to 1pc on Thursday was certainly shocking to behold. His point is that the BoJ faces a 'rational investor paradox'. The authorities are trying to drive up the inflation to 2pc and therefore to devalue Japanese government bonds (JGBs), so why on earth would you want to own them? He says the scramble to sell has 'overwhelmed' buying by the BoJ. Governor Kuroda will now have double down with a huge increase in the scale of QE." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: Andrew Sullivan, terrorism, and the art of distortion

"I used to wonder how people who continuously justify any manner of violence and militarism by their own side could possibly spend so much time pointing to others and depicting them - those people over there - as the embodiment of violence and savage aggression. But at some point I realized that it's precisely because they continuously justify so much violence and aggression from their side that they have such a boundless compulsion to depict others as the Uniquely Primitive and Violent Evil. That's how they absolve themselves. It's how they distract themselves from the reality of what they support and what their governments do in the world." Continue reading →

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Schizophrenic investors expect slump, bet on boom

"Some 57pc think there will be no escape from the 'twilight' conditions afflicting the western world, and 20pc expect an full-blown global recession. That is a remarkably bearish set of views. Yet the same investors are overwhelmingly bullish on stocks and property. This schizophrenic exuberance seems entirely based on the assumption that QE and central bank largesse will keep the game going, flooding asset markets with liquidity. Indeed, 80pc think the ECB will cut rates again, and half think it will have to swallow its pride and join the QE club in the end. Four fifths think equities will gallop on upwards over the next year. Complacency is rife." Continue reading →

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Where’d All the Fear Go?

"There are periods when a given market pegs so far to one extreme or the other that it becomes hard to ignore. Such is the case with the market that measures fear – known by stock investors the world over as 'VIX.' VIX is telling us that fear – at least as it relates to stock prices – is dirt cheap. With what we know about markets and human nature, we do not expect fear to remain cheap forever. VIX is the symbol for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index. It measures the volatility embedded into options traded on the S&P 500 (SPX) and reflects investors' 30-day consensus view of the future." Continue reading →

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