News Commentary

U.S. Government vs. DEFCAD 3D Printable Gun: You Can’t Fix Stupid

"They’re like the Society Matron who walks into the dining hall in a Three Stooges short and demands 'What is the meaning of this?!!' To them the Internet is just a big Series of Tubes, and all they have to do is shut off a valve somewhere to control the flow of information. Only the Internet doesn’t work that way. In John Gilmore's phrasing, it treats censorship as damage and routes around it. Their legal rationale — export control legislation — displays the same conceptual failure. They couldn’t quite grasp that the 'goods' that DEFCAD was 'exporting' arrived in their destination ports around the world the second the files were uploaded to the website." Continue reading →

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The Enduring Glow of Gold

"The use of monetary stimulus, in the hopes that a demand kick will snowball into a virtuous cycle in each national economy, hasn't worked to achieve its main objective for the past five years. But it has created big fluctuations in asset markets, giving speculative capital a golden opportunity to engage in the biggest wealth redistribution in modern history. Despite its recent setback, gold remains a big beneficiary of the current macro environment. It could make a new high in the current year and rise much higher in 2014. The gold bull market will end when an inflation crisis pushes central bankers around the world to tighten aggressively." Continue reading →

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Argentina offers tax amnesty to head off devaluation

"Argentina's latest effort to tease out billions of U.S. dollars said to be held by citizens through sweeping tax breaks and interest earnings received lukewarm response, though this may change. Argentine citizens are said to be holding the greenback in illegal stashes as a hedge against the Argentine peso's unstable performance, a runaway inflation and general distrust of the government's fiscal and monetary policies. Official estimates say at least $160 billion is held in cash at home and abroad by Argentines who have yet to declare their holdings." Continue reading →

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Why Cops Bust Down Doors of Medical Pot Growers, But Ignore Men Who Keep Naked Girls on Leashes

"Strange, isn’t it, that hunches and vague tips about potential marijuana growing (in a state that recently legalized the drug!) is motivation enough to send a SWAT team busting down a door? Compare that to recent reports that police in Cleveland, Ohio ignored years of tips and calls about strange things going on in the home of the three Cleveland men suspected of holding captive, brutally raping and beating three women for nearly a decade. Neighbors say they knew something was up and claim that they repeatedly called the cops. The police did not appear concerned; they certainly lacked the enthusiasm many law enforcement officers display regarding drugs." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Buffett is frightened

"Investors have reached a new level of bullishness. They're borrowing again to buy stocks, confident that prices go in only one direction. There's also a swift current of economic analysis telling us that the commodities boom is over, the Fed has the situation under control and the bull market in gold is finished. All of which is amazing and often breathtaking. Stock market investors don't seem to know or care that the only thing holding up their investments is something that will ultimately destroy them. And that the longer it continues, the bigger the mess when it finally blows up. We're talking, of course, about the Fed's monetary policy." Continue reading →

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3D printing: the new, bottom-up industrial revolution

"The new technology will be the first real challenge to the traditional top-down economics of mass production for manufactured goods. This has already happened in the services sector and the digital world, with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and the ability for self-publishing authors and music artists to sell directly to the public; now this decentralisation of power will also happen in manufacturing. Big will no longer necessarily be beautiful when it comes to making things, undoing centuries of lessons learnt from the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Taylorist production processes." Continue reading →

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Nigel Farage: Nigel Lawson calls time on the three-pint Eurosceptic heroes

"When a group of unknown political players set up Ukip in 1993, the idea that the UK might someday re-establish its independence and leave the European Union was at best a minority pursuit. Now, no less a man than Lord Lawson advocates the idea, and validates Ukip’s arguments. Clearly nobody now doubts that it is a valid position. The reaction to Lord Lawson’s view has been to ask what damage it will do internally, to David Cameron’s embattled Conservative Party, and there has been speculation about the timing of the statement. Rarely has such a chasm opened up in British political history. The Europe divide has echoes of earlier times; it is Big Politics, writ in a digital age." Continue reading →

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Stodgy Netherlands is nation that’ll blow up euro

"Consumer debt in the Netherlands has hit 250% of available income, one of the highest levels in the world. In Spain, by comparison, it has never gone above 125%. The Netherlands has turned into one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world. It has slumped into recession and shows very little sign of coming out of it. The euro crisis has been dragging on for three years now but so far has only infected the peripheral nations within the single currency. But the Netherlands is a core member of both the euro and the European Union. If it can’t survive in the euro zone, then the game really will be up." Continue reading →

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Chinese Women Aren’t Taking Buffett’s Advice on Gold

"In China, where gold has long been a national obsession, a mid-April record crash in global gold prices has been seen as an unprecedented buying opportunity. According to reports in China, Chinese have purchased 300 tons of gold worth more than $16 billion since the crash. Photos of crowds packing jewelry shops and emptying their shelves are now regular features in the news media. China’s voracious appetite for gold is long-standing. At Chinese jewelry stores, the spot price for gold is always prominently displayed. Calculators and scales are never out of a customer’s reach." Continue reading →

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The Pension Rate-of-Return Fantasy

"In June of 2012, Calpers lowered the expected rate of return on its portfolio to 7.5% from 7.75%. Calpers had last dropped the rate in 2004, from 8.25%. But even the 7.5% return is fiction. Wall Street would laugh if the matter weren't so serious. And the trouble is not just in California. Public-pension funds in Illinois use an average of 8.18% expected returns. The 100 top U.S. public companies with defined benefit pension assets of $1.3 trillion have an average expected rate of return of 7.5%. Three of them are over 9%. (Since 2000, these assets have returned 5.6%.) Who wouldn't want 7.5%-8% returns these days? Ten-year U.S. Treasury bonds are paying 1.74%." Continue reading →

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