sound money

High School Student Arrested for Doodling?

"A 16-year-old high schooler in Egg Harbor City, NJ, was arrested after doodling in his notebook what may have been either weapons or a magic hand with flames coming off it, or perhaps something else. Concerned by the boy’s notebook, a Cedar Creek High School staff member called the local police, who searched the school and the teen’s home with sniffer dogs. The boy was charged with possession of a weapon, an explosive device, and was placed in Harborfields Detention Center. The boy’s mother explained that her son, who had no history of violence or threat-making, regularly assembled and dissambled electronics as a hobby." Continue reading →

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The Invisible Hand Strikes Back

"The system proved a good deal more fragile than people have been led to expect. Couple that with the Fed's ongoing money-printing that has literally doubled equity values and you get increasing resistance to the whole idea of stock investing. First people are frightened by the breakdown of the system itself and then they are exposed to ongoing – 'industrial strength' – monetary manipulation. What do those in the industry expect? What do elites that have built up the modern stock market believe people will do with their money? People 'get it' ... and not in a good way." Continue reading →

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Ordinary Folks Losing Faith In Stocks, Plowing Into Bonds

"Since they started selling in April 2007, eight months before the start of the Great Recession, individual investors have pulled at least $380 billion from U.S. stock funds, a category that includes both mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, according to estimates by the AP. That is the equivalent of all the money they put into the market in the previous five years. Instead of stocks, they're putting money into bonds because those are widely perceived as safer investments. Individuals have put more than $1 trillion into bond mutual funds alone since April 2007." Continue reading →

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Liberty Dollars banned at U.S. Numismatic Convention

"So-called Liberty Dollars, the creation of Bernard Von NotHaus and the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code, more commonly known by the acronym NORFED, will not be part of the April 24-27, 2013 74th Anniversary Convention of the Central States Numismatic Society in Schaumburg, Ill., according to a statement issued by convention General Chairman Kevin Foley. Although the underlying criminal conviction of Von NotHaus has been the subject of controversy and criticism, Foley said, the fact remains that the Secret Service has determined that the Liberty Dollars are counterfeit." Continue reading →

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‘Brighter than a full moon’: The biggest star of 2013… could be Ison – the comet of the century

"At the moment it is a faint object, visible only in sophisticated telescopes as a point of light moving slowly against the background stars. It doesn't seem much – a frozen chunk of rock and ice – one of many moving in the depths of space. But this one is being tracked with eager anticipation by astronomers from around the world, and in a year everyone could know its name. Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations – brighter even than the full Moon." Continue reading →

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Experimental Private Rocket Makes Highest Test Hop Yet

"A privately built rocket prototype that could lead to a completely reusable spaceflight system has passed its biggest test yet — a 12-story hop and smooth landing. In the latest test at SpaceX's proving grounds in MacGregor, Texas, the Grasshopper rocket flew for 29 seconds and reached a height of more than 130 feet (40 meters). A video of the Grasshopper test flight shows the rocket soaring up into the Texas sky, then smoothly descending to land on four spindly legs." Continue reading →

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Thomas Naylor, RIP

"Thomas died recently of heart failure, in Vermont, the state he and his Second Vermont Republic organization dreamed of having secede from the American Empire he so loved to hate. It’s doubtful if that group will continue without him, but the Vermont Commons folks and others like-minded will keep the dream alive. He tended to stress what I came to call the Push reasons for secession—that is, it allows a state to get out from under an inept, dysfunctional, and evil empire so as not to go down with its inevitable collapse, and it frees it from the taxes, wars, regulations, and entangling alliances of that empire." Continue reading →

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Free Staters Not Welcome in New Hampshire

"Democratic State Rep. Cynthia Chase calls them 'the single biggest threat the state is facing today.' 'There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the 'freedoms' that they think they will find here.... Cheshire County is a welcoming community but not to those whose stated goal is to move in enough ideologues to steal our state, and our way of life.'" Continue reading →

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The Continuing Exodus of Jobs – and Taxable Income – from California

"I wish I could be a fly on the wall when this moment of truth happens to California politicians. They convinced voters in the state to enact Prop 30, a huge tax increase targeting those evil, awful, bad rich people. Governor Brown and his fellow kleptocrats in Sacramento doubtlessly are salivating at the thought of more money to waste. But notwithstanding a satirical suggestion from Walter Williams, there aren’t guard towers and barbed-wire fences surrounding the state. Productive people can leave, and that’s happening every day. And they take their taxable income with them." Continue reading →

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