Welfare-Warfare State

Federal Reserve Monetary Policy To Target Wealth Inequality?

"The gap between the wealthy and the rest of America is a hot-button issue in Washington-especially in the White House and Congress. Recently, the Federal Reserve has also taken a greater interest in the topic. And some analysts are asking whether financial inequality in the U.S. might soon become part of the Fed's decision-making process. In a recent research note, Credit Suisse research analysts Neal Soss and Dana Saporta wrote that 'the issue of growing income and wealth disparity in the U.S. is gaining stature among Federal Reserve officials and may become the next important macroeconomic variable for monetary policy.'" Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens Our Future

"The neo-con ideology promotes endless war, but neo-cons fight their battles with the blood of others. From the comfortable, subsidized offices of magazines like the Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives urge endless war – to be fought by the victims of the 'poverty draft' from states where there are few jobs. Ironically, these young people cannot find more productive work because the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing to keep the war machine turning has destroyed our economy. The six trillion dollars that will be spent on the Iraq war are merely pieces of printed paper that further erode the dollar’s purchasing power now and well into the future." Continue reading →

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Sequestration Pain: Biden Loses $13,200 Weekly Free 100-Mile Flight Home

"Anyway, he feels our pain. Well, not ours, exactly, but the pain of federal employees who are being asked to tighten their 54-inch belts. Is there fat in the federal budget? Lots of it. Is sequestration going to force the federal government on a diet? From three Twinkies a day to 2.9, maybe. The fun thing is the entertainment value. There will be media-worthy tidbits as choice as Biden’s plane grounding. We will get to see how the elite in Washington live at our expense. Their lifestyle is not ours. Their pain in sequestration is not ours. Their lifetime security is not ours. Their access to the perks of office are not ours. Then what is ours? Their bills." Continue reading →

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The Retirement Crisis That Must Not Be Mentioned

"A theme that is little explored in the Western mainstream press is that retirement has all but collapsed for many in the middle classes. We have in the past called this condition 'dreamtime' – for it was built on central banking initiatives and fostered by central banking super-money printing. The idea was that the stock market was going to go up and up – and people would be able to take retirement based on their own investment initiatives. In Europe, state-fostered retirement provided a slightly different model. But the main issue in both the US and Europe was that an entity larger than the individual was going to manage the realities of retirement." Continue reading →

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Retirement crisis: Impoverished seniors on horizon

"American households are so strapped that only half could come up with $2,000 in cash if an unexpected need arose in the next month. You would think that savings levels would increase, but no. The percentage reporting saving anything for retirement is at 66 percent, down from 75 percent in 2009. In a little more than a decade, there will be a lot of older people who will run out of money. There will be stories written in 2025 about Joe Smith, 82, a retired autoworker, living in a flophouse on $2,100 a month in Social Security after his pension was cut off and his personal savings ran out, while his children, in their 60s themselves, moved 2,000 miles away." Continue reading →

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Robert Wenzel: An Examination of Key Factors in the Collapse of the Soviet Union

"The Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, sponsored by James M. Rodney, presented at the Austrian Economics Research Conference. Recorded 21 March 2013 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Includes an introduction by Joseph T. Salerno." Continue reading →

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US Infrastructure’s Disastrous Solution

"It is a US scandal that the country's infrastructure is not just degrading but seriously degraded. While this is not a regular topic for mainstream reporting, every now and then it rises to the surface. Of course, the real issue is seldom dealt with, which is how the combined US government can spend trillions and more trillions while the country's infrastructure continues to collapse. There are accidents big and small as the result of this evolving condition, often never reported unless they rise to the level of serious injury or even death." Continue reading →

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Read This Blog or the Puppy and Kitten Get It

"If your city faces a shortfall of tax revenues, the first response of overpaid bureaucrats in City Hall frantic to keep their jobs, pensions and perks will be to slash the hours the library is open. A 2% reduction in the Federal budget, we're told, will push orphans onto the frigid streets, send our troops into battle without ammo, and generally shut down every service the public cares about. The alternative you will never hear about is a reduction in the multiple layers of overpaid bureaucrats in City Hall, the White House staff, the Pentagon, the local school district, etc., or any reduction in funding the parasitic cartels that have captured the machinery of governance." Continue reading →

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Housing: Addicted to Fiat Money

"We are told that the housing recovery is strong. Then why is the best-performing new home building stock losing money? The Federal Reserve is buying about $40 billion worth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds every month in order to sustain the present housing recovery. How is this market going to be sustained when the Federal Reserve finally stops creating half a trillion dollars a year worth of fiat money in order to goose the housing market? This is clearly the most manipulated market in the history of the United States. Bernanke and his associates have decided that it is the Federal Reserve’s job is to subsidize housing in the United States." Continue reading →

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