STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS Showing 3301 - 3350 of 6675
McCain Disparages Anti-War Protestors, Pushback Is Significant
February 02, 2015
The recent verbal confrontation between McCain and members (in particular) of the activist group Code Pink illustrates how the Internet works. We are reminded again why isolation and ridicule of target groups is often counter-productive in the 21st century. McC ...
The Economist's Departure Is Bloomberg's Gain?
January 30, 2015
One way to look at this move is to see it as a benefit for both publications. That's because there is not a lot of difference between Bloomberg and The Economist when it comes to editorial direction. Bloomberg is in a sense relentlessly authoritarian and so is ...
Indian Tribes Advance Into Cannabis Cultivation, Though Gaming Model May Not Apply
January 30, 2015
Indian tribes are taking swift steps to involve themselves in cannabis cultivation and marketing. This takes place following regulatory and business advances that have made the Native American entrée increasingly feasible. The Daily Bell previously reported on ...
Misdirection and Misinformation Plague EU Analyses – From the Top Down
January 29, 2015
Here is a good example of how top financial execs try to make sure "no crisis goes to waste." In the recent past, especially, we've been explaining how the EU's foundering – along with the euro – was actually part of a larger, hush-hush strategic plan. Carn ...
Is It Peak Food Yet? Yale Seems to Predict Worldwide Starvation
January 29, 2015
So now there is peak food. From the standpoint of farming and food production, peak food is probably good news. Prices will go up; demand will rise. It will surely become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But is it true? We tend to think at a fundamental level peak f ...
Bloomberg: 'That Horrible First Decade Is Over Now' … Or Is It?
January 28, 2015
We find this analysis questionable, indeed. Our favorite Bloomberg columnist, Noah Smith, has decided that the first 10 years of the century were hell, but apparently the five thereafter registered significant improvements. In other words, things are getting be ...
'Organic' Taking Its Place in the Elite Dialectic?
January 28, 2015
This article at CNN makes the point that organic foods are increasingly preferable because of the amount of herbicides the EPA is allowing in and on food-crops. We are beginning to see a dialectic here between "organic" and "Big Ag" crops. Big Ag uses herbicide ...
Shock: CNN Editorial Calls for a North American Union
January 27, 2015
Is the campaign for a North American Union officially underway with this editorial appearing in CNN? Certainly conspiracy theorists might be justified in thinking so. For years, more than a decade, some have suspected that powerful bureaucracies in North Americ ...
Legal Marijuana: This Powerful Trend Is Your Friend
January 27, 2015
Over a year ago, we reported that the cannabis industry was poised for a powerful industrial takeoff, and now this article – and others like it – confirm what we believed. This is no aberration. Over the next months and years there will be considerable addi ...
Draghi Plays His Part in Europe's 'Long War'
January 26, 2015
Every mainstream endorsement can be followed by an alternative point of view, carefully crafted. We call this the dialectic, and sometimes the points of view surprise us with their accuracy. Economics writer Liam Halligan provides us, above, with a counterpoint ...
India a 'Trusted' Nation?
January 26, 2015
Is this for real? India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as well as one of the most populous. If India is the second most trusted nation in the world, then God help the others. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about India: A study conducted by ...
Uneasy Dawn in Davos as Elite Sacrifices Its Own
January 23, 2015
The "big brains" gathered in Davos are mostly successful in material terms and powerful from the standpoint of our modern economic system. But in the early 21st century, these attributes may prove ephemeral. And that's probably the reason for the gloom that is ...
The Mess in Ukraine Bears Watching
January 23, 2015
The drumbeat advocating additional sanctions against Putin and Russia is evident in this Bloomberg "editors" editorial. It is this attitude that will support a continuance of the Ukraine standoff. From what we can tell, the episode was initiated by the West to ...
More Central Bank Communication Is Good If It Tells the Truth
January 22, 2015
We never believed the Fed would tighten. And we don't. Not really. We've regularly made statements to that effect. If Fed officials do "tighten" – we figure they'll find some other way to loosen. The money printing goes on. And now here come reports to the ef ...
As Prohibition Unravels this Time, Hard Questions May Be Asked
January 22, 2015
A judge is about to rule on the dangers of cannabis and the ruling may well contradict the federal DEA when it comes to sustaining the position that it is as dangerously addictive as heroin. But there is a larger issue here, which is how fedgov arrived at such ...
Why Are Central Bankers Surprised by Monetary Disasters?
January 21, 2015
Again we see the adoption of a dialectical position. The mainstream media has been in full cry over the necessity for money printing and central bank bond purchases. Now, comes a BIS former official – apparently someone with considerable clout – who says ex ...
Rickards: Gold Is Being Manipulated for China's Benefit
January 21, 2015
Jim Rickards's column has created a stir among alternative media commentators. GATA's Chris Powell posted a column of his own, commenting on it favorably. Of course, GATA has devoted many years to exposing gold (and silver) manipulation, so Rickards's column at ...
The Unraveling of the US Middle Class Is Monetary and Corporate
January 20, 2015
The West's economic system, we know now, regularly strips people of wealth. Monopoly central banks debase the currency via money printing and large corporations make entrepreneurialism difficult. If Obama wanted to revive the middle class in the US, he would ha ...
Finding Farmland: Global Maps Help Fight Hunger
January 20, 2015
Is this sudden interest in mapping farmland a back-door justification for the advancement of Big Agriculture? Will it justify as well a sudden drop in food production and rising farmland prices across the board? The idea of this article is that farmland must no ...
ECB Stimulation: The Trap Closes
January 19, 2015
So now it begins. Last week the EU Court of Justice advocate general ruled that the central bank could purchase sovereign debt. One by one, the hurdles are toppling and the reality of ECB market purchases grows closer. Of course, last year the German constituti ...
Davos Will Focus on Loss of Trust Regarding Big Business and Big Finance
January 19, 2015
This article features a mainstream newspaper reporting clearly what we already know but have rarely seen admitted in the mainstream: Big business and big finance equally have lost the "trust" battle. The paradigm is no longer believable. Having made the admissi ...
Deflation! … The Swiss Surrender
January 16, 2015
The meme is strong in this one, apologies to Star Wars. Every time we turn around, we're seeing more mainstream reports about the dangers of deflation. Now, having rejected their gold referendum, the Swiss have de-pegged their currency from the floundering euro ...
Forbes Says 'Consider Colombia' … We Agree
January 16, 2015
Over and over magazines churn out reports on the best places for retirement. The suspects are usually much the same names from year to year. But we are never to know all the variables, or why the countries place where they do in these rankings. In the case of C ...
Read the Alternative Media to Understand Bitcoin … and Money Generally
January 15, 2015
Bitcoin is not worth what it used to be mostly in our view because of various "raids" by authorities that have tied the crypto-currency to bad actors and "drug dealers." But we want to make another point. This Economist article shows us once more how one can wr ...
Should the Fed Stop Paying Interest to Banks on Reserves?
January 15, 2015
Why is inflation good? Why is disinflation or deflation bad? We know what Murray Rothbard believed because he told us: In a free-market economy, there would be gentle deflation because technology constantly made goods and services less expensive. He had no prob ...
British Sobs of Deflation
January 14, 2015
The deflation meme remains in full cry in Western media. Europe is in a deflationary morass and only Mario Draghi and a Brussels QE can save Europe from appreciating currency. Japan is printing as hard as it can and China is revving up the presses once again. B ...
Getting Excited About Properties Abroad
January 14, 2015
Actually, we are not surprised by this sort of article. It is a bubble article and bubbles are blowing up everywhere – East and West. Central banks are printing and rates are lowering despite the doom and gloom regarding inflation. The asset bubbles are right ...
Oil Wars Heating Up
January 13, 2015
In our view, there is a kind of cold war going on between the US and Russia. The US worked to destabilize Ukraine from what we can tell and now along with Saudi Arabia has caused the price of oil to plummet. Low prices for oil put pressure on Russia's economy a ...
Monsanto's Bad Year Just Beginning?
January 13, 2015
Years of protesting Monsanto's business practices may be having an effect. Monsanto is well known for various questionable business practices that result in lawsuits and often put significant burdens on small farmers who cannot afford continued litigation. But ...
Students Rip Open the Economic Dialectic Around the World
January 12, 2015
The Internet Reformation continues. The point of this article is that the Crash of 2008-2009 has given rise to an academic confrontation between professors and students regarding how economics is taught. But for us, the Internet as well must play a role in this ...
A Global Wall Street Party?
January 12, 2015
We are always on the verge of a recovery and then rates will have to move up. That seems to be a fairly consistent mainstream meme. But in the meantime, of course, rates are NOT going up. And this fits into our larger perspective that in a monopoly-fiat central ...
Does This Just-Floated Interest-Rate Meme Prepare Us for Higher Highs?
January 09, 2015
This is a continuation of the Wall Street Party meme. We don't believe the Fed has any intention of disinflating, let alone deflating (not seriously anyway) but just in case something happens … here comes Bloomberg to inform us that it doesn't matter. Not to ...
In the Race to 'Medicalize' Cannabis, Big Pharma Stumbles
January 09, 2015
The big problem with modern Western medicine is that everything has to be turned into a chemical before it can be marketed. No chemical, no profit, as no one can patent a plant. But if you can mimic the effects of that plant, without using the plant, or use the ...
Some May Want Merkel to Be the Euro-Queen, But That Seems Problematic
January 08, 2015
This article is a good example of an EU "leadership" meme. This is actually two themes in one. The first, oft promoted meme is that the EU has devolved into Germany's back yard. It is Germany's union to run as it wishes. The second meme is that leaders like Ms. ...
US Suburbs as Poverty Traps: So the American Dream Fizzles
January 08, 2015
Nowhere is the foundering of the American Dream more evident than in many US suburbs. Suburbs used to lie at the confident beating heart of the American Experience. Now they are prostrate baggage of an ill-conceived social experiment. Suburbs, initially called ...
Tory Technocracy Set to Fumble Before It Begins
January 07, 2015
The technocracy meme constantly reemerges. In this case we know why. UKIP, the quasi-libertarian, anti-EU party, is emerging as a potential political winner and many in British leadership are aghast. Solution? Combine forces. This is an idea constantly being pr ...
Bloomberg Shock: Insider Trading 'Law' Upended
January 07, 2015
We've written quite a bit about the questionable legal theory behind insider trading and US courts are now starting to agree with us. One point we made on several occasions was that there was no specific statute against insider trading. This was because – or ...
Internet Era Is Not Kind to Authoritarian TPP
January 06, 2015
It's been pointed out elsewhere on the Internet that the resumption of TPP talks last month was not exactly top news in the Western media. You would think the Western media would be covering this world-changing negotiation, as it affects the flow of information ...
The Dishonest Meme of Deflation Advances
January 06, 2015
We've pointed this out before, but this is another meme that is fast advancing. The idea of disinflation – especially – throughout the West and especially in Europe is being propagated regularly now. We've pointed out regularly that it is difficult to have ...
Stock Exchange Head: Fix Capitalism by Changing the Way Companies Are Funded
January 05, 2015
The best way to make sure capitalism becomes more popular is to give people the opportunity to take a bigger stake in it. That's the argument of the head of the London Stock Exchange, Xavier Rolet. He's not only convinced of capitalism's benefits; he also belie ...
Again, Bloomberg Questions Whether Historical Shifts Have Doomed Investors' Appreciation of Gold
January 05, 2015
This is not so much an analysis of gold as one of Bloomberg's regular negative assessments of the yellow metal's future. Bloomberg, as a media product, supports the agenda of major Western investment banks and central banks. There is not a lot of affection amon ...
Economics Is Predictive … Sometimes
January 02, 2015
Noah Smith has written another article about whether economics is a science or not, a subject that obsesses him for good reason. If economics is not predictive, what good is it in this day and age? In fact, the field is really only a few hundred years old, if w ...
EU Officials Are Minimizing Greek Contagion. Perhaps They Are Wrong
January 02, 2015
This is a good analysis, in our view, of what might happen regarding Greece and its potential pushback to Brussels-imposed "austerity." No one knows the full story regarding the austerity that has been imposed on Greece, and other Southern European countries as ...
Some Modest New Year Predictions Based on Dominant Social Themes
January 01, 2015
Ganesha has inspired us to make predictions for 2015. Our predictions focus on the trends we've covered this year. We begin with central banking, which is the engine driving most of the themes we observe. Central bankers will surely print money at an accelerate ...
Is the Real Constitutional Crisis Repairable?
January 01, 2015
The idea of this Atlantic article is that US governance generally is abdicating its responsibility to counteract lawlessness and this is fundamentally unbalancing US democracy. This is a perceptive point, though to ignore the legal and regulatory barrage genera ...
LA Times Absurdity: The 'Enemy Within' Is Cultivated by Fedgov Gridlock
December 31, 2014
This article presents the idea that people are going to get so fed up with do-nothing politicians – hamstrung by gridlock – that they will rise up and demand a dictatorship. The logic fails to convince us, though the article is penned by an award-winning pr ...
Is Merkel the Indispensible Woman or Is Her Regime a Kind of Political Sideshow?
December 31, 2014
This Bloomberg editorial purports to be puzzled by the "two faces" of Frau Merkel. But the solution to the puzzle is to recognize that Merkel is not powerful at all. Sound shocking? We'll expand below … Politicians in this day and age generally are not powerf ...
Piketty Won't Go Away Because His Book Is Useful in Promoting the Inequality Meme
December 30, 2014
We've covered Piketty and his book in several articles but this article from Bloomberg shows how memes can be perpetuated even when the evidence for the meme is lacking. The article actually provides us with a cogent analysis of the wrongness of Piketty's argum ...
Big Farming Confronts Organic Farming – and the Results May Be Explosive
December 30, 2014
We've written about "organic" food because it's a "hot" trend. But we've also wondered whether the corporate farming model can adapt to organic approaches. We wrote about some of those issues here: When Choice Matters: Organic Food vs. Organic Investing. Consum ...
Fed Regulatory Stance Seen Boosting 'Wall Street Party'
December 29, 2014
We almost missed this strange little article about some very big issues. Seems the Bank for International Settlements is upset with the Federal Reserve over its market posture. Fed officials want to regulate market risks and forego interest rate hikes. BIS offi ...
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