STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS Showing 3351 - 3400 of 6675
Party Hearty? Stock Surge Heads to Europe … and Japan
December 29, 2014
We are often critical of Bloomberg, but this is a pretty good editorial. At least we agree with part of it! We've been writing regularly about the inflation versus deflation debate and here comes Bloomberg taking an astonishingly clear-eyed position. Here's mor ...
Was the Sony Hack a Domestic Ploy?
December 26, 2014
Our suspicions about the Sony hack were raised when North Korea accused the US of involving its CIA. By then the story had been continuously presented by the mainstream media, always a sign that some sort of promotion was underway. And now the next shoe has dro ...
Reuters Shock: Fedgov Legalizes Cannabis Next Year?
December 26, 2014
This editorial informs us that people may be surprised what happens regarding cannabis next year ... legalization at a federal level. Are you surprised? Certainly, the Republican takeover of Congress may be widely seen as an impediment to further drug legalizat ...
Wishing You Happy Holidays, Without the Consumerism
December 25, 2014
We checked 'Net search engines but there was little this year about the consumerist backlash against Christmas. We know it exists, but the mainstream media doesn't seem to be in the mood to comment on it. Then this recent MarketWatch article turned up. It estim ...
Tend to Your Own Garden, not the White House's
December 25, 2014
Robert Reich is back with his usual optimism about fixing Leviathan – see the above article excerpt. Who is Robert Reich? He is "the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His film 'Inequality for All' is ...
Party On, Dow 18,000
December 24, 2014
You would think that this market would already have foundered. The US recovery is suspect. Government price inflation numbers and employment numbers are unreliable at best. Most importantly, this stock market boom has been going on since late 2009. That's aroun ...
Oil and Gas Prices Are Manipulated Once Again … Stay Tuned
December 24, 2014
For years we had arguments with "peak oilers" who maintained that the world was running out of oil. Of course, they always objected to this simplified version of their arguments. Peak oilers liked to clothe their arguments in intricate statistics. The only peop ...
Bloomberg Shock: All Central Bankers Are Heroes Now
December 23, 2014
We can see in this Bloomberg editorial how central banks and their good, gray leaders are going to be positioned going forward. Assume that the US and Britain are in a "recovery" of sorts. Now mainstream pundits such as those that populate Bloomberg are going t ...
Times Calls for Prosecution of Top US Officials Over Terror-Torture
December 23, 2014
It looks as if the just-released report on the CIA and torture has blown up this tragic issue in a very public manner. And now, one way or another, the "establishment" has to deal with it. We dealt with this yesterday in our lead article entitled, "US Power Cen ...
US Power Centers Splinter as Chaos Rises
December 22, 2014
The US is splitting apart: Some 60 years of expanding authoritarianism has created political and economic facilities that are now beginning to face off against each other. There are dozens of intel agencies, hundreds of military specializations, vast bureaucrac ...
Colombia Emerges as a Regional Tech and Bank Powerhouse
December 22, 2014
Recently, High Alert announced the opening of an expat community in Colombia in an editorial by Anthony Wile, here: A New Free-Thinking Community for Your Life, Safety and Sanity! While the editorial was greeted with an overwhelmingly positive response, some of ...
Stock Shock Surge – Is It Real?
December 19, 2014
The Fed has signaled that it has moved to a slightly tougher position regarding eventual rate hikes and the reverberations are felt around the world. The dollar has benefited so far and so have US stocks. But are the reasons being offered in the mainstream medi ...
Yes, There Are Business Cycles and the Question Is What to Do About Them
December 19, 2014
We've mentioned that Reuters columnist Noah Smith is a "gift that keeps on giving." He's back with another such gift in this column, "Maybe There's No Such Thing as a Business Cycle." Actually, the article promises a bit more than it delivers. Smith doesn't act ...
Economist: Don't Worry About the New Tech Bubble!
December 18, 2014
The tech bubble of 2000 led directly to the crisis of 2008 because after 2000 central banks radically dropped rates and began to swell the monetary base. And now they are doing it again. There was, of course, a bobble when Ben Bernanke raised rates and we've of ...
Will the World End in Fire or Ice?
December 18, 2014
Think of inflation as fire and deflation as ice. How will this latest asset reflation end? Will it subside into ice – a tremendous monetary and price deflation? Or will the current asset expansion continue into a catastrophe of fire? Often, as we've pointed o ...
Bloomberg Foresees Russia's Demise?
December 17, 2014
Bloomberg was in full cry last night regarding a failing Russian economy. We've never seen anything like it on Bloomberg: The front page of the website carried a box on the top left hand corner filled with blaring stories. It is this latter editorial that we ar ...
Misery of a Meme … Mainstream Media Profiles Boy Genius Who 'Made It Up' – and the Frat Rape That Wasn't
December 17, 2014
In the Internet era it is increasingly difficult to actualize dominant social themes. An "actualization," of course, is a news story showing the validity of the meme or theme. Several years ago, the mainstream media tried to actualize the "thoughtless and bruta ...
Inflation … Deflation … When a Central Bank Produces It, It's Wrong!
December 16, 2014
A recent article of ours made the point that deflation and disinflation are unstable monetary states in an era of central banking. While we didn't draw precise definitional lines between various kinds of deflation, our point was clear enough: Deflation and disi ...
Farmland Provides a Solution to Regulatory and 'Warmist' Overkill
December 16, 2014
Warm weather often promises an abundance of food. But for global warming promoters, warmer weather is to be feared. Purposefully or not, "scientific" research, media reports and over-regulation form an unholy triangle of food scarcity. Simplify the explanation ...
You Can Relax – There's No Retirement Crisis After All
December 15, 2014
This is an absurd article. US lifestyles and retirement possibilities have been on a downward arc since at least the turn of the century. And if one goes back and compares the 1950s to the present day, the current financial environment looks even worse. Since 1 ...
Hard Truths About US Patriot Protests
December 15, 2014
Gavin Seim and people like him are perhaps the fruit of this Internet era. They are educated and fervent about protecting constitutional freedoms. Yet there is a big difference between understanding what has been lost and regaining it. Seim is already on the ra ...
Transparency Will Not Cure the Multinational Problem
December 12, 2014
The idea behind this article is that openness is good and more openness is even better. The article makes a pretense of asking whether this is a sensible conclusion, but at the heart of the article is an argument for more transparency. The idea is that governme ...
Shock: Spain Shuts Down Google, Confronts the Internet
December 12, 2014
Richard Gingras, Head of Google News, posted this update on Thursday, explaining that Google News would have to close in Spain. That's because Spanish legislators have decided that any time someone reproduces even a few words of someone else's writing, it is no ...
So It Begins: Congress to Cut Pension Plans
December 11, 2014
This is huge news, and it's definitely launched in a big way on the mainstream media. As of this writing, the situation is still in flux but from what we've read this legislation is taking place. Even if it doesn't happen this time, it's part of a trend that wi ...
Cannabis: Congress Swims Against the Tide in DC
December 11, 2014
This is a case of one step forward, one step backward when it comes to cannabis legalization. But in a sense the two occurrences we'll discuss here shed some light on the larger mechanism of legalization now taking place. The first occurrence is Congress steppi ...
Markets Retrench – A Short- or Long-Term Phenomenon?
December 10, 2014
The contradictions of the current "bull" market worldwide are catching up with the averages. Call it an equity "cognitive dissonance." Understandable turmoil in Greece combined with the puncturing of an "exuberant" Chinese stock market caused a sudden global se ...
CIA Torture Is But the Tragic Tip of the Proverbial Iceberg
December 10, 2014
So now it is general knowledge that the US tortured throughout the Bush administration ... and beyond. The publication of this information by the Senate Intelligence Committee is generating a massive wave of indignation around the world. The US has long been se ...
Economist Magazine Explains Why Economics Is Prestigious – But Gets It Wrong
December 09, 2014
This is an interesting meme. Economists ARE influential, though not for the reasons that The Economist enumerates. In fact, we can make an argument that modern mainstream economics is entirely a manufactured science: in the past we've done just that. Anyway, th ...
Pew Study Reveals People Feel 'Better Informed' Thanks to the Internet
December 09, 2014
This interesting survey confirms what has seemed obvious to us and our readers for years: That the 'Net is making people more informed, not less. This has proven to be, in our view, an unstoppable process and one that is sparking major social changes. We track ...
EU Shock Report: Elites Plot a Europe 'Forged' by Crisis
December 08, 2014
Wow. We've been banging the drum regarding the shady manipulations of Europe's founders for years now. But it looks as if those who have ignored this sordid history are gradually giving in. That's how life works in the Internet era. 'Net exposure eventually col ...
What Happens If People Decide the War on Drugs Was Not Only Dysfunctional but Also False?
December 08, 2014
So it begins. In fact, we asked the question quite a while ago regarding the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands in jail for using cannabis. "Where is the justice?" we asked. By phrasing the question this way, we positioned it as moral issue. And, yes, the ...
EU Deflation: Real Problem or Eurocrat Exaggeration?
December 05, 2014
This is predictable. EU officials are now stating they are going to do what they want to do whether or not the EU agreements allow it. We've mentioned it numerous times because onetime EU top man Romano Prodi is on record as suggesting that this would happen so ...
In Celebration of What George Orwell Understood – and What He Didn't
December 05, 2014
Reading about Orwell in The Economist magazine is a bit like reading about a celebration of the Internet in China. You can expect that a lot has been left out. Defending its lack of substance, the article retreats into the kind of archly intellectual tone that ...
The Crashes and Profits Yet to Come
December 04, 2014
Elite memes have two sides and we can see this when it comes to the stock market. On the one hand, there are plenty of articles in the mainstream media indicating that the current "rally" could go on indefinitely. And then there are articles like this that prov ...
Scientific American Warns Against the Damage Done by Government Shutdowns
December 04, 2014
Scientific American often provides us with memes we recognize, especially when it comes to global warming. Another theme is the virtue of government science. For the editors at Scientific American, there can be almost no significant breakthroughs without govern ...
Bloomberg Spins Economic Fairy Tale to Cover Up Deeper Realities?
December 03, 2014
What's funny about this Bloomberg editorial is that it criticizes gold purchasers for following "stories" but somehow neglects to explain that those who purchase stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate are also following certain narratives. To put it another ...
Porn Ban Reveals Broader Agenda for Social Control?
December 03, 2014
Yesterday came word that Britain was banning the filming of numerous kinds of "violent" sexual acts including spanking. We're not going into the specifics of what was "banned" because it really doesn't matter. What does matter is that elites, specifically Briti ...
Rand Paul Expands the Political Dialectic – And That's a Good Thing
December 02, 2014
Rand Paul is back in the news with statements about the war on drugs creating a "culture of violence" that puts police into an impossible situation. In the same editorial, he also said the criminal justice system targets more blacks than whites but that nonethe ...
Slate Strikes Out: Analysis of Thanksgiving Tale Draws the Wrong Conclusions
December 02, 2014
It didn't take that long for the mainstream media to start debunking an increasingly favorite libertarian report regarding the "First Thanksgiving." We recently presented the libertaraian narrative here at The Daily Bell in a scholarly retelling by Richard Ebel ...
Reuters Discovers the Great Convergence of Global Stock Market Stimulation
December 01, 2014
This Reuters article states clearly what we've been pointed out in our Wall Street Party meme: It's not just a US phenomenon. We noted this as quantitative easing began several years ago in the US. The EU, too, was stimulating European economies at the time as ...
Swiss Gold Repudiation Doesn't Undermine Larger Internet Era Trend
December 01, 2014
The numbers were more skewed than we expected, but the anti-gold vote was not a surprise. For a variety of reasons, the Swiss don't seem to seek a return to a quasi-gold standard. There are, of course, various speculations regarding this vote. Some believe, as ...
Big Banks: What Happens When Customers Cease to Believe?
November 28, 2014
This article presents us with a predictable meme regarding financial centralization as a competitive advantage. When it comes to banks, this is an especially ubiquitous theme. That's because those behind the century-old banking consolidation are desperate to es ...
Assange: Google as a Creature of the State Department
November 28, 2014
This report from the Russian news agency Tass (via Spanish Publico) might be easily dismissed; but for several reasons it is likely not. First, the report is not firsthand but apparently is part of a book being written by WikiLeaks's Julian Assange. Second, we' ...
Fed Numerical Inputs Mislead Officials and Media Alike
November 27, 2014
This is an interesting critique because it deals specifically with the inputs that Fed officials use to decide on the value and volume of money at any given time. We've often pointed out that the rationale for central banking generally is, well ... economically ...
Mainstream Media Negativity On Swiss Gold Referendum Conceals the Truth
November 27, 2014
USA Today has weighed in on the upcoming gold referendum in Switzerland with a predictable anti-gold article. In fact, the anti-gold tone when it comes to the mainstream media is overwhelming. Central bankers hate the yellow metal because it restricts their fre ...
EU Desperation: Using Germany as a Club to Threaten the West
November 26, 2014
Once more, Germany is being brandished as a club. From what we can tell, this is an age-old meme. The idea is that what the Germans did to Rome 2,000 years ago, they can do to Europe today. Thus: Beware of Germany. We don't have to go that far into the past to ...
A Meme Grows on the Dow: Stock Profits for Another Half-Decade?
November 26, 2014
The Wall Street Journal recently published a passionate plea to young investors regarding the stock market. It is truly a remarkable statement. And in fact, it is only one of several recent editorials that have appeared recently that push such exposure. We last ...
Is UKIP the Most Significant Political Movement in the UK?
November 25, 2014
Is UKIP now going to be portrayed as a populist party? The Economist uses the word "populist" (see above) to describe UKIP, and this may provide us with a significant clue. That would be disappointing because UKIP is in many ways a "libertarian" party that want ...
Bloomberg: Calls for a US Exit Tax on the Horizon
November 25, 2014
This Bloomberg editorial fires a beginning salvo for an emigration tax. With seven million US citizens living abroad and the US fedgov apparently in dire need of revenue such a tax might serve two purposes. First of all, it might make emigration more difficult ...
Who Will Watch the Bankers?
November 24, 2014
The Fed has apparently announced that it regrets the way it conducts its bank supervisory role and intends to do better. This is yet further fallout from revelations from Carmen Segarra, a bank regulator for the Fed who published considerable criticism about th ...
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