STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS Showing 3201 - 3250 of 6675
States' Rights and Frankenfood
April 03, 2015
Any time you read the phrase "a bipartisan bill...," hide your guns and children. Partisan gridlock is the only thing that saves us from Washington's antics. We are in maximum danger when they start singing about "bipartisanship." To hear some members talk, all ...
Renewed Efforts Target US Surveillance State with Legislative Roll Backs
April 02, 2015
If the US public were polled in depth about the loss of privacy that has taken place since 9/11, chances are there would be a significant percentage of people that would resist the trade-off. Likewise, if people were polled in depth about the globalized warfare ...
Real Reason for Rising Military Suicides?
April 02, 2015
There are powerful forces in the US and abroad that will resist any consensus that links military service to depression and suicide. This study published yesterday in JAMA Psychiatry states bluntly suicide does not seem to be much enhanced by deployment in Afgh ...
Mr. Bernanke's Blog: Setting the Record Straight His Way
April 01, 2015
Ben Bernanke was once among the most powerful men on the planet because of the monetary control he exercised as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Now he is not quite so powerful, but apparently he is prepared to be a good deal more informative. He has started a ...
Is the IRS Inevitable?
April 01, 2015
What if you could get rid of the IRS? There are so many alternative forms of taxation that are likely preferable and simpler, one is certainly justified in asking: Why the IRS and its administration of progressive taxation? Certainly it is well known that initi ...
War on Terror's Economic and Mortality Costs Have Yet to Be Tallied
March 31, 2015
It is important to keep track of the war on terror and its damages. A big war creates immense antipathy among those subject to its destruction ... Trade suffers; blowback occurs. And for the US, such a war can be economically draining far beyond what is now bei ...
Freedom Train Rolls? Legitimate 'Color' Revolution in Brazil …
March 31, 2015
A big mainstream media meme is that when economic conditions worsen, people respond by seeking out Hitler-esque leaders who will express the frustration of the "people" via genocide, incipient warfare and the creation of a police state. Regardless of whether th ...
Singapore's 'Success' Provides Yet Another Opportunity for Media Misdirection
March 30, 2015
Predictably, the death of Lee Kuan Yew has generated many positive comments in the mainstream media about his "leadership" of Singapore. The main thrust of the comments has to do with his ability to run an authoritarian regime that produced a kind of capitalist ...
Kofi Anan: Drug Users Need Help Not Punishment
March 30, 2015
Leaders in high places around the world are making it clear that the drug war is in a sense "over" – and all that is left to do is wind it down. Of course, if you ask the millions who have suffered from the drug war and their families, the "war" is an all-too ...
Bloomberg: More Flaws in Piketty's Book; Why Henry George's Tax May Be Best
March 28, 2015
This article from Bloomberg further deconstructs the conclusions of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century." It is incredible that this book was named the Financial Times Business Book of the Year. The book has already been singled out for mathematical mistakes t ...
Real Tragedy of 'Science': Public Faith Declines as Fakery Grows
March 28, 2015
The breadth of this scandal (see excerpt above) is extraordinary and comes not long after a top executive at Monsanto issued a plaintive tweet lamenting the West's eroding faith in "science." You can see our Monsanto analysis here: "Monsanto Laments Dwindling F ...
New York Post Expose: Stock Market Rigging Hits the Mainstream
March 27, 2015
The stock market has moved down hard these past few days and perhaps there is more to come. The moves allowed the New York Post's John Crudele to readdress a favorite topic of his, which is market-rigging in the US and abroad. His most recent article seems to h ...
Furor Over Clarkson's Firing Suggests a Deeper Dissatisfaction
March 27, 2015
The furor over "Top Gear" clearly expresses the sickness at the heart of British society. As in many authoritarian countries, people's resentments and grievances are often not recognized or properly expressed until triggered by an event too important to be igno ...
robot fires worker
A Lack of Freedom Is Destroying the Middle Class, Not Chinese Competition
March 26, 2015
Once more this weary meme is dredged up. We suspect it will be regularly trotted out within the context of "robots stealing our jobs." Imagine you were on a farm and robots were taking over all the menial tasks. The average economically illiterate person would ...
Indonesia Welcomes Smart Cities, Though It Shouldn't
March 26, 2015
We've tracked this emergent meme a number of times. You can see one of our articles here: Smart City or Dumb Idea? An excerpt: Gradually you realize that by keeping the definition amorphous the concept [of the Smart City] becomes a weapon that can be used again ...
Europe's Real Anti-EU Revolution May Be an Individual One
March 25, 2015
Is Grexit really so grave? The adversarial stance taken by the two parties is likely partially for public consumption. Following the political adage of never letting a good crisis "go to waste," the entire affair has been in a sense orchestrated. At least the l ...
A Tale of Two Memes – and How Our VESTS Analysis Anticipates Them
March 25, 2015
What we call "memes," the mainstream media might term "trends."There are two examples in this analysis: self-driving cars and water shortages. We've identified both as having elements involving government and corporate control. In other words, these are not mer ...
ABCs of the Coming Credit Crunch?
March 24, 2015
This is a good analysis of what could go wrong with world markets (especially Western and US ones) and why ... It touches on a number of memes: Sort through them to better understand what's taking place, or what could take place – and could not. More: "Maybe ...
Yemen's Chaos … Continued
March 24, 2015
We've written articles in the past pointing out that Yemen is perhaps the most important country in the Middle East. It's not widely regarded as so in the West because of the lack of reporting on the country within a comprehensible socio-political context. But ...
World Bank Economist Shares His View on Economic Success
March 23, 2015
Now that we understand the reality of economic growth, we have a real problem with books – and analysis – like this. One model for prosperity (which we are partial to) holds that the less force used in creating an economy, the better. People ought to have t ...
Capturing the Illogic of the 'War on Terror'
March 23, 2015
This is one of those articles that deserves a wide audience because it captures the essential illogical nature of the "war on terror" in a single incident and provides us clarity about its destructive aftermath. Certainly, it may be argued that the article is i ...
Brazil's False Choices May Not Stand
March 21, 2015
This article is an almost perfect example of false choices. The editorial staff is counseling Dilma Rousseff to get out of the way so that a man who knows better than she how to wield the power of the state can exercise it. The implication – stated outright a ...
Panic of Elon Musk: Cars Will Drive Themselves This Summer
March 21, 2015
We just covered Elon Musk's latest statements regarding self-driving cars and his prediction that in the not-too-distant future driving would be banned. Cars would drive themselves without human input. See here: "Tesla's Musk Continues to Restyle Himself as a T ...
Paul Tudor Jones Advances the 'Income Inequality' Meme and Warns of Violence to Come
March 20, 2015
This Ted Talk by Paul Tudor Jones has been getting a lot of attention, perhaps because it amplifies the "social justice" meme that we've written about before. The idea here is that societies benefit from social justice and that only government activism can keep ...
global network at your fingertips
West Must Help China Build 'New World Order'?
March 20, 2015
It used to be those who used the phrase "New World Order" were derided as conspiracy theorists. So what do we call Bloomberg now that its lead editorial for Friday trumpets the term? The editorial – penned by Bloomberg's editorial board – makes the point th ...
Autonomy Has Nothing to Do With It
March 19, 2015
Several news items on the central banking front. As we can see from the above news excerpt, Cyprus is making threatening noises regarding its monetary nexus. President Nicos Anastasiades is, in fact, in the process of removing Governor Chrystalla Georghadji. He ...
Droughts in the News: Time for Another Scarcity Meme?
March 19, 2015
Here comes Reuters, right on time. With California and Brazil suffering from horrible droughts – or so the mainstream media tells us – this article pounds the drum for water scarcity. Of course, as followers of the Daily Bell/VESTS model, the reality of a w ...
Real Reason for the Asian Investment Bank – and Western Participation
March 18, 2015
High finance and international politics are subtle affairs. On its surface, the effort to create an Asian-oriented "world bank" is straightforward. But beneath the surface, currents swirl. The putative reason for such a bank is that the current World Bank is of ...
Tesla's Musk Continues to Restyle Himself as a Tech Visionary. But Why?
March 18, 2015
Elon Musk is not your normal car company executive. Perhaps he's interested in the fundamentals of his auto enterprise but he's also given to making big pronouncements, ones that are increasingly futuristic. We recall he had ideas about building a "hyperloop" m ...
Construction of a Meme: The Fed Loses 'Patience'
March 17, 2015
This AP article is a good example of a mainstream media promotion. The promotion – theme – involves central banking. The positioning of the article attempts to make the meme credible and the "news" believable. Knowing what we now know about operations of ce ...
NAU at Work? Canadian, Mexican Border Agents Can Now Work Within US, Carry Firearms
March 17, 2015
We last wrote about the nascent NAU in late January, in an article entitled, "Shock: CNN Editorial Calls for a North American Union." Now, once more, these three large states seem to have taken another step toward unity. … Now we can update our speculation †...
Shock: Germany Mulls Cyprus Solution to Solve Grexit?
March 16, 2015
Now the Cyprus episode begins to become clearer. What the EU needed was a precedent, and apparently Cyprus sufficed. We've written about Cyprus before, some two years ago when the Cyprus default was ongoing. In an article entitled, "Yes, Cyprus Was Aimed at Sin ...
World Economy Grows While Carbon Emissions Don't – Are We Sure?
March 16, 2015
We are supposed to be relieved that there is economic growth without an increase in carbon. In fact, we can't remember a more useless evolution – if the statistics are even accurate. Of course, if you believe in global warming, and that carbon dioxide is the ...
Limited Hangout Campaigns Probably Won't Answer Fed Critics
March 14, 2015
This is another one of a series of articles in Bloomberg that seem to comprise a "limited-hangout" campaign supporting the Fed. This one makes a feint toward supporting a rules-based Fed program but then seems to settle for a more generic potential solution: "T ...
Intellectual Property? Be Careful What You Wish For …
March 14, 2015
We try not to utilize two of the same outlets in the same edition but this second editorial from Bloomberg dovetails with our first article quite nicely. It is putatively about the recent decision to give the Gaye family a victory in a much-discussed plagiarism ...
Latest Mystery: Why Consumers Aren't Spending
March 13, 2015
Is it really a mystery why people aren't spending? The numbers that the mainstream media uses are "cooked" and thus the conclusions that can be drawn from those numbers are faulty as well. For Bloomberg editorialists the idea that their data is faulty never see ...
Mainstream Reporting Evaporates
March 13, 2015
What is analogous to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Reporting for a mainstream Western publication, especially in the US. Most modern mainstream reporting is inaccurate: yet excessive pains are taken to ensure the "objectivity" and "ac ...
The Endless Hopelessness of a Crushing Debt Contraction – and What to Do About It
March 12, 2015
This is another one of those hopeless articles that the mainstream media specializes in. There's nothing about it that provides any action points. You can understand what is going to happen but you can't do anything about it. This is a specialty of the so-calle ...
Confidence In Government Is Getting Worse
March 12, 2015
Those who believe in social salvation by government cannot be pleased with these polls. Maybe that's why they are polling the same issue over and over. It seems something like a compulsion. Ask enough times and maybe you'll get the right answer. Only, no ... so ...
Questionable Narratives: Gold Versus Stocks
March 11, 2015
We track dominant social themes and this is a consistent one: Don't invest in gold. Gold traveled up against the dollar to nearly US$2000 an ounce, but you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media. Most of the coverage gold received was negative and took plac ...
Senate Bill Introduced to Legalize Medicinal Cannabis: Ride the Wave
March 11, 2015
Believe us now? Meme watching is a skill. As soon as we detected the first "green shoots" of cannabis legalization we knew change was afoot. Change from the top down. It's important to re-emphasize. We use VESTS to discern what the internationalist power struct ...
Central Banking is a Technocratic Art Form
March 10, 2015
Our ongoing effort to analyze the arguments against an "audit" of the Fed has been helped immeasurably by Bloomberg View, which regularly advances arguments why the Fed should be left alone. These editorials have become more frequent now that the Fed and other ...
Is McDonald's Part of a Bigger Problem?
March 10, 2015
In the 1950s, the burger was surely considered "America's food." But today, the US consuming public has apparently grown wary of such staples, and McDonald's is bearing the brunt of the damage. What remains McDonald's great selling point is its price. People wh ...
India, the Next China?
March 09, 2015
China, Brazil and now India. Among the BRICs, only Russia and South Africa receive a measure of bad press. Russia a great deal of it, to be sure. But this is surely another meme in the making, one brought to us by the miracle of central banking that has lifted ...
Juncker: Ukraine Confrontation Justifies EU Army
March 09, 2015
The current Ukraine is the gift that keeps on giving from the standpoint of the expansion of state power. As Russia is considerably demonized, the vast military-industrial complex of the West – including NATO and various standing armies – is invigorated. NA ...
German Recovery? Don't Bet on It
March 07, 2015
For those impatient to proclaim a Western recovery, this Reuters article is for you. It tries to make the case that the numbers are finally turning favorable for Germany and perhaps for parts of Europe as well. We can't help recall the talks of green shoots som ...
Ferguson's Problem Is not Police Racism But a Broken Justice System
March 07, 2015
The Department of Justice report on Ferguson is startling. The statistic that jumps out is not one that this article in The Atlantic makes the lead – but it IS the lead or should be. Here is the horrible statistic in context as the article relates it toward t ...
Chinese Trap
March 06, 2015
We wrote about the China property crash recently, but this follow-up article in the UK Telegraph is noteworthy because it seems to reveal some serious economic dilemmas. Interestingly, our initial article analyzed an editorial in Bloomberg not long ago that had ...
The Growing Divide Between Western Rhetoric and Economic Reality
March 06, 2015
This article provides us with a logical sequence of events showing quite clearly why central planning ought to work – even though it doesn't. In fact, the entire article is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. It makes logical, if inaccurate, assumptions and ...
More Central Bank Transparency Is Inevitable
March 05, 2015
Bloomberg has been running a series of editorials defending the Federal Reserve and criticizing those who are supporting various congressional bills to pry it open. This article is a little different because it takes the position that some additional sunlight c ...
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