STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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May 08, 2013
Hardly anyone exhibits what we have called Europe's "immovable rigor" more than Jose Manuel Barroso. Barroso, a socialist and communist in his youth, is one of Brussels's top Eurocrats and one of its most arrogant. His statement is an example of the immoveable ...
May 08, 2013
This article makes sure to remind us that Warren Buffett is the world's fourth richest man. But wealth does not necessarily create wisdom. We remember when Buffett was technically broke ... certainly right after the financial crisis that began in 2008. Then wit ...
May 07, 2013
So we see again that Reuters celebrates the political at the expense of the marketplace. If Italy is on the brink, it is because of a series of political decisions that have stripped the country and citizens of their solvency. But, of course, Italy has been und ...
May 07, 2013
The reason the stock market is going up is because central banks have launched an unprecedented money-printing binge. But you wouldn't know that reading this Reuters headline. The headline is weirdly disassociated from the text of the article itself. The headli ...
May 07, 2013
Free-Market Analysis: We've often pointed out that a national socialist (Nazi) meme is gaining strength in the West. It is promoted by often charming individuals like Ellen Brown (Web of Debt) and many, many others who are far less charming and often truculent ...
May 07, 2013
Well, it didn't take long for this meme to make considerable headway. We've been tracking it for years, since noticing the popularity of Web of Debt. Since then we've watched its expansion via a variety of what we believe to be pre-packaged websites. And now it ...
May 06, 2013
Did you know that gold and oil have similar trading characteristics? Oil has been in use about 100 years from an industrial perspective and gold for several thousand years – though some say there are gold mines in South Africa that are 100,000 years old or mo ...
May 06, 2013
Are the rats removing themselves from the ruins of the EU? This one rat, the "German euro founder" according to the UK Telegraph is jumping ship. We call Oskar Lafontaine a rat because of the damage he has caused by backing the European Union – which was neve ...
May 06, 2013
We have titled this article "The Long, Slow Slide Toward Prosperity" even though that doesn't seem to make much sense, certainly not in the context of this Bloomberg article. But we will explain shortly. First, more about the article. It is just one of many tha ...
May 03, 2013
Is the Fed loosening or tightening and how do they know? Wouldn't the top bankers at the Fed need forward-looking indicators to be most successful? In other words, once an economy has sagged – or roared to life – isn't it too late to apply the necessary pro ...
May 03, 2013
We are not fooled by this emergent meme. It sounds reasonable but it is really intended, in our view, to flood with the West with other cultures and other ethnicities. In theory, this is great; in practice not so. It is more than likely a globalist gambit, inte ...
May 03, 2013
We don't believe for a minute that the oil and gas industry suddenly "discovered" fracking, etc. From what we can tell, these technologies have been around a long time. So why have the powers-that-be begun to cautiously indicate the true scale of oil and gas pr ...
May 03, 2013
When leftists speak about the redeeming qualities of Swedish communitarianism, they don't mention that Sweden has an inbred, titled elite. This is very interesting and might change the context of a conversation that usually celebrates Sweden's confiscatory tax ...
May 03, 2013
From an investment and business standpoint this is bad news. We were led to believe by the US government itself and supporters in Iraq that the new government would increase peace throughout the region. But now the cracks are beginning to show. Iraq's Sunni min ...
May 03, 2013
This is a disturbing story based on research that shows quite clearly how the US's premiere national police force is contributing to what we might call the "terrorists among us" meme. The charge that the FBI is manufacturing terrorism – and suspects – rath ...
May 02, 2013
John Stossel is surely a token libertarian, one that the major US media tolerates ... perhaps because he is photogenic and perhaps because he has perfected the art of dissenting in a tolerably polite way. This article in Human Events is a good example of Stosse ...
May 02, 2013
Tracking elite memes is an art form not an econometric analysis. We do the best we can, and we're fairly convinced that Mexico and the US are on the menu as part of a larger (with Canada) North American Union. We've been writing about this regularly in the past ...
May 02, 2013
Another day, another analysis focusing on minority income inequality. The New York Times editors love these articles because they can position the old Gray Lady as beating her breast over the evil in US society without ever demanding substantive change. Several ...
May 02, 2013
The globalists who are doing their best to eradicate so-called tax havens have apparently discovered that about a billion Chinese like doing business in cash. Presumably, China is on the menu. The impulse is always the same for the globalists, and it is one of ...
May 01, 2013
It seems official now ... Ben Bernanke is leaving at the end of his term. He is said to be exhausted by the past seven years of economic implosion and subsequent quarrels about monetary policy. Of course, from our humble perspective, this is all to the good. It ...
May 01, 2013
This is an unusual article to appear in Bloomberg, especially given the headline. But unfortunately, it promises more than it delivers. It would be nice to read a real evaluation of central banking in the modern mainstream press. But perhaps this is as close as ...
May 01, 2013
This Bloomberg article has an oddly celebratory tone. But we are not so interested in celebrating the demise of tax havens as we are in drawing the appropriate lessons from this event. The first lesson we can draw is that the world is a lot more coordinated tha ...
May 01, 2013
What the heck is The Conference Board and why does it matter? Well, according to Wikipedia, The Conference Board is a pretty big deal. The Conference Board, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit business membership and research group organization. It counts ...
April 30, 2013
Whoops, there goes Lars Christensen running his mouth again. Christensen is one of the founders of the idiosyncratic Saxo bank, which began life online, apparently as an "Internet bank." When you read up on Saxo you will be surprised as to how much controversy ...
April 30, 2013
We have been noting the spate of adulatory articles appearing in the mainstream press regarding central banks and central bankers. It really is quite amazing. Reuters has run several articles comparing central bankers to superheroes. And now comes the Canadian ...
April 30, 2013
The bad news goes on and on. From the Economist magazine we learn that some 300 million young people are out of work in emerging markets. We suppose this does not count the tens of millions out of work in Southern Europe and a similar number in the US. What rea ...
April 30, 2013
This is a terrific analysis provided by Standard and Poor's about the problems caused by old people and how leaders will struggle with this grave crisis. Of course, in writing the above sentence, we are being somewhat sarcastic. This is, in reality, just one mo ...
April 30, 2013
We've written about many of the farcical elements of Green industry in the past and identified Fisker as one of the most egregious offenders. Unfortunately, the resurgence of electrical motoring caught the attention of buyers and investors with predictable resu ...
April 30, 2013
Barry Diller has buyer's remorse, as we can see from this video. He comes across as cogent and even eloquent about the changes in the news media ... and yet one wonders why he purchased a failing magazine. Newsweek was not worth a dime when Diller purchased it ...
April 29, 2013
Presumably we are supposed to feel better because there is now a hawkish woman of integrity voting against accommodative Federal Reserve policies. We're not actually especially impressed by her but we are always impressed generally with Reuters's endless effort ...
April 29, 2013
Excuse our cynicism. This all looks to us like a kind of monetary passion play. The outcome is predictable and the drama is being presented for the gratifications of the rubes. We are supposed to worry – or at least follow with fascination – what the German ...
April 29, 2013
Here's an interesting article in the Washington Post explaining how US fiscal austerity needs to be offset by Federal Reserve pump priming. We would argue, not to put too fine a point on it, that it is a confused mess. The logic is lacking and the facts are in ...
April 29, 2013
Like you, dear reader, we were very happy to see that the US had the most energy efficient economy in US history. But unlike the Energy Information Agency (EIA), we don't consider this an unalleviated good. We would rather the US had an ECONOMY – which seems ...
April 29, 2013
Since we just finished being a bit mean to the AEI in another article in this issue, perhaps it's only fair to write one that gives them a bit of a pat on the back. This article, written to commemorate the ubiquitous and obnoxious Earth Day, is right on target ...
April 26, 2013
The United States is usually portrayed as a place where – unlike corrupt countries like the former Soviet Union – laws are obeyed, taxes are paid and a grateful nation takes its lead from Congress, the White House and even the military-industrial complex. B ...
April 26, 2013
Just the other day we wrote about ways that the plan to combine Canada, the US and Mexico into one super state was advancing. And now we read that US law enforcement agents are going to effectively be able to treat Canada as part of the US for enforcement purpo ...
April 26, 2013
We continually calibrate the clash between globalist dominant social themes and what we call the Internet Reformation. Which side is winning? What does the outcome mean for investments and even for freedom itself? Global warming, the War on Terror, Peak Oil – ...
April 26, 2013
This is a funny article because it begins by addressing significant issues seriously (see above excerpt) and then abruptly veers off into an analysis of European stocks and then simply winds down without providing any answer to the provocative issues that have ...
April 25, 2013
Central banking is fundamental to the current crippled economic model of the West. It is a new model, always expanding, always changing. Basically, central bankers fix the value and volume of money, doing so in ways that distort the larger economy and cause fir ...
April 25, 2013
The argument that the head of Business Insider Henry Blodget is making is that cutting government benefits and pursuing monopoly privatization doesn't help economies grow. Only printing debt-based fiat money can do that, apparently. It is a ludicrous argument b ...
April 25, 2013
Ironically, at the same time that the influential website Business Insider is running an article by editor Henry Blodget (see other article, this issue) blasting austerity, it is also the recipient of a more acute analysis by Joe Weisenthal. Blodget argues that ...
April 24, 2013
Another day, another editorial in Reuters about central banking superheroes. Are you convinced yet that this is a dominant social theme? And how exactly does this work? Is it coincidence? Do all the Reuters columnists sit down in a room together and decide that ...
April 24, 2013
Thump, thump, thump. The North American Union is being born right under your eyes. The globalists running Washington, DC have clearly stated in many ways that Canada, Mexico and the United States are to form a more perfect union. There are plenty of strategies ...
April 24, 2013
This is an interesting argument from an intriguing mind. Bruce Bartlett, the author, once worked as a staffer for libertarian conservative Ron Paul, yet he is also known as a classical Keynesian from an economic standpoint. Bartlett doesn't seem to like gold ve ...
April 24, 2013
For as long as we've been analyzing elite dominant social themes we've been reading these sorts of articles and commenting on them. The thickest, most resonant of these sorts of misleading efforts appear in predictably in the most august mainstream publications ...
April 24, 2013
The previous article in today's issue, also from Bloomberg, explains to us that "luck" is what determines socioeconomic status and that because luck is inevitably unfair we need government to even things out. The idea that government is necessary to combat the ...
April 23, 2013
We would like to be able to write otherwise, but we don't believe much that comes out of Western political systems these days. That's not to say every particular evolution is noxious. In the United States, the Tea Party has contributed to a change in the freedo ...
April 23, 2013
Like the leaders of Germany's pre-war National Socialist Party, the leaders of the European Union have maintained an implacable rigor when it comes to the restatement and continued application of their failing policies. The IMF-style austerity that they've have ...
April 23, 2013
This editorial is frustrating because it refuses to treat people as individuals but instead refers to them collectively as "Greece." We would submit when this sort of analysis is performed on a country or region it is inevitably incorrect. It must be because al ...
April 23, 2013
Here is yet one more example confusing regulation with monetary matters. People won't question the logic of these articles, but truly they are, well ... flawed. Consider: In a monopoly fiat environment, bubbles and blowups inevitably reoccur. Throughout the cen ...