STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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April 05, 2013
Here's a modest proposal: Let's wipe out the national debt. Much of the West's national debt is owed to various central banks. Columbia Professor Michael Woodford, called "the world's most closely followed monetary theorist," in this article says it ought to be ...
April 05, 2013
This is a fun article/interview to analyze because unlike Greenbackerism it doesn't aspire to any kind of faux-sophistication about finance or maliciously distort the truth to mislead people. It studiously avoids reality, but that's not quite the same thing ... ...
April 05, 2013
But a degree is NOT ... not anymore. With Western economies in collapse, it is probably wiser to gain a trade than a degree. People who realize this are sensible and tending to their futures in a manageable way. Formal education at its higher levels is lifted f ...
April 05, 2013
This week, while economists should have been closely considering the implications of the actual bankruptcy of Stockton, California, they instead heaped scorn on the perceived ideological bankruptcy of David Stockman. In other words, Stockman trumped Stockton. R ...
April 05, 2013
For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their pri ...
April 04, 2013
No ... the greatest of all modern, libertarian thinkers, Ludwig von Mises, has won. The reputation of sycophantic socialist John Maynard Keynes lies in ruins (among those who understand, anyway) and the long debate that began back in the 1930s is likely settled ...
April 04, 2013
The book excerpt by David Stockman that appeared recently in the New York Times (entitled "The Great Deformation") has badly rocked the chattering classes (see other article this issue). Their arguments are being deployed now in a concerted counterattack that s ...
April 04, 2013
The New American has done us the favor of pointing out the particulars of the BRICs' recent announcement regarding the formation of a developing world version of the International Monetary Fund. It turns out in almost every way that the BRICs agenda is an inter ...
April 04, 2013
Gradually, the nonsense about North and South Europe will fall away. It is true the cultures are different and no one would accuse Greeks, in aggregate, as valuing the kind of efficiencies and detailed order apparently dear to many German hearts (or so we are t ...
April 04, 2013
Almost every week in the European – British – press we are treated to yet another optimistic forecast about Britain's economic condition. And yet it keeps deteriorating. This admission by government officials about the reality of the British fiscal conditio ...
April 04, 2013
It's happening again ... In the late 1990s, credit was screwed down in the US, creating in the tech bubble and bust. In the early 2000s, the Fed kept rates so low that some homebuyers actually received offers of remuneration were they to take advantage of credi ...
April 04, 2013
We must make a confession: We didn't read David Stockman's article in the New York Times until recently ... but, boy, we sure should have! This video, which is a response to Stockman's screed, is probably the most inchoate and disorganized single presentation w ...
April 04, 2013
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is much in the news these days given that Europe is convulsed first by monetary incompetence and then by IMF-oriented "austerity." As these pages show regularly, the IMF has ambitions of becoming a global central bank of la ...
April 04, 2013
This week's Solari Story from Catherine Austin Fitts is titled "The Mom and Pop Predicament." Here's a bit of the transcript: I find there's a real effort now to blame Mom and Pop USA for what's happening and it's one of the most frustrating things for me. Yes, ...
April 03, 2013
In our continued effort to explain why the shift from East to West is not entirely coincidental, we bring you this report from Der Spiegel. It continues, generally, with the dominant social theme (already identified in these pages) of Asian might, and in partic ...
April 03, 2013
Around the world, Western-style monetary recipes are failing. But this article attempts to convince us that the Chinese have somehow managed to implement miraculous growth using ingredients that are notably dysfunctional elsewhere. How is that possible? We woul ...
April 03, 2013
We used a provocative headline (above) to remind readers that when central bankers promise to "stimulate" they are really talking about printing more money that inflates the money supply and causes, eventually, price inflation. This is what Japan's newly electe ...
April 03, 2013
Another day, another jeremiad from The Atlantic (which used to be a respectable thought publication) on the efficacy of political activism in the economic arena. It is truly tiresome after a while and, yes, it is easy to shoot down the idea of a state-controlle ...
April 03, 2013
After selling off an astounding 56% between October of 2007 and March 2009, the S&P 500 has staged a rally for the ages, surging 120% and recovering all of its lost ground too. This stunning turnaround certainly qualifies as one of the more memorable, and unusu ...
April 03, 2013
One of the difficulties with standing on principle is that often one is defending them when they are practiced by bad people. Or when bad conduct is involved. In both kinds of cases one may have no sympathy at all for the specifics but still finds it important ...
April 02, 2013
We've posted several articles now attempting to explain that the East versus West monetary competition is a kind of dominant social theme that doesn't reveal the reality of what's going on. But it is a meme, nonetheless, that is being ladled thick and fast. Fir ...
April 02, 2013
We've often pointed out that current economics involves transmitting electronic digits from central banks to money center (distributive) banks that then lend out the money or not as they choose. There is really no difference between putting this money in banks ...
April 02, 2013
Another day, another fulsome narrative about how paunchy middle-aged men (and some plump or fashionably emaciated women) save the world. The only trouble with these endless books is that there are so many crises because the same superheroes we learn are saving ...
April 02, 2013
This editorial makes the case that the US government is propping up Wall Street products and production and needs to stop it. The free market and risk taking needs to return to the larger securities industry. When government makes risky activity profitable then ...
April 02, 2013
You can only shake your head. There are so many people who believe that more government is the answer or that "markets fail." Of course it is impossible for a market to fail. The worst that can happen is that the market price is not sufficiently accurate from a ...
April 02, 2013
The Telegraph tells us the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, who went to Bosnia and discovered that UN officials and supporters were apparently involved in sex trafficking or at least covering it up. This is an important story that has now been made into a film. Were ...
April 02, 2013
We've written about this dominant social theme before but because of this article we can't resist returning to it. Everything we wrote about it is right here in black and white. We should also note that while this article was written a week ago when Cyprus was ...
April 02, 2013
When large democracies create state mandates they will inevitably be exploited. Now it appears that nearly a million in Britain were taking advantage of sickness-related benefits that they were not eligible for. This figure is arrived at via reports that 878,30 ...
April 01, 2013
We've already written about this dominant social theme. We are supposed to believe the Western world is moving away from the dollar and that Australia is fundamentally breaking away from Britain and welcoming the embrace of China? Last week came news that the B ...
April 01, 2013
This article actually appeared about six months ago but is worth examining within the parameters of Western decline given that we are documenting the shrinkage of the US dollar economy, the rise of an alternative, BRIC-based International Monetary Fund, etc. (S ...
April 01, 2013
This is a very revealing article posted at Reuters that comes out flatly and says the Cyprus crisis was overblown on purpose because otherwise sufficient pressure could not have been generated by the world community to change Cyprus's behavior. Yet the campaign ...
April 01, 2013
This article posted at CNBC basically acknowledges that an important issue surrounding the Cyprus issue is Cyprus' status as a tax haven and that others are now vying to replace Cyprus. If indeed Brussels attacked Cyprus over its accommodation of those seeking ...
April 01, 2013
The dramatic recent events in Cyprus have highlighted the fundamental weakness in the European banking system and the extreme fragility of fractional reserve banking. Cypriot banks invested heavily in Greek sovereign debt, and last summer's Greek debt restructu ...
March 31, 2013
The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Douglas Bell. Introduction: Doug Bell grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from Wesleyan University. After nearly a decade as an industrial designer and project manager in a professional educati ...
March 30, 2013
A book review in the Wall Street Journal by associate professor of economics at San Jose State University Jeffrey Hummel entitled "The New Central Planning" tends to confirm the perspective that the Federal Reserve is under continued attack. The upshot may be a ...
March 29, 2013
According to the Washington Post, there is a growing consensus for shutting off the Federal Reserve's monetary stimulus plan – see above – that is based on two reasons. Either it has succeeded brilliantly or it has introduced macro-economic risks that have ...
March 29, 2013
We are led to believe from this report that the process of creating a government in Italy is moving ahead even though it is obviously difficult. In fact, we have anticpated the difficulties in several articles, pointing out that Brussels Eurocrats and the globa ...
March 29, 2013
So Canada, the bright light of Western industry along with Australia, is now showing signs of wavering. The Canadian miracle is growing long in the tooth. We've already written about this but it occurs to us that the presentation of the impending collapse is be ...
March 29, 2013
We used the word "she" in the above dominant social theme to illustrate a point. We have no idea what sex India is. In fact, from what we can tell, India is actually an arbitrary series of lines on a map representing dirt, rocks, trees, rivers, etc. Lots of peo ...
March 29, 2013
This week's Solari Story from Catherine Austin Fitts is titled "The Black Budget." Here's a bit of the transcript: "If you want to understand how things got as sort of wacky as they've gotten, you really want to dip into and try and understand what the black bu ...
March 28, 2013
According to Business Insider, Jeroen Dijsselbloem has provided an "end game" for the euro that shows clearly what strategy is being contemplated. And the strategy is to shift responsibility from taxpayers to bank depositors for insolvencies. The idea, apparent ...
March 28, 2013
Gradually the liniments of banking reform are becoming clearer. It began as a low drum roll with the resurgence of Greenbackerism and has continued to expand. We've tracked these ideas and have been regularly attacked for pointing out the "campaign-like" nature ...
March 28, 2013
Over and over again we find waste and mismanagement in government programs. And the worst offender of all – at least in the West – is the US federal government. Probably the European Union would exceed the US government but the amount of money available to ...
March 28, 2013
While there is considerable controversy over climate change – global warming – that hasn't stopped New York state from incorporating it into financial policy. Like many globalist dominant social themes, this one is gradually graduating from hypothesis to la ...
March 28, 2013
One of the biggest dominant social themes currently is increased central banking accountability – or even a wholesale reorganization that brings central banks entirely under public sector purview. In this issue of the Daily Bell as in others we continue to tr ...
March 28, 2013
Here at the Daily Bell we've been carrying on a conversation with feedbackers over the advances of industrial robots – and subsequent investment and employment ramifications. Now comes this article on robotics taking over reporting. Will reporters be put out ...
March 28, 2013
Perusing the Sunday New York Times will almost guarantee running across the term "ideology" in various commentaries and news analyses. In her essay in Week in Review, titled "Cutting Slack Is So Old School," Sheryl Gay Stolberg invoked the term as follows: she ...
March 27, 2013
The Council on Foreign Relations deservedly or not has a reputation in "conspiracy circles" for being an elite facility that has considerable influence on US policies. But leaving that aside, the CFR often provides support for free-market arguments. Such is the ...
March 27, 2013
This Forbes analysis is actually a fairly sophisticated analysis on how realtors decide whether houses are a good buy or not. The article concludes that houses may be cheap to buy given current conditions. And this, apparently, may begin to drive a housing bubb ...
March 27, 2013
We've written about this before – the idea that robots are going to deprive people of jobs - and pointed out that it is basically another economically illiterate dominant social theme. The larger mainstream media sells news based on these kinds of scare tacti ...
