STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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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 ...
December 10, 2014
"First, let me try to tell you about the setting of the Terra Viva, or Living Earth, community in such a way that I can convey even an inkling of the spectacular appeal of this magical place." Anthony Wile. Yes, Anthony is a great writer and this sounds like a ...
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 ...
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 ...
December 09, 2014
There has been no greater threat to life, liberty, and property throughout the ages than government. Even the most violent and brutal private individuals have been able to inflict only a mere fraction of the harm and destruction that have been caused by the use ...
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 ...
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 ...
December 08, 2014
Last week the US House voted overwhelmingly in favor of an anti-Russia resolution so full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War. Ironically, much of the bill condemns Russia for doing exactly what the US government ...
December 07, 2014
Remember, all markets are now manipulated on a 24/7 basis. It is the only way TPTB have been able to maintain their fiat Ponzi scheme this long, by "painting" markets like stocks and precious metals to tell the story they want told. Of course, not all markets â ...
December 06, 2014
Morgan Stanley recently predicted a good deal of growth for organic/natural food sellers. In fact, this area is "hot." And because it is, I want to clarify certain concerns regarding organic/natural food from an investment standpoint. Increasingly, we have an i ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
December 04, 2014
No. The reason requires a considerably lengthier response. Slavery is the social condition in which one human being owns another as property. This means the owner can use and dispose of the slave as he would other property such as a table or dog. Historically, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
December 02, 2014
Forty years ago, on December 11, 1974, Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek formally received that year's Nobel Prize in Economics at the official ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden. He delivered a lecture called, "The Pretense of Knowledge," which forcefully cha ...
December 02, 2014
In a blatant and massive market intervention, the price of gold was smashed on Friday. Right after the Comex opened on Friday morning 7,008 paper gold contracts representing 20 tonnes of gold were dumped in the New York Comex futures market at 8:50 a.m. EST. At ...
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 ...
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 ...
December 01, 2014
It seems nobody wants to be Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration. The president's first two Defense Secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, both complained bitterly this month about their time in the administration. The president's National Secu ...
November 30, 2014
I think that in my experiences living outside the USA for a decade, I came to see life as a need to find peace within ourselves. Taking an allegiance to a country, a group of political leaders, is inherently contrary to that. I have seen many write that one's i ...
November 29, 2014
The meme of marijuana and violence is weakening. As this theme is discredited, cannabis decriminalization and legalization will surely continue to expand. Here at The Daily Bell we see this as an ongoing and even inevitable trend. Vox is the latest media platfo ...
November 29, 2014
The old adage "you are what you eat" has a lot of people horrified these days, as we begin to realize just what it is we're actually putting into our bodies. Anyone who's worked at a beef packing plant, commercial chicken farm or sausage-making facility knows j ...
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 ...
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' ...
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 ...
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 ...
November 27, 2014
"The first rule of the politics of fear is that if you want to make something sound scarier than it actually is, you add the word 'culture' at the end of it." – Brendan O'Neill, Editor of Spiked. It is the c-word*: culture. Depending on the political agenda o ...
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 ...
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 ...
November 26, 2014
Reason flees; pygmies rule. Our intellectuals and legislators on both sides of the spectrum have abandoned all sanity regarding immigration, culture, freedom, and common sense. Our country is in free fall. Collapse lies over the horizon like grinning Death with ...
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 ...
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 ...
November 25, 2014
"The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." – Baron Rothschild. Events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri in the "Show Me State," are allowing Americans an opportunity to safely watch on cable news a frightening preview of what will likely happen whe ...
November 25, 2014
This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, is when Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to m ...
November 25, 2014
In a few days the Swiss people will go to the polls to decide whether the Swiss central bank is to be required to hold 20% of its reserves in the form of gold. Polls show that the gold requirement is favored by the less well off and opposed by wealthy Swiss inv ...
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 ...
November 24, 2014
Two momentous events are taking place in the Americas. One is the ongoing implementation of a US-government inspired "immigration overhaul." The other is continued and expansive unrest in Mexico. The BBC, watching the immigration tumult unfold from across the " ...
November 24, 2014
It will not shock readers to hear that quite often legislation on Capitol Hill is not as advertised. When Congress wants to do something particularly objectionable, they tend give it a fine-sounding name. The PATRIOT Act is perhaps the best-known example. The l ...
November 23, 2014
Voters in Alaska and Oregon voted to make marijuana legal for adults and regulated like alcohol, and the cities of South Portland, Maine and the District of Columbia made possession of small amounts of marijuana legal for adults. A medical marijuana initiative ...
November 22, 2014
What follows in this editorial is one of the most important announcements I'll ever make. A new community is rapidly taking shape in the mountains of Colombia. A number of liberty-minded individuals within the free-market thinking community are taking quick act ...
November 21, 2014
So the British Parliament is meeting to discuss "Money Creation and Society," a scenario that can give rise to numerous different imaginary interactions, many of them potentially amusing. In fact, we don't believe most MPs understand the monetary regime under w ...
November 21, 2014
Gone is the almost disparaging confidence of Swiss bankers and others when it comes to this anti-fiat referendum that could basically force the Swiss National Bank to back at least 20 percent of assets with gold. Only months and even weeks ago they were almost ...
November 20, 2014
Such articles as the one excerpted above on globalization seem dishonest to us. The article deems globalization an unmitigated good but makes no distinction between the globalization of governance and the globalization of the marketplace. Nothing wrong with mar ...
November 20, 2014
The "healthy food" meme keeps growing because it's a profitable one. But like many other things in the modern mercantilist environment, it's not entirely what it seems. We'll try to draw a distinction in this article that will allow us to examine this trend and ...
November 20, 2014
"[The role of the schoolmaster is to] collect little plastic lumps of human dough from private households and shape them on the social kneading board." ~ Edward Ross, Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order. Five-year-old Elizabeth of Mobile, Alaba ...
