EDITORIAL
Showing 3901 - 2 of 2
October 28, 2014
On October 13th, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced in Stockholm, Sweden, with French economist, Jean Tirole, the recipient for his work on developing models to better assist governments in regulating private enterprise. A couple of weeks earlier, ...
October 27, 2014
So it is Monday and some results are in, as the article excerpted above explains. While the Ukraine parliamentary election results will be announced on October 20th from what we can tell, stress test results have turned out as expected with 25 banks out of 130 ...
October 27, 2014
Long ago we analyzed the cannabis trend as one that was going to create vibrant ventures that, taken together, would generate a business no less powerful than that of the alcohol/beverage industry. And even with the inevitable setbacks, this projection holds, i ...
October 27, 2014
In 1968 the government of Canada decided to openly admit Americans seeking to avoid being drafted into the US war on Vietnam. Before, would-be immigrants were technically required to prove that they had been discharged from US military service. This move made i ...
October 26, 2014
As someone who grew up under a communist regime, with no free press, no public debate of foreign affairs, with schools that were indoctrination camps and a nearly tyrannical bunch of rulers who seemed to believe that their destiny was to guide the workers of th ...
October 25, 2014
The movement to legalize cannabis is in place. It will continue. And it leads to some interesting conclusions. One can argue, for instance, that the tragic shooting in Canada's capital city earlier this week may ultimately benefit cannabis decriminalization eff ...
October 24, 2014
We´ve always been a little skeptical of bitcoin and have received plenty of slings and arrows for our apparently non-libertarian stance when it comes to this private, electronic technology. But we remain interested and this Bloomberg article caught our eye. Th ...
October 24, 2014
We've been writing a series of analyses of natural and organic farming and food; the above article in the Wall Street Journal fits right into this evolving meme. Corporations like McDonald´s are adopting "organic" as a kind of brand these days. But "organic" h ...
October 24, 2014
Last week a lengthy report on an apparently fraudulent and dangerous medical cannabis-related product was brought to my attention. It is not a pleasure to read – always the case when we come across bad news but this news is particularly distasteful, as it com ...
October 24, 2014
I recently was in Vietnam and spent some time in prosperous, capitalist Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and toured the American War Museum. I believe there are a number of parallels between the Vietnam and Iraq War and that history could repeat itself now ...
October 23, 2014
It seems these days that every time we identify a new meme, we see a "fast-track" evolution. The "Internet of Money" is no exception. We wrote about the Internet of Money on October 20, and now in this article in The Local, we see an apparent furtherance of thi ...
October 23, 2014
To call "organic food" a meme is questionable. From our point of view, the word "organic" by itself does not yet constitute a promotion. However, there is a debate taking place in the feedback section of The Daily Bell and it revolves around what actually const ...
October 23, 2014
I know the secret of life. You get up each morning and put both feet on the floor. You stand up and walk through the day in as straight a line as possible. Work diligently. Treat everyone with the civility they deserve. Treat those for whom you care with patien ...
October 22, 2014
Veteran financial reporter John Crudele has blown up the myth of the market-driven stock exchange with this astonishing article in the New York Post. We were attracted to it not only because it tells the truth, in our view, but because we have been making the s ...
October 22, 2014
Actually, as this book shows, it is green farming that is not sustainable. In pursuit of our organic meme, we've been investigating the growth of organic farming, and came upon this just-published book that encapsulates the VESTS model. (Unfamiliar with VESTS? ...
October 22, 2014
A recent CNBC article tells us that "gold is sending wacky signals." ... Why? Because of a strange, emergent "correlation" that gold is now exhibiting with the recently rising dollar and bonds. The article quotes trader George Gero of RBC as saying: "It started ...
October 22, 2014
More Americans are living outside the United States. Although there are no firm statistics, the US State Department estimates that somewhere between 3 and 6 million Americans now live offshore and I think this is a low estimate. Although I now live in Canada, I ...
October 22, 2014
A distinguishing feature of Nietzsche's thought was that he believed humankind needed to overturn the old, mostly theological ethics and transform values to something new. He didn't say what that would have to be but since he identified Christian ethics with ra ...
October 21, 2014
Bloomberg editorialists seem to make a habit of assuming certain elite memes are accurate and beyond reproach. Maybe they have to sign a document or something. Probably not ... but sometimes it seems like it. This editorial is a case in point. It is actually a ...
October 21, 2014
Imagine how difficult it is to allow people to set fire to an herb and inhale it. Not very. Yet according to Reuters, this is a nearly impossible task. We have no doubt that cannabis decriminalization and legalization is sweeping the West and indeed the world. ...
October 21, 2014
Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1934, there appeared in English one of the most important books on money and inflation penned in the twentieth century, The Theory of Money and Credit by the Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. Even eight decades later, it s ...
October 20, 2014
We've noticed a new meme creeping into economic reports: The Internet of Money. This phrase sounds mysterious and forward looking; in fact, it describes the process of money migrating to non-bank platforms. The big drama inherent in the Internet of Money is its ...
October 20, 2014
We can see from this recent report that cannabis decriminalization is being actively pursued in one of the largest and most conservative states in the US – Texas. The article explains that because Texas voters "do not have the right to change the law via ball ...
October 20, 2014
Former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently called on the government to force young people to spend two years either "serving" in the military or performing some other type of government-directed "community service." Neoconservative Sena ...
October 19, 2014
Mostly this research is being conducted with animals – very little on humans. There are very few clinical trials. It is promising in neuropathic pain, inflammations, anxiety, schizophrenia (with CBD) and many others (see Pacher and Kunos, above). When CBD bec ...
October 18, 2014
October 16th was "World Food Day." Perhaps you missed it, but certainly for those directly involved, it's a contentious holiday – with two well funded farming models facing off with each other. In this article I want to show how a "third way" is one that may ...
October 17, 2014
Remarkably, we continue to see articles about regulatory capture. The latest one is here, appearing in The Daily Beast. It would seem that the departure of uber-editor Tina Brown has provided The Daily Beast with the opportunity to expand its coverage. The idea ...
October 17, 2014
Africa is in the grip of a meme. We've called it "Africa Rising" before, and we've written numerous articles about it. We've compared Africa's progress to that of China and Japan – and showed that there seems to be a pattern between these three nations and th ...
October 16, 2014
This article is a strongly worded warning about negative ramifications regarding FATCA. As such, it's a bracing affirmation of the kind of sensible reporting that circulates on the Internet beyond the filters of mainstream media. It also provides us with yet mo ...
October 16, 2014
Are Whole Foods's actions regarding organic produce a sign that organic farming is being taken seriously at the corporate level? Well ... yes and no. Obviously, Whole Foods has made a serious commitment to "organic," but it is manipulating the sector as well. I ...
October 16, 2014
[Note: this article proceeds from two assumptions. First, drugs can be abused but the abuse could not possibly be more destructive than the War on Drugs has been. Second, drug use is in no way the same as drug addiction.] "The American narcotics problem is an a ...
October 16, 2014
In an interview today with Politika, a Serbian newspaper, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, said that it is futile and dangerous for the US and its European puppets to blackmail Russia and that the Exceptional Nation and its vassals should consider the risks ...
October 15, 2014
And so, the UK Telegraph tells us, it begins ... the dizzy unraveling of the euro. But not so fast. We've written about Beppe Grillo before. He's a very successful comic and politician, someone who is influential both culturally and politically. But he also sha ...
October 15, 2014
Collective farming – under the watchful eye of government – has been responsible for mass starvation wherever it's been tried, certainly in the 20th century. Mao's Great Leap forward, which starved some 50 million, Russia's Kulak consolidation that cost mil ...
October 15, 2014
Good news on the asset forfeiture front: "Asset confiscations fall to six-year low," according to The Age (Victoria). That would seem to be good news, right? But, no ... not in this day and age. We're constantly assaulted by legislative initiatives we could nev ...
October 15, 2014
"[M]an acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, ther ...
October 14, 2014
Actually, as the article excerpted above points out – and as it has been pointed out to us numerous times – the Nobel Prize in Economics is actually the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." The prize was obviously establ ...
October 14, 2014
Another article celebrating the efficiency of the state when history shows us otherwise. This is a growing trend in the expanding cannabis industry: Uruguay, too, has been slowed by government's determination to grow cannabis itself. And now Italian officials w ...
October 14, 2014
Yes, I know most free-market thinkers have read Atlas Shrugged and we certainly identify philosophically today with the appeal of a Galt's Gulch-style community like Rand described in her novel. But let's talk about how we can learn from the problems of Galt's ...
October 14, 2014
Suppose that there was a button in front of you that if you pushed it would, in one instant, abolish all the governmental controls and regulations on the U.S. economy. Would you push that button, and transform America into a society of free men associating with ...
October 13, 2014
Genetically modified wheat has again been discovered in the US, but you won't read much about it in the mainstream media. The last time GM wheat was discovered in US farm fields, the domestic export market crashed and Japan issued a US wheat ban. The meme here ...
October 13, 2014
Dubai crashed as of this writing and perhaps on Monday Wall Street and Europe will do the same. If a crash is successfully averted, next week and the week after offer similar opportunities. Regardless ... as we wrote last week, this is a central bank controlled ...
October 13, 2014
According to Forbes magazine, at least 5,000 Americans contacted healthcare providers fearful they had contracted Ebola after the media reported that someone with Ebola had entered the United States. All 5,000 cases turned out to be false alarms. In fact, despi ...
October 12, 2014
Here's my guess... Some time in the next few months the authorities get a wake-up call. They are tapering off QE. This reduces the amount of excess liquidity driving up stocks. It is bound to increase volatility, too. It wouldn't be too much of a surprise to se ...
October 11, 2014
The Daily Bell has covered the growing lawlessness of governments in ways that directly affect many of our readers, particularly in Western nations. These include ever-increasing surveillance, draconian Homeland Security powers and militarization of out-of-cont ...
October 10, 2014
We wish we could be more sympathetic to US tech giants, but we can't. The largest US firms have apparently – and obviously – turned themselves into a kind of Trojan horse for the US intelligence community and for law enforcement besides. Now Congress is hol ...
October 10, 2014
For a while, asset forfeiture in the US was a much-discussed topic, but then it faded away. We missed this Forbes article in September that puts the controversy into perspective and offers some reasonable solutions. Of course, the larger issue is a kind of offi ...
October 10, 2014
We have known since . . . well, when haven't we known that our public officials are incompetent. Their incompetence is always expensive, but now it risks a worldwide ebola pandemic. With so little known about a deadly disease, one would think that with ebola on ...
October 09, 2014
Just recently the Crash of 1929 loomed over Western stock markets, especially the Dow. But on Wednesday the Roaring Teens resumed. Like the Roaring '20s, this stock market is destined to climb as high as the Federal Reserve will allow it to go. Of course, marke ...
October 09, 2014
We recently wrote that a certain amount of skepticism might be warranted when surveying reports about Ebola and the grimness of its potential spread. But skepticism aside, there are other larger questions as well regarding how the Ebola epidemic is going to be ...
