27 Huge Red Flags For The U.S. EconomyIf you believe that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction, you really need to read this article. As we look toward the second half of 2014, there are economic red flags all over the place. Industrial production is down. Home sales are way down. Retail stores are closing at the fastest pace since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. U.S. household debt is up substantially, and in 20 percent of all U.S. families everyone is unemployed. ... (more)
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The Belgian ConnectionOne of the biggest questions at the end of 2013 was how the Treasury market would react to the reduction of bond buying that would result from the Federal Reserve’s tapering campaign. If the Fed were to hold course to its stated intentions, its $45 billion monthly purchases of Treasury bonds would be completely wound down by the 4th quarter of 2014. Given that those purchases represented a very large portion of Treasury bond issuance at that time, it was widely assumed by many, me in parti... (more)
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Meet The Man Who Killed KeystoneOn May 12, the United States Senate fell 5 votes short of the 60 required to invoke cloture. (Cloture is a way to close debate and cause an immediate vote on a bill.) The measure in question was the first energy bill to have hit that chamber since 2007. It was killed by the Keystone XL Pipeline project which would funnel Canadian crude oil from Alberta down to Texas refineries.
Republicans wanted to add an amendment to approve the project. Democrats wanted a stand-alone vote on i... (more)
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The Student-Loan ScamThe federal student loan program ranks among the biggest scams of the welfare-state way of life that modern-day Americans have embraced.
An article in the Washington Post entitled "College Debt Is Still Keeping Grads from Buying Homes," points out that "young people are still drowning in student loans, and that debt is holding them back from reaching grow... (more)
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Killing the Internet: A Blizzard of New Taxes in the WingsFor years revenue-hungry states and local municipalities have salivated over the prospect of taxing the life out of the internet. Now a move by a small but dedicated minority in Congress may result in the scraping of the Internet Tax Freedom Act and usher in a new era of exorbitant taxation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In a few months, the newspaper reports, "customers may begin receiving notices from their Internet providers that new taxes are on the way. Even thoug... (more)
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How Consumers Rule In a Free EconomyOne of my favorite economists in the history of economic thought is the great Austrian, Carl Menger (1840-1921). While the mainstream of the economics profession acknowledges Menger's place due to his contribution to the Marginalist Revolution in the 1870s, it otherwise ignores him because his theoretical framework does not lend itself to policy prescriptions. In an era in which the economics profession largely views itself as a shadow branch of government which is itself charged with managing t... (more)
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Faber: The Most Underappreciated Asset is CashDr. Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions and memory of the stock and futures markets around the world. Dr. Doom also trades currencies and commodity futures like Gold and Oil. He is the publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. He is also fond of schooling the Wall Street media talking heads on economics and financial systems.
In the following video he discusses why cash is the most underappreciated asset -- certainly for the next... (more)
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Making the World Safe from Democracy or: How to Defend Oneself Against the United StatesRead part I
After this excursion into the theory of democratic peace I am back to the proposition that there is no greater threat to lasting peace than the democratic state, and in particular the United States. Thus, the question: how to make the world safe from democracy or how to defend oneself against the U.S..
This is not only a problem for foreigners but for Americans as well. Af... (more)
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The "Economic Recovery" Continues: Businesses Are Being Destroyed Faster Than They Are Being CreatedWhat would you say about an economy where businesses are shutting down faster than they are opening? Well, a shocking new study released by the Brookings Institution indicates that this is exactly what is happening in the United States. We are absolutely killing small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and as you will see below, the number of self-employed Americans has been on a downward trend for a decade even though our population has been steadily growing.... (more)
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And the Band Played OnAfter three months of consistently disappointing jobs numbers, the markets were as keyed up for a good jobs report as a long suffering sailor awaiting shore leave in a tropical port. The just released April jobs report, which claimed that 288,000 jobs were created in the U.S. during the month, provided the apparent good news. However, you don't have to go too far beneath the surface to find some troubling trends within the data. But even this minor excavation was too much for the media cheerlead... (more)
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New Frontiers in Regulatory OverreachIn most cases, excessive regulation doesn’t surprise me all that much. It usually focuses on familiar industries, such as automobiles. So, for example, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came up with a rule mandating that all cars and light trucks sold in the United States have rearview cameras, it wasn’t a great shock.
But every now and then, regulators do something that ... (more)
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The Debate DebateWhile there is wide agreement that the cost of college education has risen far faster than the incomes of most Americans, there is some debate as to whether the quality of the product has kept pace with the price. Not surprisingly, almost all who argue that it has (college administrators, professors, and populist politicians) are deeply invested either ideologically or financially in the system itself. More objective observers see a bureaucratic, inefficient, and hopelessly out of touch ivory to... (more)
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