Archive - Dec 24, 2015 - Story

In American politics the nation of Russia, especially as personified in its leader Vladimir Putin, becomes all things to all men. To American leftists, Russia is a neo-fascist, violently nationalist country that ruthlessly suppressed minority groups, especially homosexuals. To the American Right, Putin is the second coming of Stalin who is working to subvert good old-fashioned American values around the world.

"By now, it’s an all-too-familiar drill. After an extended period of extraordinary monetary accommodation, the US Federal Reserve has begun the long march back to normalization. A majority of financial market participants applaud this strategy. In fact, it is a dangerous mistake."

There’s only one investment we can think of that many people either love or hate reflexively, almost without regard to market performance: gold. And, to a lesser degree, silver. It’s strange that these two metals provoke such powerful psychological reactions - especially among people who dislike them. Nobody has an instinctive hatred of iron, copper, aluminum, or cobalt. The reason, of course, is that the main use of gold has always been as money. And people have strong feelings about money. From an economic viewpoint, however, money is just a medium of exchange and a store of value. Efforts to turn it into a political football invariably are signs of a hidden agenda, or perhaps a psychological aberration. So, let’s take some recent statements, assertions, and opinions that have been promulgated in the media and analyze them.

The poor are getting poorer but the rich, it appears, are no longer getting richer. With apartment vacancies at 9-month highs, Bloomberg reports that Manhattan's luxury-home market is rapidly losing its luster. Prices have been dropping every month since February, when they reached their highest point on record, and, as one analyst notes, "the downward trend in that decline hasn’t abated, and we haven’t seen it wavering in any way."

With all the action in Syria, the Ukraine is no longer a subject for discussion in the West. In Russia, where the Ukraine is still a major problem looming on the horizon, and where some 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees are settling in, with no intentions of going back to what's left of the Ukraine, it is still actively discussed. But for the US, and for the EU, it is now yet another major foreign policy embarrassment, and the less said about it the better. In the meantime, the Ukraine is in full-blown collapse - all five glorious stages of it - setting the stage for a Ukrainian Nightmare Before Christmas, or shortly after.

Earlier in the week, many scoffed at the stereotype-confirming 30% of Republicans than supported the bombing of Agrabah - the fictional city from the Disney movie Aladdin. Now, according to WPAResearch, a new poll shows a stunning 66% of young Democrats are especially eager to take in the imaginary refugees.

The world didn’t completely fall apart in 2015, but it is undeniable that an immense amount of damage was done to the U.S. economy. So don’t be fooled by all the happy talk coming from Barack Obama and the mainstream media.  When you look at the cold, hard numbers, they tell a completely different story.  The following are 58 facts about the U.S. economy from 2015 that are almost too crazy to believe...

“The SAC study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and 'friendly forces and people' to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the 'systematic destruction' of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.”

"Unfortunately, an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates.” 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders said in an op-ed on Wednesday that a full independent audit of the Federal Reserve is necessary “to reign in Wall Street."

Today the Swiss Federal Government confirmed that it had received enough signatures and would hold a referendum as part of the so-called "Vollgeld", or Full Money Initiative, also known as the Campaign for Monetary Reform, which seeks to ban commercial banks from creating money, and which calls for the central bank to be given sole power to create the money in the financial system. In other words, an initiative to ban fractional reserve banking, and revert to a 100% reserve.

"Erdogan's adventurism has been quite successful so far, but it amounts to an extraordinary departure for Turkish foreign policy, and maybe even risks the destruction of the country. How on earth could this happen? The background is an inferiority complex, and megalomania."

The governments of both Somalia and Brunei have prohibited public festivities celebrating Christmas saying that they could damage the Muslim faith. Of course, as we saw yesterday, this kind of suppressive, micro-aggression is already here in America (at Cornell University) but while Mistletoe and crosses are banned here, Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has banned "hats or clothes that resemble Santa Claus," fearing they could "provoke al-Shabab to carry out attacks." No, this is not from The Onion.

A massive explosion has occurred at an industrial gas plant (owned by Inter Corp Oil) in the southeastern Nigeria town of Nnewi. Local media reports the blast occurred while a truck was discharging its contents, and the ensuing fireball has left over 100 people burned to death.

Every year, Pew Research Center looks back at the most memorable facts that illustrate important trends shaping our world. From faltering faith in government to the decline of Christians in America and from increased racial tensions to the shrinking American middle-class, here are some of our most striking findings of 2015.