Archive - Aug 4, 2015 - Story

"The share of young people living with their parents--which rose sharply during the recession and its aftermath--finally began to decline in 2014. But over the last six months, this decline seems to have stalled. We find that the share of young people living with their parents has increased relative to pre-recession rates for all labor force status groups, not just the unemployed and underemployed." - Goldman Sachs

"The Koran teaches persecution is worse than slaughter. Then it says, retaliation is prescribed in matters of the slain. Retaliation is a prescription from God to calm the breaths of those whose children have been slain. So if the federal government will not intercede in our affairs, then we must rise up and kill those who kill us. Stalk them and kill them and let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling."

We’re living in two worlds, you and I. There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media. Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America - privileged, progressive and free - is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth. All is not as it seems.

Yesterday afternoon's meltup short-squeeze in China - after regulators announced their latest restrictions on short-selling - has stalled in the early trading tonight following The IMF's decision to delay inclusion of Yuan in the SDR pending a review in September 2016. Though this will be a disappointment to the Chinese, the door is still open though given waringse from BMW and Toyota over "normalizing" auto sales, the market problems may be morphing quickly into economic problems.

From our perspective, the fundamental reason for economic stagnation and growing income disparity is straightforward: Our current set of economic policies supports and encourages a low level equilibrium by encouraging debt-financed consumption and discouraging saving and productive investment. We permit an insular group of professors and bankers to fling trillions of dollars about like Frisbees in the simplistic, misguided, and repeatedly destructive attempt to buy prosperity by maximally distorting the financial markets.

The Russian Airborne Troops are ready to assist Syria in countering terrorists, if such a task is set by Russia’s leaders, commander of the Airborne Troops Colonel-General Vladimir Shamanov told reporters on Tuesday.

Wondering why the drop-out rate from college is so high? One reason could be that a stunning 65% of students avoided buying textbooks due to the cost. As NBCNews reports, textbook prices have risen over three times the rate of inflation from January 1977 to June 2015, a 1,041 percent increase - dwarfing the government's official CPI data. Just as government-subsidized healthcare has 'enabled' dramatic rises in the costs of drugs so government-subsidized education has sparked hyperinflation-esque pricing in college textbooks

Despite its history of gains, and 5,000 years of tradition behind it, gold is rapidly becoming one of the most widely despised assets. But before we pronounce it dead and write the final gold eulogy, however, let’s consider the following...

What if the assumptions about a U.S. economic recovery and Fed rate hikes were wrong? Could observers be mistaken now about the trajectory of the Dollar vs. the Euro as they were back in 2000? Confidence is the only thing that really undergirds modern fiat currencies. But confidence can be very ephemeral...disappearing as quickly as it arrives. The U.S. Dollar benefits from confidence that the Euro currency may just be unworkable, that the U.S. economy will continue to improve, and that the Fed will raise rates throughout the remainder of 2015 and into 2016. If these expectations are unfulfilled, there could be a Euro reversal.

Presented with no comment...

The reality might just be that the collective "we," and quite possibly sooner than we think, really will need a bigger boat. That is, as it pertains to the global debt markets, which have swollen past the $200 trillion mark this year rendering the great white featured in Jaws which can be equated with past debt markets as defenseless and small as a small, striped Nemo by comparison. The question for the ages will be whether size really does matter when it comes to the debt markets...

A Japanese citizens’ judicial committee has overruled government prosecutors and forced them to bring three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to trial on charges of criminal negligence for their inability to prevent the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

America's twin trillion-dollar bubbles - auto loans and student debt - are taking their toll on household finances as "mortgage holders today are carrying more non-mortgage debt than at any point in the past 10 years, with an average of $25,000 per borrower." 

...despite record stock prices and non-stop propaganda, fewer and fewer people are believing the hype.