ETC

Wishful thinking is not a solution. The world of work has changed, and the rate of change is increasing. Despite the hopes of those who want to turn back the clock to the golden era of high-paying, low-skilled manufacturing jobs and an abundance of secure service-sector white collar jobs, history doesn't have a reverse gear.

There's a marked difference between how African Americans and whites experience gun violence in the US. More specifically, "among whites, 77 percent of gun deaths are suicides. But among black Americans, 82 percent of gun deaths are homicides."

There are many half-truths perpetrated on individuals by Wall Street to sell product, gain assets, etc. However, if individuals took a moment to think about it, the illogic of many of these arguments are readily apparent. The index is a mythical creature, like the Unicorn, and chasing it has historically led to disappointment. Investing is not a competition, and there are horrid consequences for treating it as such.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal masterpiece Crime and Punishment is often thought of as one of the longest classics at more than 200,000 words. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016, which was signed into law on Friday, is nearly twice as long. At 887 pages, the bill allocates $1.15 trillion in war and discretionary spending for fiscal year 2016 which began almost three months ago. (That’s an average of $1.3 billion in spending PER PAGE of the bill.) In making it public law, President Obama has effectively signed the death warrant of the US government’s finances.

I would imagine any ancient Roman wise enough to make this same prediction back before the Empire collapsed as the great city fell from a population of one million down to 12,000, would have sounded like a real KOOK.

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey

Yellen and her cohort have no clue, however, that all of their massive money printing never really left the canyons of Wall Street, but instead inflated the mother of all financial bubbles. So they are fixing to blow-up the joint for the third time this century. That was plain as day when our Keynesian school marm insisted that the Third Avenue credit fund failure this past week was a one-off event - a lone rotten apple in the barrel. Now that is the ultimate in cluelessness.

The Fed's hubris has led it to the Dark Side.

Brazil's Supreme Court green lighted House Speaker Eduardo Cunha's Rousseff impeachment bid on Wednesday, even as the high court is also considering a request for his removal. Meanwhile, the economy continues to deteriorate as we just got the highest unemployment reading for the month of November in seven years."

It appears that a main preoccupation of economists – the self declared “behavioral economists” prominent among them – is to show how dumb people are as consumers and in assessing risks. Drawn to logical conclusion, this implies that economists, advising benevolent dictators are the solution. In ancient Greece people flocked to oracles and sought guidance.; today, Councils of Economic Advisers, IMF, OECD, Nobel prizes sustain perceptions that "macro- strology" and much else of what economists do is "science."

How much do you think your paper currency will be worth 23 centuries from now? Or even 23 years? Or potentially even 23 months?

The continued misuse of capital and continued erroneous monetary policies have instigated not only the recent downturn but actually 30 years of an insidious slow moving infection that has destroyed the American legacy. “Recessions” should be embraced and utilized to clear the “excesses” that accrue in the economic system during the first half of the economic growth cycle. Trying to delay the inevitable, only makes the inevitable that much worse in the end.

China did everything it could to prevent a collapse and it still happened.  How do you think other countries will do?

The upside is ephemeral, illusory or wishful thinking; the downside is real and lasting.

In the fifth and final GOP presidential nominee debate deathmatch (from The Ventian in Vegas), all eyes will be on the Cruz and Rubio as they vie for 2nd place to The Teflon Don. It won't be all plain-sailing for Trump (who warned CNN about "fairness" and slammed FOX's Megyn Kelly in the pre-debate tweetfest), who expects "them all to be coming for me," but we suspect Ben Carson will be a little quieter. With the stakes highest so far (and Iowa caucuses just 7 weeks away) for some of the also-rans it is put-up-or-shut-up time which may mean more fireworks and spectacle as Americans are distracted from their fear of terror, stagnant income, pre-Fed last supper.