Mexico

Courtesy of the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, we bring you the "20 facts about US Inequality that Everyone Should Know". For everything one has always wanted to know about wage inequality, CEO pay, homelessness, education wage premium, gender pay gaps, occupational sex segregation, racial gaps in education, racial discrimination, child poverty, residential segregation, health insurance, inter and intragenerational income mobility, bad jobs, discouraged workers, wealth inequality, labor market deregulation, job losses, immigrants and inequality and productivity and real income, this is the definitive resource.

Constitutional values cannot defend themselves. They require the people to stand firm, and to never yield. Americans today have yielded far too much already, and at some point very soon, we’re going to have to make the hard choice on what is more important; our general safety and personal comfort, or our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. Like the American Colonials, we have a system that does not serve our best interests, but the interests of an elite few. We are quickly losing our ability to dictate the terms of our own society, and our own destinies. Sadly, we are not yet presenting the determination that the colonials held in the face of this danger. Today, we are a nation mourning its own demise before it has even occurred. We have turned to reluctant compliance and submission. We are, frankly, whiny and pathetic. This does not have to be.

BP tries to blame shrimpers for all of the turtle deaths ...

That's what makes oil trading so much fun - it's all based on factors that are out of our control and half a World away, so the speculators have dozens of tools available to them to manipulate the market.

Our descendents will surely look back on this time and wonder how we could have been so foolish– to let these people rob our freedoms; destroy our economies; kill foreigners on their home soil; and shower themselves with Peace Prize medals… all while keeping society quietly subdued with games, tricks, and bombastic patriotism. They tell us to wave the flag, to buy yellow ribbon bumper stickers, and to remember the fallen on days like today. Truthfully, though, the memories of the fallen would be much better honored if the government quit making more of them… and stopped destroying the freedom that they supposedly died to defend.

This is not entirely surprising given that governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear industry

• French government says China backs Lagarde for IMF (Reuters)
• ...but, China has actually not backed Lagarde (WSJ)
• “You Americans Are Funny” — You Start an IMF (Forbes)
• Norquist Emerges as Barrier to U.S. Debt Deal (Bloomberg)
• Scarcity, Usefulness, and Getting an Edge (Hussman)
• Bullard Says Fed May Keep Rates, Balance-Sheet Steady to Assess Economy (Bloomberg)
• For Global Steel Industry, China Poses Guessing Game (WSJ)
• Goldman Finding Third Time a Charm in Russia (Bloomberg)
• Greece Will Accelerate State Asset Sales to Stem Debt Crisis as Bonds Drop (Bloomberg)
• It can go wrong? It will go wrong (WaPo)

What's with these tornadoes?

Christine Lagarde's chances of heading the IMF just took a another step back. Why? Because the firm whose alumni are about to be or already are in key posts at the Fed, the ECB and the BOC, has said (through its moutpiece Jim O'Neill who "can't see how the EUR should be above 1.40" even as Thomas Stolper et al see it going to 1.55 in a year) that it is not too crazy about having a European replacement for DSK, and that "it might be better if some leadership and authority came from outside of Europe with a fresh set of independent eyes" (supposedly the fact that Lagarde has had no formaly economic academic brainwashing is not a factor). In other words, Goldman has aligned itself with China, which has made it clear that it may be wise if the next IMF leadership "reflected the New World Order." As such, the largely symbolic IMF conclave just became very interesting: while the IMF is largely a figurehead with the real backstop organization always being the Federal Reserve, Goldman appears to have just voted alongside China... and thus against Europe and the US.

The FBI always gets its man ... whether he's guilty or not!

A new study by Deloitte confirms everyone's worst fear (and every millionaire's wettest dream): the wealth amassed by millionaire households is set to increase by more than 100% over the next 9 years. From a total of $92 trillion held by the world's richest in 2011, by 2020 the world's millionaire households will possess $202 trillion, or roughly 4 times current global GDP. Even though much of move up is attributed to the wealth surge in the developing world, the biggest beneficiary is, you guessed it, the United States where the millionaires (those with net wealth of at least $1 million), who currently account for $38.6 trillion of total wealth, will see their assets increased by 225% to $87.1 trillion! And while a comparable study of how much wealth the lower and middle classes are set to lose over the next decade, we are confident that it will be roughly comparable...inversely. So if anyone harbored any illusions that the current status quo was about anything but the rich getting richer, all those can be promptly swiped aside.

This situation is too far gone, the energy industry has it's hooks too deeply in our politicians and they have WAY too much control over our daily lives. That means the logical thing to do, when faced with an out-of-control vital service that is gouging consumers and damaging our economy, our environment, and working against our national interests - is to NATIONALIZE THEM.

We are about to experience the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.

When we first speculated that many women would step up and claim they were being abused by DSK a few days back, we had no idea just how right we would be. Yet even we had no idea about the moral caliber of the women doing the "stepping up." Well, The Telegraph has just released the bombshell. "Dominique Strauss-Kahn hired prostitutes from the "Manhattan Madam" who infamously also served Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former Governor of New York, she claimed on Wednesday night. Kristin Davis said she provided young women for the IMF chief in 2006, as he ran for the French Socialists' presidential nomination, and that one complained about his "aggressive" behaviour. "He was a client of my agency," she told The Daily Telegraph. "When men abuse women I'm no longer going to protect their identities". As for DSK's preference: ""He wanted an 'All-American girl', with a fresh face, from the
mid-West," she said. "A girl in January 2006 complained he was rough and
angry, and said she didn't want to see him again"."And the hits just keep on coming...

There have been quite a few spoof and comedic versions floating around, but here, courtesy of the NYPD, is the official version.