New Orleans

The growing dilemma we now face is private police officers outnumber public officers (more than two to one), as the corporate elite transforms the face of policing in America into a privatized affair that operates beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment. What we’re finding ourselves faced with is a government of mercenaries, bought and paid for with our tax dollars, all the while claiming to be beyond the reach of the Constitution’s dictates. When all is said and done, privatization in the American police state amounts to little more than the corporate elite providing cover for government wrong-doing. Either way, the American citizen loses.

Presenting the Florida jobless claims website. According to the Miami Herald reports, on Friday, the state’s auditor general issued a scathing 45-page audit that joins mounting evidence that CONNECT - aka Florida's Online Reemployment Assistance System or said simpler, jobless claims website - is a system in disarray.

"We really cannot exit this [era of QE and ZIRP] without some significant market event... The end has to come at some point... Gold will go measurably higher...  In any market that is so one sided, that is accelerating so rapidly, that trend will end… it will most likely end in a fairly violent fashion."

From “24” to “Breaking Bad” to “The Walking Dead,” American minds are being saturated with propaganda selling the idea that crisis situations require a survivor to abandon conscience. What we see developing is an extremely dangerous philosophy that rests on the foundation that victory (or survival) is the paramount virtue and that it should be attained at any cost. Moral compass becomes a “luxury” that “true” apex survivors cannot afford, an obstacle that could eventually get one killed, believing that the “survival of the fittest” is more important than the survival of the principled. However, if we cast aside our principles in the name of victory, then, ironically, we have still lost everything. If there is such a thing as the “greater good,” truth and honor must be the apex of that vision.

27 years ago, in his acceptance speech, George H.W. Bush famously told America that he wanted a "kinder, gentler nation." While it took nearly three decades, it seems that his wish has finally come true. Sort of. Last week, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service appeared in front of the House Way and Means Oversight Subcommittee... and apologized to taxpayers, specifically those who have had their assets seized and bank accounts wrongfully frozen - "To anyone who is not treated fairly under the [tax] code, I apologize."

according to the latest update from the 29 west coast ports that serve as the entry point of the bulk of Asia/Pac trade into and out of the US, things are about to get far worse for America's manucaturing base, because as RILA reported earlier, talks between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) representing port management, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) officially broke down on Wendesday, and without an agreement, experts have suggested that nearly 30 west coast ports could be shut down within a week. As RILA reports, "a work slowdown during contract negotiations over the past seven months has already created logistic nightmares for American exporters, manufacturers and retailers dependent on an efficient supply chain. A complete shutdown would be catastrophic, with hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk if America’s supply chain grinds to a halt."

Just because we do not acknowledge the binds that tie us to our servitude does not invalidate their existence, but rather significantly strengthens them.

Nearly two weeks ago, we were surprised to read on the Navy's website that one of America's prize aircraft carriers, CVN-74, John C. Stennis (whose crew is perhaps best known for the following awkward incident), as part of an operational training period in preparation for future deployments, just underwent not only its first ordnance onload since 2010, but, according to Senior Chief Aviation Ordnanceman Jason Engleman, G-5 division's leading chief petty officer, "the biggest ordnance onload we've seen."

"There will first be a pernicious excitement, and next a fatal collapse." -- Walter Bagehot, Lombard Street (1844)

Despite the authorities' best efforts to keep everything orderly, we know how this global Game of Geopolitical Tetris ends: "Players lose a typical game of Tetris when they can no longer keep up with the increasing speed, and the Tetriminos stack up to the top of the playing field. This is commonly referred to as topping out."

"I’m tired of being outraged!"

Are you in better shape financially than you were last Thanksgiving?  If so, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate because most Americans are not.  As you chow down on turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce this Thursday, please remember that there are millions of Americans that simply cannot afford to eat such a meal.  According to a shocking new report that was just released by the National Center on Family Homelessness, the number of homeless children in the U.S. has reached a new all-time high of 2.5 million.  And right now one out of every seven Americans rely on food banks to put food on the table.  Yes, life is very good at the moment for Americans at the top end of the income spectrum.  The stock market has been soaring and sales of homes worth at last a million dollars are up 16 percent so far this year.  But most Americans live in a very different world.

While the media continue to just about exclusively paint a picture of recovery and an improving economy, certainly in the US – Europe and Japan it’s harder to get away with that rosy image -, in ordinary people’s reality a completely different picture is being painted in sweat, blood, agony and despair. Whatever part of the recovery mirage may have a grain of reality in it, it is paid for by something being taken away from people leading real lives.

“Ordinary people are unnerved about how money works in a bottomless cyber space. Gold seems tangible, clear and timeless”

It isn’t just our economy that is crumbling.  Something is happening to America that no amount of money will be able to fix.  Everywhere around us we can see evidence of the social decay that is systematically eating away at the foundations of our society.  It can be found on the streets of our inner cities, in dark basements in extremely rural communities, in the most prestigious boardrooms on Wall Street, and definitely in the halls of power in Washington.   Bringing in an entirely different crop of politicians or printing gigantic mountains of money is not going to solve this problem, because it exists in the hearts of millions of ordinary men and women.  The truth is that we really need to take a good, long look at ourselves in the mirror...

Greenspan told the CFR that "gold is a good place to put money these days given it's value as a currency outside of the policies conducted by governments." "Gold has always been accepted without reference to any other guarantee." When asked where the price of gold was headed in the next five years he said “higher --- measurably" ...