The global economy is structured to systematically funnel wealth to the very top of the pyramid, and this centralization of global wealth is accelerating with each passing year. According to the United Nations, 85 super wealthy people have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet combined. Seven out of every ten people on the planet live in countries where the gap between the wealthy and the poor has increased in the last 30 years... And when our fundamentally flawed financial system finally does collapse, it will be the poor that will suffer the worst.

Senior U.S. Intelligence Officers: Obama Should Release Ukraine Evidence

Plus Iran, Syria and Ukraine ...

Correlation or causation?

With hours to go until Argentina's grace period runs out and default occurs, investors are less than frantically selling Argentine bonds and pesos. They are lower but do not appear in full panic mode as we presume investors cling to hope that Argentina folds and pays off the holdouts (though there has been no sign of that so far). ARG 2033 bonds are down 3 points to 81 and the black-market peso is modestly weaker at 13.0 (near its record lows). Argentine CDS tightened modestly (as BofA warns the facts surrounding Argentina’s bond payments continue to be unique and deciding if CDS are triggered could take longer than expected) but 1Y CDS are holding at 4600bps (equivalent) - a 52% probability of default. Paul singer continues to defend himself (and the holdouts) from claims they are "dangerous fundamentalists" hell-bent on making it impossible for foreign sovereigns to restructure their debts.

In just 800 words Pat Buchanan exposes the sheer juvenile delinquency embodied in Washington’s current Ukrainian fiasco.
What motivates Putin seems simple and understandable. He wants the respect due a world power. He sees himself as protector of the Russians left behind in his “near abroad.” He relishes playing Big Power politics. History is full of such men. But what motivates those on our side who seek every opportunity to restart the Cold War? Is it not a desperate desire to appear once again Churchillian, once again heroic, once again relevant, as they saw themselves in the Cold War that ended so long ago? Who is the real problem here?

If the specter of the second cold war descending into outright smoldering status doesn't send the S&P promptly to all time highs, nothing will. Moments ago the White House accused Russia of violating the 1987 missile treaty, in response to a still unspecified ICBM launch, calling the "breach" a "very serious matter." Bloomberg added that at issue was a ground-launched ICBM missile. And just so it is clear that the US is now picked the "escalation" of the prisoner's dilemma,  also moments ago AGP reported that the US is now weighing the risks of aiding Ukraine militarily. Specifically, senior American military officers are discussing the possibility of "providing Ukraine with more precise intelligence that would allow it to target missiles held by pro-Russian forces, US officials said Monday."

"In effect, by pursuing indexation we have introduced a socialist way of allocating capital in the heart of the capitalist system... As we all know, socialism is the ultimate form of freeloading. It has never worked, and it never will. This indexation is one of the most obvious forms of parasitism we have ever encountered."

Singapore’s plans to become a gold and precious metals hub took a key step on Thursday. Jim Rogers, Jim Sinclair and Marc Faber have extolled the virtues of owning physical coins and bars in Singapore. “Individuals are making a mistake if they’re holding all their assets in one country.…I still have the majority of my gold in Switzerland, but I am already moving gold to Asia,” Faber recently said.

When it comes to the apocalypse, Krugman likes to have his apocalyptic cake and eat it too. Krugman says that the recent concern about “debts and deficits” was a “false alarm.” He attempts to paint those who were concerned about the debt crisis as scare mongers. He sarcastically says that “the debt apocalypse has been called off.”

Just as the Federal Reserve cannot directly force you to stick the needle of monetary heroin (debt) into your arm, it also can't force employers to pay employees more. The ultimate hubris of the Keynesian Cargo Cult (which includes the global economy's central banks) is the naive notion that they can manipulate an entire system with a few levers such that the desired outcome--and only the desired outcome--is the output. The idea that you can change one input in an interconnected system of systems and only affect the one output you want is not just naive and simplistic: it requires a level of blindness and incompetence that is off the charts.

The Untold Story In the NSA Spying Scandal: Blackmail

Video of Rebel Buk Launchers Headed Back to Russia? No – Images From Ukraine-Held Territory Since May

For an administration in its sixth year, juggling presidential optics is nothing new. And with some rare exceptions, the public relations team around the president has remained consistently stubborn about refusing to let the never-ending stream of political, economic or international crises affect Mr. Obama’s daily schedule. The current myriad incidents are no exceptions: Moments after making a grim statement about Ukraine on Friday, the president popped into the East Room, where the first lady, Michelle Obama, was holding a mock state dinner for children to promote her Let’s Move nutrition initiative. “My big thing,” he confessed to the kids, “chips and guacamole!” There was plenty of laughter all around.

It has been over six months since we first highlighted the growing deterioration in the quality of auto loans and mentioned the 's' word (subprime) as indicative that we learned nothing from the financial crisis. Since then, auto loans (and especially subprime in the last few months) have surged to record highs; and most concerning, recently has seen delinquencies and late payments spike. The reason we provide this background is that, thanks to The NY Times, this story is now hitting the mainstream media as subprime-quality car buyers (new and used) realize the burden they have placed on themselves thanks to exorbitantly high interest rates (and a rapidly depreciating 'asset'). As one car 'owner' exclaimed, "buying the car was the worst decision I have ever made."