University of California

It appears there is a minimum wage threshold below President Obama's mandated thresholds that are "fair" and "livable." As NYPost reports, Urban Outfitters has asked workers at the company’s home office to "volunteer" for extra weekend shifts at a new fulfillment center in the town of Gap, Pennsylvania. In other words, the true minimum wage is $0 per hour. Bear in mind that if the labor market were growing as it should, in sharp contrast to how it has been presented over the past year, minimum wage laws would be the furthest from the mainstream.

I'm guaranteed to hear, "But... Who could've seen this coming?" Or "We knew prices were frothy, but no on could've foreseen the effect it had on XYZ asset classes". Yeah, right! This should mark my 3rd accurate bubble pop call in 8 years.

America’s descent into totalitarian violence is accelerating. It is a land in which facts have been redefined as enemy propaganda, a land in which legally protected whistleblowers are redefined as “fifth columns” or foreign agents subject to extermination, a land in which America is immune from criticism and all crimes are blamed on those whom Washington intends to rule.

We all know how sectarian, religious and political differences have thrown many Middle Eastern countries into chaos and armed conflict. But there is a deeper factor at play which deserves greater recognition: severe water scarcity.

The minimum wage is not what is commonly referred, as is being proven again as parts of the US experiment directly with this boundary. In New York, fast food workers have been given a $15 per hour minimum wage which is being celebrated by the same fast food workers who will bear the brunt of the experimentation. Some of them will be happy with the results, but there will be clear losers – the full wrath of redistribution is usually unseen which is why it persists.

What do El Paso, New York, and Chicago have in common? They are among the top 20 cities from which Americans are fleeing in droves...

Last month, the United States Supreme Court declined to take up a case involving Arizona’s and Kansas’s attempts to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The refusal of the Supreme Court to hear the case yet again sends a message to state and local governments that the federal government shall continue to centrally direct election and immigration law. The net effect is an imposition of a migrant subsidy scheme across all states regardless of the local economic and demographic realities, while ignoring the fact that residents of certain states bear a greater tax burden in subsidizing migrants.

There is an argument to be made that this could indeed be a "new market" given the continued interventions by global Central Banks in a direct effort to support asset prices. However, despite the coordinated efforts of Central Banks globally to keep asset prices inflated to support consumer confidence, there is plenty of historic evidence that suggest such attempts to manipulate markets are only temporary in nature.

In a world where everyone is a lawbreaker, it’s hard to spot the real criminals.

One way to ensure that Californians cut back on watering their lawns is to simply encourage households to remove the grass altogether and replace it with something that needs far less water — like rocks. "California’s love for lawns is wholly unsuited to the state’s dry climate," one professor tells The Guardian. It's an “'inherited historic aesthetic' that comes straight out of the British Empire."

Humans desperately need a new story to live by. The old one is increasingly dysfunctional and rather obviously headed for either a quite dismal or possibly disastrous future. One of the chief impediments to recognizing the dysfunction of the old story and adopting a new one is the most powerful of all human emotional states: Denial. But here we are, 40 years after the Club of Rome and 7 years after the Great Financial Accident of 2008, collectively pretending that neither was a sign warning of the dangers we face -- as a global society -- if we continue our unsustainable policies and practices that assume perpetual growth.

Like Houston, the financial system has been flooded with liquidity over recent years which has ultimately only had one place to flow - the financial markets. That excess liquidity has sent prices soaring to record highs despite weakting macro economic data. While many hope that the Central Banks can somehow figure out how to keeps the rivers of liquidity from overflowing their banks, history suggests that eventually bad things will happen. Of course, for investors, that translates into a significant and irreperable loss of capital.

What the honey-bee die-off means for humanity...

China is faced with a new reality wherein the very conditions that have supported the country's rapid economic growth may now be set for a wholesale reversal, as the "migrant miracle" gives way to a consumer-driven economy characterized by rising wages, decreased savings and investment, and falling export competitiveness. Meanwhile, what was once a "demographic dividend" is quickly becoming a "demographic deficit" as the number of working-age Chinese begins to decline. Beijing's response to this new reality will go a long way towards shaping the country's economic future.

"The EU and US need to hear the pleas coming from the southern European countries, as well as those of the refugees. The humanitarian catastrophe has reached large scale, with profound and irreversible consequences. Greece is paying a disproportionately high price, although Greece played no role in triggering this catastrophe. The EU and the US have the moral obligation, which is also consistent with their long-term interests, to take the necessary steps to put an end to the suffering of those in war zones, while at the same time preventing Greece’s collapse under the mounting pressure of refugees."