Washington D.C.

Last month, we offered a plain language translation of the Warsh op-ed, because we thought it was too carefully worded and left readers wondering what he really wanted to say. Translation wasn’t necessary for Fisher’s speech, which contained a clear no-confidence vote in the Fed’s QE program. Now William Poole is more or less saying that we have no idea what’s truly behind the Fed’s decisions. But he doesn’t stop there. He’s willing to make a prediction that you wouldn’t expect from an establishment economist... Poole’s refreshingly honest take on the Fed’s inner workings – from someone who truly knows what goes on behind the curtains – is more than welcome.

On a day when Sebelius faces more music, but small golf-claps are heard around Democrat offices at the sign-up rates for Obamacare, The Hill reports - rather dishearteningly, Capitol Hill staffers who signed up for ObamaCare through the Washington, D.C. healthcare exchange are being told to confirm their enrollments in person, and not to rely on data provided by the website... "Do not rely on your 'My Account' page or other correspondence from DCHL... do not assume you are covered."

We’ve spent the last five decades learning to love our oppression, adoring our technology, glorying in our distaste for reading books, and wilfully embracing our ignorance. Huxley’s vision of a population, passively sleep walking through lives of self- absorption, triviality, drug induced gratification, materialism and irrelevance has come to pass. Only in the last two decades has Orwell’s darker vision of oppression, fear, surveillance, hate and intimidation begun to be implemented by the ruling class. We’ve become a people controlled by pleasure and pain, utilized in varying degrees by those in power. Stay tuned for our modern day Hunger Games after this commercial for your very own Duck Dynasty Chia Pet.

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it."  Sadly, that appears to be the approach that the Obama administration and the mainstream media are taking with the U.S. economy.  They seem to believe that if they just keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better, eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. And of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some sort of an economic recovery by now.  Those running our system have literally been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our economic numbers.  The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in U.S. history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics.  All of that "stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the economy. Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all.

As an experiment, Bloomberg Businessweek typed the names of the 50 states into Google to see what people most frequently ask about them. The questions range from dumb (well, mostly dumb) to revealing, both about the states and about the people doing the searching. Lots of questions about carrying a gun, buying alcohol, getting divorced, and fighting union organizers. Whether a state is in the Midwest or South seems to be a particular obsession. But the most common question about the states is even more basic: Is it a state? or Is it racist?

Much has been said about how the median household income in the US has gone nowhere since the great financial crisis (and in real terms has been declining for the past decade). We won't add much to this topic suffice to say that please don't take your declining income grievances to Washington D.C. for the simple reason that, as the chart below shows, what's bad for America is good for its (heavily lobbied) politicians.

Is Low-Level Radiation Dangerous … Or Harmless?  How Much Radiation Will We Be Exposed To?  How Can We Protect Ourselves from Radiation?

The Shocking Reasons that Americans Are Right to Be More Afraid of Bad Government Policy than Terrorism

At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of the administration's collective mouth.  And of course it is not just Obama that has been lying to us.  Corruption and deception are rampant throughout the entire federal government, and this has been the case for years.  Now that some light is being shed on this, hopefully the American people will respond with overwhelming outrage and disgust. Aside from the now "fake" employment data, the following are five massive economic lies that the government has been telling you... Our financial system is far more vulnerable than we are being told.  We are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and when this bubble bursts it is going to be an absolutely spectacular disaster. Please don't believe the mainstream media or the politicians when they promise you that everything is going to be okay.

The root cancer at the core of the U.S., and indeed global economy, is cronyism and an absence of the rule of law when it comes to oligarchs. In the U.S., this cronyism is best described as an insidious relationship between large multi-national corporations and big government to funnel all of the wealth and resources of the nation to themselves at the expense of everyone else. In a genuine free market defined by heightened competition and governed by an equal application of the rule of law to all, the 0.1% does not aggregate all of a nation’s wealth. This sort of thing only happens in crony capitalism, which is basically nothing more than complete and total insider deals to aggregate newly created money into the hands of the few. The following profile of Washington D.C.’s so-called “boom” from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pretty much tells you all you need to know.

You may find what is happening at one Wal-Mart in Ohio very hard to believe. At the Wal-mart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton, Ohio employees are being asked to donate food items so that other employees that cannot afford to buy Thanksgiving dinner will be able to enjoy one too. On the one hand, it is commendable that someone at that Wal-Mart is deeply concerned about the employees that are so poor that they cannot afford to buy the food that they need for Thanksgiving. On the other hand, this is a perfect example that shows how the quality of the jobs in this country has gone down the toilet.

The establishment desires to acclimate Americans to the idea that being anti-government is wrong; that it is a despicable philosophy embracing social deviance, aimless violence, isolation and zealotry. Looking beyond the mainstream position, my question is, is it really such a bad thing to be anti-government today?

Responding to his administration’s ongoing struggles with the launch of Obamacare, President Barack Obama announced a proposal today that would enable insurance companies to grant one-year extensions to the health plans of Americans who would otherwise face cancellation. Here are some of Obama’s other plans to fix the troubled rollout of his signature health care law...

Just as the market was expecting, and may have been leaked once again, Janet didn't let anyone down. Today's exuberance in stocks matched only by confirmation that Janet Yellen has gained her helicopter pilot's license and is ready to take over the reigns of printer-in-chief from Bernanke. Key extracts:  "Unemployment is down from a peak of 10 percent, but at 7.3 percent in October, it is still too high, reflecting a labor market and economy performing far short of their potential...  I believe the Federal Reserve has made significant progress toward its goals but has more work to do." In short: Get to work Mr. Chairwoman, and allow Congress to keep doing more of what they have been doing under the Fed's central planning: nothing.

When one steps back from all the frustration, all the confusion,  all the failures both in the rollout and the mass behavioral experimentation, and the fact that the math just doesn't work, the primary stated purpose behind Obamacare was simple: to provide uniform, affordable (the A in ACA) healthcare for all Americans. But especially to those who are currently uninsured. At least such was the utopian, egalitarian vision behind its conception. Which is also why, stripping away the political posturing, the html coding errors, the funding issues, the biggest failing of Obamacare would be if it opened, and none of America's uninsured came. Sadly, this last nail in Obamacare's coffin, has just been confirmed with a just released Gallup poll which found that a tiny 18% of uninsured Americans - the primary target population for the exchanges - have so far attempted to even visit an exchange website.