Corruption

Saddled with a corporate media that marches in lockstep with the government, elected officials who dance to the tune of their corporate benefactors, and a court system that serves to maintain order rather than mete out justice, Americans often feel as if they have no voice, no authority and no recourse when it comes to holding government officials accountable and combatting rampant corruption and injustice. In the face of such abject injustice, outright corruption and overt inequality, it’s hard to feel empowered to believe the average citizen can make a difference.

There is no such thing as objective science when a researcher receives tens of thousands of dollars from the GM producers themselves, then goes on to promote their financiers’ products. Corporate collusion between government bureaucracies and educational institutions has become a serious issue in the U.S. that has corrupted objectivity in nearly every sector of American life.

• China stocks slump 6 percent on fears of further yuan depreciation (Reuters)
• U.S. Lacks Ammo for Next Economic Crisis (Hilsenrath)
• Emerging Markets Extend Slide as Commodities Fall; Pound Jumps (BBG)
• China yuan to move both ways, more 'adjustments' unlikely: central bank economist (Reuters)
• Playing Chinese markets is as simple as 'follow the leader' (Reuters)
• PBOC Injection Shows China Worries About Outflows (WSJ)
• Russia Fails to Soothe Oil Concerns as Citi Joins Ruble Bears (BBG)

The fallout from last week’s massive explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin continues to worsen, despite Beijing’s best efforts to play down the danger to the public. The death toll from the apocalyptic blast - which was described by witnesses as akin to a nuclear explosion - has risen above 100 with 114 people confirmed killed and more than 700 injured. Some 6,000 have been displaced. Authorities now fear that storms in the area could transform sodium cyanide (which is water soluble) present on the scene into hydrogen cyanide, which is "rapidly fatal." 

Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly understood, amounts to.

There is an economic and financial trainwreck rumbling through the world economy. Namely, the Great China Ponzi. In all of economic history there has never been anything like it. It is only a matter of time before it ends in a spectacular collapse, leaving the global financial bubble of the last two decades in shambles. The resulting deflationary spiral will suck the global economy into its vortex. And Wall Street will go down for the count because this time the Fed will be utterly powerless to reverse the tide.

In a culture where vigilance is encouraged rather than labeled paranoia, in a culture where productivity is enabled rather than obstructed, in a culture where free thought is treated with interest rather than disdain, government holds no value. The only people who understand the true nature of government and still value the existence of an overreaching state are the people who would like to take advantage of the unchecked power such a state affords. We often call these people “elitists.” They often call themselves elitists. Big government serves only the interests of these elites. Everyone else is either a hapless victim of it, a useful idiot in service of it, or a revolutionary opposed to it.

During six months of protracted and terribly fraught negotiations between Athens, Berlin, Brussels, and the IMF, the idea that Spain, Italy, and Ireland somehow represented austerity "success stories" was frequently trotted out as the rationale behind demanding that Greece embark on a deeper fiscal retrenchment despite the fact that the country is mired in recession. For many in the periphery, the notion of an economic recovery is fiction, plain and simple.

For anyone who might have missed it, Brazil is in trouble. "Macro imbalances in Brazil are large, the worst in almost a decade. The fiscal deficit at -8.1% of GDP is also at its widest in more than 20 years, with the combined twin deficits now tracking at a disquieting 12.5% of GDP. Brazil stands at a crossroads – both roads involve currency depreciation."

With the economy imploding, currency collapsing, and credit risk soaring, it is perhaps no surprise that just under a year since she was re-elected, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff is now Brazil's most unpopular democratically elected president since a military dictatorship ended in 1985, with an approval rating of just 8%. In a recent poll, 71% said they disapprove of the way Rousseff is doing her job... and two-thirds would like to see her impeached.

When China's tinderbox economy implodes, who will be left to bid up the world's surplus commodities and real estate?

A decline in the desire to own products conferring and announcing one’s high social status happens close to, or hand in hand with fairly severe economic downturns. People no longer want to stand out as rich when times are getting tough. This effect can be observed in numerous areas, even in the colors and shapes people choose when buying cars.

... in under a minute, the hateful script had taken offline the entire system in much the same manner as chucking a spanner into a running engine might stop a car. The databases, as always, were flushing their precious data onto many different disks as this happened, so massive, irreversible data corruption occurred. That was it, the biggest computer system in the bank, maybe even the world, was down. And it wasn't coming back up again quickly. At the time this failure occurred there was more than $12 TRILLION of trades at various stages of the settlement process in the system. This represented around 20% of ALL trades on the global stock market.