ETC

Why is wealth/income inequality soaring? The easy answer is of course the infinite greed of Wall Street fat-cats and the politicos they buy/own. If conventional labor and finance capital have lost their scarcity value, then the era in which financialization reaped big profits is ending.

Roughly ONE THIRD of the advisory firms the SEC examined failed to meet custody rule requirements.

Throughout the United States, Americans believe there is a “war on police.” A recent survey found 58% of Americans agree with this sentiment. A new, privately-funded billboard campaign hijacks the “Black Lives Matter” moniker to read “Blue Lives Matter,” highlighting powerful pushback from law enforcement sympathizers against activists. A deeper examination of the FBI's 2014 data, however, reveals that police are not only safe, but still running rampant in their liberal use of violence against the citizens they allegedly serve.

From the bowels of Australia’s iron ore mines to the top of Dubai’s pointless 100 story office towers, the entire warp and woof of the global economy has been distorted and bloated by the central bank money printing spree of the last two decades, led by the red credit machines of Beijing. Everywhere economies have succumbed to over-building, over-consumption, over-financialization and endless dangerous, unstable speculation. Stated differently, China’s red capitalism is the new black swan. There is nothing rational, stable or sustainable about it.

We expect the ultimate outcome of Carl Icahn's Super PAC will be to make it easier for activists to pressure management teams into buying back even more of their shares - perhaps by granting them a tax amnesty on repatriating some of the $2 trillion in offshore cash if used for shareholder friendly activity - but then again we tend to be cynical.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

The terms of Obama’s proposed TPP ‘trade’ treaty with Asian countries won’t be made public until the treaty has already been in force for at least four years. The terms of Obama’s proposed TISA (Trade In Services Agreement) with 52 nations won’t be made public until the treaty has already been in force for at least five years. Obama’s proposed TTIP treaty with European countries has been so successfully hidden, that even the number of years it will be kept from the public isn’t yet known. Hello, international fascism — all in secret, until too late for the public to do anything.

Many of the systems we take for granted are historical accidents. Either based on legacy systems hundreds of years old (higher education) or assembled in a short-term, ad hoc fashion (post-1940 national defense/ national security), these systems have expanded into vast patronage systems that are completely out of touch with 21st century needs, costs or realities. The U.S. healthcare system was not planned; it is largely accidental.

Stocks of “vice” industries like alcohol and tobacco are showing leadership – that hasn’t always been good news for the market.

Free trade, as a matter of practicality, can only exist where all trade partners exist on a perfectly “level playing field”

The geopolitical and financial risks facing the global economy are well-known. Hot wars and currency meltdowns garner headlines around the world. But few even hear, much less discuss, four ticking global time-bombs

...isn’t it a little bit scary to consider that the government’s #1 asset is its ability to steal money from you?

It’s unfortunate that it took the corporate media all these years to" discover" that the United States and Russia are fighting a geopolitical proxy war in Syria. It remains to be seen how many more years and lost lives it will take for them to also "discover" that this proxy war is being fought over resources and power. It’s a sad state of affairs when the Western media provides humanitarian cover for the U.S. and NATO to fuel a brutal civil war simply to create economic advantages for NATO states and allies while undermining stability in the Middle East - creating the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since World War II. And as millions of refugees continue to pour out of Syria into Europe and abroad, the NATO-dominated public of the E.U. and U.S. remain largely ignorant to the fact their own governments helped create the refugee crisis they so abhor.

It’s getting harder by the day to tell young people that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law without feeling like a teller of tall tales. Unless something changes and soon for the young people growing up, there will be nothing left of freedom as we have known it but a fairy tale without a happy ending.