Indiana

During the "recovery" from the Great Recession, the land of Lincoln had more people enter the food-stamps program than start jobs. Food-stamps growth in Illinois has outpaced jobs creation by a 5-4 margin... and stunningly, has put 25 people on food stamps for every manufacturing job created during the recession recovery.

"When you look at recent graduates with student loans it gets really ugly, really fast. If alumni don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth, we risk this tidal wave of demand for higher education crashing down."

Every dictator knows that a continuous state of emergency is the best means to justify tyrannical policies. The trick is to keep the fictitious emergency from breeding so much paranoia that routine activities come to a halt. Many have discovered that its best to make the threat external, intangible and ultimately, unverifiable. In Orwell's 1984 the preferred mantra was "We've always been at war with Eurasia," even though everyone knew it wasn't true. In its rate decision this week the Federal Reserve, adopted a similar approach and conjured up an external threat to maintain a policy that is becoming increasingly absurd.

The reality is that while most folks who are reading this may find it difficult to empathize, the vast majority of Americans are scratching for any extra $0.75 an hour they can find.  At the same time CEO’s and highly paid bureaucrats continue to tout policies that have enriched themselves beyond the wildest dreams and comprehension of the average American.  Yet they promote these policies as being in the best interest of the working class.

An assistant professor from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point recently declared that professionals critical of the “War on Terror” constitute a “treasonous” opposition that should be subject to military force.

While many were skeptical that the mystical Nazi treasure train had been finally discovered after many years of searching, an official update last Friday by the Polish government suggested that that may indeed be the case. As the Mail reported on Friday, a representative of the Polish culture ministry, Poland’s National Heritage and Conservation Officer Piotr Zuchowski, said that the man who helped hide the train had revealed its location shortly before he died, and that proof of the train has been observed on radar. Mr Zuchowski told reporters that the train was about 100 metres long but added: 'It is not possible to disclose the exact location of where the train can be found. 

Over the past several years, the two-day Jackson Hole symposium had garnered a particular prominence among economists and market watchers as this is where various key inflection points by the Fed were hinted, leaked or announced, including QE2, QE3 and the taper. This year, however, the gathering of central bankers in Teton County, will be less exciting due to the absense of the most important central banker in the world: Janet Yellen, which means the highlighter will be Vice-Chairman Stanley Fischer when he speaks tomorrow at 10:25pm  which will be a key event given the recent market turmoil.

Though the Saudi Arabian government publicly declared its tentative support for the widely-praised Iran nuclear deal last month, new reports reveal it is secretly funding propaganda efforts to undermine it. A new group called the American Security Initiative has spent over $6 million on advertisements criticizing the deal — using money supplied by the Saudi monarchy.

Earlier this week, two people, a Pole and a German, said they may have found the legendary, long-lost Nazi train rumored to be full of gold, gems and guns, i.e., the prize possessions of years of Third Reich plunder, that disappeared just before the end of World War Two. As BBC first reported, the train was believed to have gone missing near what is now the Polish city of Wroclaw as Soviet forces approached in 1945.

The purpose of this article is to outline, with facts, large global structural issues that everyone, bulls and bears alike, should be fully aware of.  This article will focus on much larger structural issues that have been building for years and decades. And no this article is not so much about central banks, debt issues, Greece, China, deficits, etc. While all these are important as part of the overall picture, they are mere current symptoms of a much larger issue that is at the core of all that is already in play and will only deepen in our societies in the decades to come.

Politicians have always labored under the entirely mistaken impression that one can keep people from doing what they actually want to do, or that markets can be suppressed by outlawing them. It turns out that kids don’t like to be told how their food should be prepared either. In fact, they absolutely hate it. Congress just received an update on the “unintended consequences” of Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules. Apparently the stuff she wanted to push on children just tastes really crappy and now a black market in salt, pepper and sugar has developed...

High school students, even those who are borderline-failing their SATs, have a better understanding of economics and job growth than Washington bureaucrats.

Prepare to laugh. A lot.

Is something really big about to happen?