New York Times

"Washington broke arms and heads to get that 60th vote—not one to spare—to impose on the American people a plan which imperils their jobs, wages, and control over their own affairs. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want. The same routine plays out over and again. We are told a massive bill must be passed, all the business lobbyists and leaders tell how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan. And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension."

There’s a specific sort of instability in the world today – a game theoretic instability – which means that it has an identifiable pattern and rhythm you can understand in order to improve your investment strategy. It’s the instability of the game of Chicken, and once you start looking for it, you will see it everywhere here in the Golden Age of the Central Banker. Greece vs. the Troika? Chicken. Western sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine? Chicken. OPEC vs. US energy producers? Chicken. ECB vs. the Swiss National Bank? Chicken. Fed monetary policy communications to markets? Chicken. Abenomics? Chicken. US policy towards China? Chicken. ISIS vs. the world? Chicken.

Wherever government officials sense a credible threat to their power, they invariably take every opportunity to crush it by any means necessary: this is the first principle of how governments function, and every libertarian is all too familiar with it. this latest tragedy, you can be sure, will be used to accomplish the same anti-libertarian ends: the calls to investigate “hate groups,” and even to ban “hate speech,” are already being heard. Of course, who and what constitutes a “hate group,” and who is hating whom are subjective evaluations that no government official is qualified to make...

• Tsipras Hardens Greek Stance After Collapse of Talks (BBG)
• Obama Fights to Save Trade Bill (WSJ)
• German Stock Market Pain Seen Just Beginning Should Greece Exit (BBG)
• Russia to boost forces in western flank if U.S. stations arms in east Europe (Reuters)
• Lab Nears Settlement Over Pricey Medicare Drug Tests (WSJ)
• China's $358 Billion in Margin Loans Points to Next Bear Market (BBG)
• Draghi Faces EU Court Ruling on 2012 Bond Plan as Greece Teeters (BBG)
• Sex, lies and debt potentially exposed by U.S. data hack (Reuters)

The narrative being sold through the media is that Greece is to blame, that German taxpayers are on the hook for Greek debts (while they’re really on the hook for German banks’ losing wagers). And that is, no matter how you twist it, not the same story. It’s again just a narrative. Brussels is toxic - and so is the IMF - and Greece should leave as soon as possible, as should Italy, Spain, Portugal. We should all resist the spin-induced attempts to demonize Putin, Athens and China any further, and instead focus on the rotten apples in our own basket(s). In short, the propaganda we should be worried about is not Russia’s, it’s our own. And it comes from just about every news article we’re fed. We’re much less than six degrees removed from Orwell.

The U.S. middle class is being systematically ripped to shreds, and most Americans are showing very little alarm about this. How much damage has to be done before people will finally start waking up?

Welcome to the Recovery! Food banks across the US state of New York are running out of food (37% of food pantries say they have had to turn away needy people because they ran out of food), amid falling funds and rising demand from people that have trouble affording food. About 2.6 million people have trouble affording food across New York with about 1.4 million New York City residents relying on food pantries to feed themselves, according to the Food Bank For New York City. But as PressTV reports, contrary to the belief that people visiting food pantries are homeless and jobless, most customers are employed, but are not paid enough money to put food on the table without help.

"A month and a half after six officers were charged in Mr. Gray’s death, policing has dwindled in some of Baltimore’s most dangerous neighborhoods, and murders have risen to levels not seen in four decades."

Most Americans are deathly afraid to go to the hospital these days – and it is because of the immense pain that it will cause to their wallets.  If you want to get on a path that will lead you to bankruptcy, just start going to the hospital a lot.  In America today, hospitals and doctors are blatantly ripping us off and they aren’t making any apologies for it.  As you will read about below, some hospitals mark up treatments by 1,000 percent.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate country, it would actually be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.

Taking heads and supposed market gurus bloviate enthusiastic comments about how it should be easy to benefit from volatility exchange-traded products. But how likely is it that these individuals are able to extract the divine trading signals, similar to what they have proposed? over the past 2 years that only less than 5% of users of these derivative products, such as mass-market available volatility ETFs, would have earned a skilled profit from it (as opposed to from haphazard guessing). So at best, only 1 in 20 people are making money on VXX and its kin.

Americans are already dispossessed of their livelihoods and careers and their pensions are next. Wherever we look, the fate of populations under Western influence are the same. The Ukrainians are exploited, the Greeks, the British, the Americans. Wherever the West has an imprint, the populations are exploited. Exploitation of the many for the few is the Hallmark of the West, a decrepit, corrupt, and collapsing entity.

The highly regarded former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, has severely criticized the State Governments in the U.S. over “faulty practices” used to devise budgets which mask the true financial position of those states.

In an election that was, essentially, a litmus test for Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plans to expand his powers, voters dealt the Turkish President and his Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) a stinging blow at the ballot box on Sunday.

In a scene straight out of "The Shawshank Redemption", two convicted murderers apparently busted through a steel wall, maneuvered down catwalks, cut through a steel pipe, left a Post-it note with the message “Have A Nice Day”, and crawled their way to freedom, emerging from a manhole outside of a New York maximum security prison on Saturday.

Amid escalating violence in Ukraine,"the Obama administration officials are considering new deterrence strategies to rein in Russian meddling in Europe, in what some say would amount to an updated version of Cold War-era containment," WSJ reports.