New York Times

China is looking to succeed where the United States has failed. Beijing — which, as a reminder, claims it will not use its regional infrastructure development initiatives as a tool of foreign policy — is now set to facilitate the construction of nearly $50 billion in power plants, roads, and railways in neighboring Pakistan. The proposal, which will give China access to the Indian Ocean via the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea, is part of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious “Silk Road” Economic Belt, and importantly, will likely include financing for the completion of the "Peace Pipeline," which will carry natural gas from Iranian gas fields across Pakistan.

The built-up tensions and fragilities are begging for release. The unfortunate consequence of not allowing the process of “creative destruction” to occur in banking and Big Business is that the historic forces behind it will seek expression elsewhere in the realm of politics and governance. The desperate antics of central banks to cover up financial failure can’t help but provoke political upheaval, including war.

In a fiat currency system, perception is, by definition, everything. Paper money has no intrinsic value. So the people saving it and accepting it in exchange aren’t expressing faith in the money itself but in the competence and honesty — and power — of the institutions managing it. Let that faith erode and those slips of colored paper and ephemeral computer bits revert to their intrinsic value. And on the credibility front, the trends aren’t encouraging.

Should Gary Gensler truly be Clinton's chief financial officer, and should Hillary become America's next president, then ladies and gentlemen, in the fine tradition started by Hank Paulson who nearly brought the entire wastern world to ruin, the next US Treasury Secretary will be the following fine former Goldman Sachs employee and "champion for everyday Americans."

Anthrax Was As Important As 9/11 In "Justifying" the War on Terror, the Iraq War, and the Patriot Act

The propagandistic American “media” and the crazed neoconservatives have set humanity on the path to destruction. The American people and the entire world need to understand that the threat to life on earth resides in Washington and that until Washington is fundamentally and totally changed, this threat will remain as the worse threat to life on earth. Global Warming can disappear instantly in Nuclear Winter.

Conformity and being able to navigate stifling bureaucracies no longer creates value or helps employers solve real-world problems. This is why college graduates can send out hundreds of resumes and not even receive a single reply, much less an interview or job offer. An entire new feedback loop of accreditation is needed...

One Is a NeoCon Warmongering Crook ... The Other Is a NeoLib Warmongering Crook. See?? Totally Different!!!

Congratulations Active Managers: thanks to the Federal Reserve, also known as the Chief Risk Officer of the S&P 500, which has made any market risk a thing of the past, your underperformance relative to benchmarks over the past decade is now a 1 in 130,000 years event.

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers - “One thing that irritates me is that the F.B.I. has gone beyond just covering up, trying to avoid disclosure, into what I call aggressive deception,” He says the al-Hijjis’ “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” he said, adding, “I am speaking of the kingdom,” or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.

When You See It ...

"The systematic destruction of the American way of life is happening all around us, and yet most people have no idea what is happening. Unfortunately, in our society the value that we place on individuals has a tremendous amount to do with how much money they have."

We know it will be next to impossible to wait until October when this book of toner repair and printer cartridge replacement wisdom comes out, here is a sampling of timeless soundbites by the former Fed Chairman and current blogger, that should be enough to hold readers over.

Activists plan to protest in South Carolina today, according to Reuters, after a white police officer was caught on video fatally shooting a 50-year-old black man in the back as he ran away following a traffic stop. The officer has been charged with murder and the FBI and U.S. Justice Department are investigating the shooting, the latest in a series of incidents that have raised questions about U.S. policing and race relations.