Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Doug Casey explains what I was saying the other day:

"There really aren't investments anymore. With trillions of newly created currency units floating around the world, things will become very chaotic and unpredictable shortly. It's very hard to invest using any kind of Graham-and-Dodd methodology when things are that chaotic. Whether you like it or not, you're going to be forced to be a speculator in the years to come. A speculator is somebody who tries to capitalize on politically caused distortions in the marketplace. There wouldn't be many speculators, or many of those distortions in the marketplace, if we lived in a free-market society. But we don't."

Investing today is about guessing what government's going to do, not what investigating what companies are undervalued. That's ridiculous, but we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

"Well, investing is best defined as allocating capital in a way that it reliably produces more capital. The government is going to make that quite hard in the years to come with much higher taxes, much higher inflation and draconian regulations. You will actually be forced to speculate. That's a pity, from the point of view of the economy as a whole. But I kind of like it, in a way. Few people know how to be speculators, so I should be able to make a huge amount of money in the next few years. Unfortunately, it'll be at a time when most people are losing their shirts. But I don't make the rules. I just play the game."

As always, the big guys profit from government intervention while the rest of us lose.

TAX AND SPEND:

Many people blame big business for our problems, but big business can't rob us because it can't force us to do anything against our will. Only government can rob us, and it does more every day, and that's why our country is going down the tubes.

REGULATION:

Here's another example of how the plethora of laws in the US has destroyed the rule of law and replaced it with the rule of bureaucratic fiat.

"For instance, I’d note that the current FTC chairman’s term of office expired eight months ago. Yes, he’s been nominated for a second term, but the Senate has yet to act on that. Yet “the law” somehow permits the chairman to continue exercising his power indefinitely beyond the deadline prescribed by statute. But we can’t make an exception for Bill Isely, a non-lawyer who merely got confused by conflicting statutes and advice.More relevant to Isely’s case, FTC Secretary Donald Clark directly violated a federal statute when his office published Isely’s personal financial records on the Internet. There was no ambiguity here. Clark violated the law as written; he didn’t even try to deny it when I spoke with him about it. But the FTC took no action against Clark or anyone else. Again, the laws are applied to government officers quite liberally, yet they apply strictly and without mercy to those who lack state privilege."

Heads they win. Tails we lose.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

We're suffering the grandaddy of all bubble economies. Bubbles usually form in one or a few sectors of the economy. But today...

"Peter Coy and Roben Farzad write that the prices of everything from U.S. farmland to cemetery sites in China have blown far beyond economic fundamentals.   The S & P is trading at 23 times earnings and the historical average is 16.   Doug Noland, who runs the Federated Prudent Bear Fund fears “this is the granddaddy of them all, an almost-encompassing bubble right at the heart of monetary systems.”"

When these bubble pop, it's really going to hurt.

"However the authors point out that Ben Bernanke isn’t concerned and Janet Yellen hasn’t said a thing about bubbles, and by the way She said the Fed has nothing to do with commodity price run ups.   “She’s right,” Coy and Farzad contend: “Commodities aren’t being hoarded, as they would be if investors were speculating on them. Inventories have fallen since last summer.”"

In other words, those high prices commodities are entering the marketplace, driving up prices.

HEALTH CARE:

Great interactive infographic shows the breakdown of calories eaten by Americans since 1970. Notice the big jumps in grains, added sugars and added fat? Pretty easy to tell where our obesity problem comes from. I'll bet that's all from government-corporate processed food.

POLICE STATE:

Here's another example of how the plethora of laws in the US has destroyed the rule of law and replaced it with the rule of bureaucratic fiat.

"Graves has filed a lawsuit against the [Texas] AG’s office demanding that it acknowledge his actual innocence. The AG’s office, which insists that it would be illegal to offer formal recognition of that irrefutable fact, also maintains that it has the sad duty to continue stealing from Graves, because it is “obligated to collect the money that the court has ordered be paid.” Their scrupulosity over such matters is quite selective: When ordered to release an innocent man, the AG’s office can contrive sufficient wiggle room to justify keeping him imprisoned another four years — but when ordered to mulct the pittance that innocent man makes after being wrongly imprisoned, the AG is hyper-fastidious in applying the strict letter of the “law.”"

Every day abominations like this occur under our oppressive regimes.

WAR:

Remember when NATO wasn't trying to kill Qaddafi? Did you believe that lie? They tried to kill him and failed, but they managed to kill his son and three young grandchildren.

"Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi escaped a NATO missile strike in Tripoli on Saturday, but his youngest son and three grandchildren under the age of 12 were killed, a government spokesman said."

Don't you love that humanitarian aid? Remember, if the US and western countries hadn't intervened, this war would have been over a month ago, but because they intervened and kept the war going, the casualties keep piling up, and many Muslims are blaming us. Some will commit terrorist acts against us in response. How does this make us safer? Imagine if a terrorist had killed Bush's or Obama's daughters and you can realize how this makes us much less safe. You don't have to be a fan or Bush, Obama or Qaddafi to want revenge. Libyans plunder embassies of US, Britain, France and others in retaliation. That won't be enough. Remember Qaddafi has billions hidden away that he can use to fund terrorist attacks against the west. Qaddafi's forces also increased attacked in Misrata seeking revenge, leading to more casualties.

Here's a great reminder that the psychotic criminals in Washington are not normal people.

"U.S. legislators of both parties are affirming support for NATO airstrikes that reportedly killed Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s youngest son and three grandchildren."

It's OK to murder parents and children as long at's done to advance the interests of the western ruling class.

FOREIGN POLICY:

WikiLeaks dump reveals that the US is funding the police state in New Zealand as well.

"Wikileaks has just posted hundreds of cables from US personnel in New Zealand that reveal regular government lobbying on copyright, offers to draft New Zealand three-strikes-and-you're-out legislation, and a recommendation to spend over NZ$500,000 to fund a recording industry-backed IP enforcement initiative. The funding raises the question of whether New Zealand is aware that local enforcement initiatives, including raids and court cases, have been funded by the US government."

Talk about a client state.

POLITICS:

Pat Buchanan on Trump's laudable campaign to force Obama to produce his records:

"If a White House correspondent stood up at a press conference and said: "Mr. President, Donald Trump is asking for your college and law school test scores. Do you believe you benefited from affirmative action in your academic career?" would that be racist?Perhaps Obama might begin his answer as he did, two decades before, in a Nov. 16, 1990, letter as president of Harvard Law Review:"As someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action program when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized.""

How about rephrasing the question:

"Mr. President, you told the Harvard Law Review you benefited from affirmative action. Please tell the American people details of the specific instances in which you benefited."

I'm not holding my breath. I hope Trump runs. He doesn't play by the ruling class' rules, and that's good for the people. If Obama and his media lapdogs think making fun of him at the correspondents dinner is going to keep him from flirting with running for president and attacking Obama, they're delusional. This might chase off another Washington insider, but not anybody who's lived in the real world.

MEDIA:

In a good reminder that the press is literally in bed with politicians, Greta Van Susteren attends event with Sarah Palin.

"The hubbub was enough to cause one reporter to quip: "Look at all these reporters who typically rip her a new one mosey on up to her, desperate to get a photograph.""

I'm shocked. Isn't if funny how all the phony animosity disappears when they get together?

MISC:

How market actors deal with pirates.

"In the eyes of insurers, however, there is no equal to the threat of lethal force. Says Clive Stoddart, global head for kidnap and ransom for Aon Risk Solutions insurance brokerage: "There really is no substitute for having a weapon: live ammunition carried by people who have the right training." Marsh's Gustafson states the case simply: "Not one ship has been taken that has an armed security team on board." For a tanker transiting high-risk waters, an armed, four-person security detail costs about $30,000. That's expensive, but insurers are willing to discount premiums by as much as $20,000 for ships that use them, says Catlin underwriter Stuart Allen. Catlin's Dobbs relays the report of one security firm: In 1,000 transits through treacherous waters there were 90 encounters with pirates. Seventy-two were resolved simply by showing arms. Of the remaining 18, three were deterred by warning shots fired into the air, and 15 by single shots fired near the pirate vessel."

How hard was that to figure out? Instead spending billion on navy patrols and socializing that fantastic cost, the firms who profit from sailing those seas came up with an inexpensive, effective solution. This is why we should privatize everything. Naturally the Bloomberg article puts a negative spin on this, as if private security forces repelling pirates before they seize a ships and prisoners is somehow a bad thing compared to Navy Seals killing pirates after they've seized ships and prisoners.

The NSA advises Americans to upgrade to Windows 7. I wonder how much Microsoft paid for that.