Via AP (my highlight):
he NC State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting of a teenager by a police officer in Boiling Springs Lakes over the weekend.
Brunswick County District Attorney Jon David asked for the investigation after the shooting around 1 pm Sunday on President Drive.
Family members said they called police after 18-year-old Keith Vidal picked up a screwdriver and threatened his mother.
Mark Wilsey Sr. says that initially officers were able to calm his son, who suffers from schizophrenia. But Wilsey says when a third officer arrived, his son became agitated.
Wilsey says officers used a stun gun on Vidal and then a shot was fired and Vidal was hit.
The Star News in Wilmington reported that both parents and at least 6 law enforcement officers were at the scene at the time of the shooting.
Authorities say officers from three agencies responded. Several media sources reported that a police officer from Southport is on paid administrative leave following the shooting.
The family also told WECT-TV that two officers were holding down Vidal in a hallway of the house when another law enforcement officer stepped between them and fired, killing Vidal.
Vidal was a student at South Brunswick High School and celebrated his 18th birthday on December 10.
Friends say that Vidal could easily be subdued by police -- they say he was no taller than 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighed less than 100 pounds.
According to his Facebook page, he was scheduled to graduate high school this spring.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Is Germany's Gold Housed in New York, Paris and London All Gone?
By JS Kim, Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU (via ZeroHedge)
Here is a recent correspondence from our friend Lars Schall, an independent financial journalist, and the German Central Bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, regarding the exact whereabouts and specifications of Germany’s national gold reserve. From the correspondence below, it appears that the US Central Bank had already leased out Germany’s gold reserves in prior years and no longer has it, as the gold bars the US Central Bankers returned to Germany last year were clearly not the same ones that Germany originally deposited with them. The questions Mr. Schall’s revelations now beg is (1) if the Banque de France and the Bank of England have Germany’s original gold as well; and (2) if the various Central Bankers are deliberately returning Germany’s gold on a painfully slow timeline because they have already leased out Germany’s gold into the open market in prior years, no longer hold it, and mustctherefore scrape together Germany's gold from the open market now.
Below is Mr. Schall’s inquiry to the Deutsche Bundesbank:
December 26, 2013
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am an independent financial journalist. In connection with the transfer of 37 tons of Bundesbank gold from New York to Germany, I came across the news that the bars were a melted before the transfer. May I kindly ask you for the following information:
Why were the bars melted at all? And why couldn’t that wait until the bars arrived in Frankfurt?
Kind regards,
Lars Schall
Bitcoins, the IRS and Tax Fraud
Cameron Keng at Forbes breaks it down:
I agree that Bitcoin is effectively pseudonymous and potentially anonymous. But, it’s important to understand the difference between “anonymous” and “tax fraud.” Knowingly or intentionally refusing to report or pay taxes on income earned is by definition – tax fraud. Whether you’re likely to be caught is an entirely other argument. Mixing the two is a mistake that we shouldn’t make. Tax fraud is a crime that occurs the moment a taxpayer commits a crime with “intent.”
The second argument begins when we concede that we’re engaging in tax fraud. Assuming we’re committing an intentional crime, the question comes down to what is the likelihood of getting “caught.” We’re basically gambling or playing the odds that we’re not going to be that unlucky person that the IRS calls.
Many people believe that if the IRS “doesn’t know who owns the bitcoin” and their wealth is “entirely in bitcoin,” then the IRS can’t touch them (people are arguing that the IRS can’t levying bank accounts and garnishing wages because the IRS doesn’t know who owns the bitcoins). I’d like to dispel this myth. The problem with this argument is that it is short-sighted and factually incorrect. First, it only focuses on whether the IRS is able to “track” and tax the income when it is earned. The IRS is not required to audit an individual or business solely on whether they know that you’ve “earned income.” If your spending outpaces your income, then the IRS is going to audit you. This is an age where we’re able to create a “social currency” out of electrons, it’s safe to assume that the government has the technology to track spending in a meaningful way.
To prove this point, most people don’t know that the IRS requires informational reporting by credit card agencies and payment processors through 1099s. Property is recorded publically through titles that is tracked. The IRS is hiring talented engineering, economics and mathematical talent faster than they’re hiring tax accountants and tax attorneys for the sole purpose to create the infrastructure and algorithms that are able to improve their DIF system. The DIF System or Discriminant Function is the process that the IRS uses to pinpoint tax audit targets. Technology is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.
Also, as a seasoned tax professional I’d only need to glance at bank statements, credit card statements or an asset ledger to discover whether there is tax fraud. Unless you’re willing to live like an ascetic monk devoid of all worldly pleasures, then the IRS is going to discover that you’re lying. Once the IRS learns of the tax fraud, then they’re capable of seizing all of your assets for a fire-sale to collect on the tax due or they’ll simply put you in jail for upwards of 10 years. I don’t think any amount of money is going to be able to compensate me for a year in incarceration, let alone a decade.
As an example, Bob owns a million bitcoins and is a billionaire. Bob spends a million dollars a year and owns a McMansion. The IRS calls and asks where did this money come from? Bob can’t explain where the money is coming from and is slapped with a giant tax bill. Bob never pays the tax debt and is convicted of tax fraud or evasion – a felony. Bob spends 10 years in jail. Bob leaves jail and has to leave the country and probably can never return, if he wants to spend any money from his bitcoins.
To be fair, I’m not arguing that the IRS is an omnipotent government agency that makes the CIA look like cub scouts. The IRS is one of the most underfunded agencies and I’m sure that millions of tax fraudulent taxpayers escape their gaze annually. But, the real issue is whether the risk outweighs the probable benefit to you.
I agree that Bitcoin is effectively pseudonymous and potentially anonymous. But, it’s important to understand the difference between “anonymous” and “tax fraud.” Knowingly or intentionally refusing to report or pay taxes on income earned is by definition – tax fraud. Whether you’re likely to be caught is an entirely other argument. Mixing the two is a mistake that we shouldn’t make. Tax fraud is a crime that occurs the moment a taxpayer commits a crime with “intent.”
The second argument begins when we concede that we’re engaging in tax fraud. Assuming we’re committing an intentional crime, the question comes down to what is the likelihood of getting “caught.” We’re basically gambling or playing the odds that we’re not going to be that unlucky person that the IRS calls.
Many people believe that if the IRS “doesn’t know who owns the bitcoin” and their wealth is “entirely in bitcoin,” then the IRS can’t touch them (people are arguing that the IRS can’t levying bank accounts and garnishing wages because the IRS doesn’t know who owns the bitcoins). I’d like to dispel this myth. The problem with this argument is that it is short-sighted and factually incorrect. First, it only focuses on whether the IRS is able to “track” and tax the income when it is earned. The IRS is not required to audit an individual or business solely on whether they know that you’ve “earned income.” If your spending outpaces your income, then the IRS is going to audit you. This is an age where we’re able to create a “social currency” out of electrons, it’s safe to assume that the government has the technology to track spending in a meaningful way.
To prove this point, most people don’t know that the IRS requires informational reporting by credit card agencies and payment processors through 1099s. Property is recorded publically through titles that is tracked. The IRS is hiring talented engineering, economics and mathematical talent faster than they’re hiring tax accountants and tax attorneys for the sole purpose to create the infrastructure and algorithms that are able to improve their DIF system. The DIF System or Discriminant Function is the process that the IRS uses to pinpoint tax audit targets. Technology is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.
Also, as a seasoned tax professional I’d only need to glance at bank statements, credit card statements or an asset ledger to discover whether there is tax fraud. Unless you’re willing to live like an ascetic monk devoid of all worldly pleasures, then the IRS is going to discover that you’re lying. Once the IRS learns of the tax fraud, then they’re capable of seizing all of your assets for a fire-sale to collect on the tax due or they’ll simply put you in jail for upwards of 10 years. I don’t think any amount of money is going to be able to compensate me for a year in incarceration, let alone a decade.
As an example, Bob owns a million bitcoins and is a billionaire. Bob spends a million dollars a year and owns a McMansion. The IRS calls and asks where did this money come from? Bob can’t explain where the money is coming from and is slapped with a giant tax bill. Bob never pays the tax debt and is convicted of tax fraud or evasion – a felony. Bob spends 10 years in jail. Bob leaves jail and has to leave the country and probably can never return, if he wants to spend any money from his bitcoins.
To be fair, I’m not arguing that the IRS is an omnipotent government agency that makes the CIA look like cub scouts. The IRS is one of the most underfunded agencies and I’m sure that millions of tax fraudulent taxpayers escape their gaze annually. But, the real issue is whether the risk outweighs the probable benefit to you.
European Regulators Discussing Bitcoin
The regulations are coming. FT reports on the "concern" European bankers have for those speculating in Bitcoin:
Carl-Ludwig Thiele, a board member of Germany’s central bank, told the newspaper Handelsblatt that Bitcoins were “highly speculative” due to their high volatility and the way they were constructed.
Yhiele added that central bankers and regulators in Europe were increasingly discussing the Bitcoin phenomenon, though their efforts had so far stopped at warning people over the “enormous” speculation risks the currency posed.
A spokesman for the Bundesbank said that Mr Thiele’s views were shared by the central bank, and that they were in line with recent warnings from the European Central Bank over the risks of Bitcoin.
Greenwald on Jonathan Pollard, Israel
I am not entirely sure where this piece fits in the puzzle, but in an interview with Channel 10 television in Israel that aired Monday night, according to Haaretz, Greenwald:
agreed that the Snowden revelations are relevant to Pollard’s case. “When the U.S. government goes around the world criticizing other countries for spying on allies and prosecuting them,” he said, “are they going to maintain that with a straight face when they’re doing exactly that?
It’s proper to raise Pollard’s case in the context of U.S. spying on its Israeli ally, he continued, because that underscores the hypocrisy of what the U.S. itself is doing. The U.S. government, Greenwald charged, does exactly what it accuses its enemies of doing, and no country has the right to say other countries shouldn’t do something while it is secretly violating that very same taboo.Also of note, Greenwald said, according to H:
Greenwald said the Snowden documents contain “a huge number of very significant stories” that have not yet been published, and these include stories related to the Middle East in general and Israel in particular. He and the other journalists working on the material will continue releasing stories at about the same pace as hitherto, he added, explaining that they have only had the Snowden documents for seven months, and “given their volume and complexity,” that isn’t a long time.I hope these new stories are more than just revelations that the US spies on Israel. Given, what we know about other spying the US is doing that would be no surprise. Is Greenwaldnow hinting, however, that we may for the first time get transcripts of conversations picked up by the NSA?
Where the Jobs Will Be 2012-2022
Please take this with a large degree of skepticism, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics has looked into its crystal ball and projected where job growth will occur into the year 2022/
2014 Spitzer Antics: Caught Sucking His Topless Girlfriend's Toes in Front of Kids
NyPo has the dirt:
Sleazy Eliot Spitzer turned a resort hot tub into a steamy love cauldron over the weekend — kissing and sucking the toes of his topless mistress, Lis Smith, in front of families with children, mortified witnesses told The Post
The still-married former Love Gov and Smith, Mayor de Blasio’s ex-mouthpiece, were spied frolicking near the family pool at around 4 p.m. Sunday at the Half Moon family resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
“It was gross,” said a hotel witness, who was vacationing with her family. “She had her top off.”
The disgraced Spitzer — infamous for wearing his signature black knee socks while having sex with hookers — appears to have a bit of a foot fetish as well, according to onlookers.
“He was licking her toes,” the witness said. “She would sit in his lap. Then he’d put her feet in his mouth. He licked her toes and was playing with her feet.”Are we witnessing a public breakdown?
Monday, January 6, 2014
Life in the Electronic Concentration Camp: The Many Ways That You’re Being Tracked, Catalogued and Controlled
By John Whitehead
“[A security camera] doesn’t respond to complaint, threats, or insults. Instead, it just watches you in a forbidding manner. Today, the surveillance state is so deeply enmeshed in our data devices that we don’t even scream back because technology companies have convinced us that we need to be connected to them to be happy.”—Pratap Chatterjee, journalist
What is most striking about the American police state is not the mega-corporations running amok in the halls of Congress, the militarized police crashing through doors and shooting unarmed citizens, or the invasive surveillance regime which has come to dominate every aspect of our lives. No, what has been most disconcerting about the emergence of the American police state is the extent to which the citizenry appears content to passively wait for someone else to solve our nation’s many problems. Unless Americans are prepared to engage in militant nonviolent resistance in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, true reform, if any, will be a long time coming.
Yet as I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, if we don’t act soon, all that is in need of fixing will soon be unfixable, especially as it relates to the police state that becomes more entrenched with each passing day. By “police state,” I am referring to more than a society overrun by the long arm of the police. I am referring to a society in which all aspects of a person’s life are policed by government agents, one in which all citizens are suspects, their activities monitored and regulated, their movements tracked, their communications spied upon, and their lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness dependent on the government’s say-so.
That said, how can anyone be expected to “fix” what is broken unless they first understand the lengths to which the government with its arsenal of technology is going in order to accustom the American people to life in a police state and why being spied on by government agents, both state and federal, as well as their partners in the corporate world, is a problem, even if you’ve done nothing wrong.
Indeed, as the trend towards overcriminalization makes clear, it won’t be long before the average law-abiding American is breaking laws she didn’t even know existed during the course of a routine day. The point, of course, is that while you may be oblivious to your so-called law-breaking—whether it was collecting rainwater to water your lawn, lighting a cigarette in the privacy of your home, or gathering with friends in your backyard for aSunday evening Bible study—the government will know each and every transgression and use them against you.
As noted by the Brookings Institution, “For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders — every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.”
As the following will show, the electronic concentration camp, as I have dubbed the surveillance state, is perhaps the most insidious of the police state’s many tentacles, impacting almost every aspect of our lives and making it that much easier for the government to encroach on our most vital freedoms, ranging from free speech, assembly and the press to due process, privacy, and property, by eavesdropping on our communications, tracking our movements and spying on our activities.
Tracking you based on your consumer activities: Fusion centers, federal-state law enforcement partnerships which attempt to aggregate a variety of data on so-called “suspicious persons,” have actually collected reports on people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot’s license as “suspicious activity.” Retailers are getting in on the surveillance game as well. Large corporations such as Target have been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years. In 2015, mega-food corporations will be rolling out high-tech shelving outfitted with cameras in order to track the shopping behavior of customers, as well as information like the age and sex of shoppers.
Tracking you based on your public activities: Sensing a booming industry, private corporations are jumping on the surveillance state bandwagon, negotiating lucrative contracts with police agencies throughout the country in order to create a web of surveillance that encompasses all major urban centers. Companies such as NICE and Bright Planet are selling equipment and services to police departments with the promise of monitoring large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.” Defense contractors are attempting to take a bite out of this lucrative market as well. Raytheon has recently developed a software package known as Riot, which promises to predict the future behavior of an individual based upon his social media posts.
Tracking you based on your phone activities: The CIA has been paying AT&T over $10 million per year in order to gain access to data on Americans’ phone calls abroad. This is in addition to telecommunications employees being embedded in government facilities to assist with quick analysis of call records and respond to government requests for customer location data. They receive hundreds of thousands of such requests per year.
Tracking you based on your computer activities: Federal agents now employ a number of hacking methods in order to gain access to your computer activities and “see” whatever you’re seeing on your monitor. Malicious hacking software can be installed via a number of inconspicuous methods, including USB, or via an email attachment or software update. It can then be used to search through files stored on a hard drive, log keystrokes, or take real time screenshots of whatever a person is looking at on their computer, whether personal files, web pages, or email messages. It can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones, offering another means of glimpsing into the personal business of a target.
Tracking you based on your behavior: Thanks to a torrent of federal grants, police departments across the country are able to fund outrageous new surveillance systems that turn the most basic human behaviors into suspicious situations to be studied and analyzed. Police in California, Massachusetts, and New York have all received federal funds to create systems like that operated by the New York Police Department, which “links 3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors, criminal databases and terror suspect lists.” Police all across the country are also now engaging in big data mining operations, often with the help of private companies, in order to develop city-wide nets of surveillance. For example, police in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, now work with IBM in order to “integrate new data and analytics tools into everyday crime fighting.”
Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. The goal is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of the individuals present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country (only twelve states do not use facial recognition software). For example, in Ohio, 30,000 police officers and court employees are able to access the driver’s license images of people in the state, without any form of oversight to track their views or why they’re accessing them. The FBI is developing a $1 billion program, Next Generation Identification, which involves creating a massive database of mugshots for police all across the country.
Tracking you based on your car: License plate readers, which can identify the owner of any car that comes within its sights, are growing in popularity among police agencies. Affixed to overpasses or cop cars, these devices give police a clear idea of where your car was at a specific date and time, whether the doctor’s office, the bar, the mosque, or at a political rally. State police in Virginia used license plate readers to record every single vehicle that arrived to President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 from Virginia. They also recorded the license plates of attendees at rallies prior to the election, including for then-candidate Obama and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. This data collection came at the request of the U.S. Secret Service. Incredibly, Virginia police stored data on some 8 million license plates, some for up to three years.
Tracking you based on your social media activities: The obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, has astutely observed, “We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal ‘Game of Thrones’ downloads, or run sweeps for insurance companies seeking non-smokers confessing to lapsing back into the habit. Instead of that one guy getting busted for a lame joke misinterpreted as a real threat, the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor.”
Tracking you based on your metadata: Metadata is an incredibly invasive set of data to have on a person. Indeed, with access to one’s metadata, one can “identify people’s friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.” The National Security Agency (NSA) has been particularly interested in metadata, compiling information on Americans’ social connections “that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information.” Mainway, the main NSA tool used to connect the dots on American social connections, collected 700 million phone recordsper day in 2011. That number increased by 1.1 billion in August 2011. The NSA is now working on creating “a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion ‘record events’ daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes.”
Tracking you from the skies: Nothing, and I mean nothing, will escape government eyes, especially when drones take to the skies in 2015. These gadgets, ranging from the colossal to the miniature, will have the capability of seeing through the walls of your home and tracking your every movement.
To put it bluntly, we are living in an electronic concentration camp. Through a series of imperceptible steps, we have willingly allowed ourselves to become enmeshed in a system that knows the most intimate details of our lives, analyzes them, and treats us accordingly. Whether via fear of terrorism, narcissistic pleasure, or lazy materialism, we have slowly handed over our information to all sorts of entities, corporate and governmental, public and private, who are now using that information to cow and control us for their profit. As George Orwell warned, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
Thus, we have arrived in Orwell’s world. The question now is: will we take a stand and fight to remain free or will we go gently into the concentration camp?
John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization, and author of Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,
Hottest Metros Area For Home Buyers in 2014
ZipRealty today released a list of the hottest metros for home buyers in 2014, based on consumer search activity on ZipRealty.com.
"We analyzed home search activity on our site over the past year to find out where people are most interested in buying homes," said CEO Lanny Baker. "Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston have the most Saved Home searches on our website. And these three metros were among the healthiest in 2013, outperforming the nation in year-over-year median home price growth and shortest days on market, based on a year's worth of data collected in our Housing Trends Reports.
"Demand for Chicago homes has also started to increase over the past few months with stable growth in pricing, a 25% decline in inventory year-over-year and a 31% decline in median days on market as of the end of November 2013," noted Mr. Baker.
The Top 10 Metros to Watch in 2014 based on ZipRealty.com Saved Home searches are:
Los Angeles
San Francisco Bay Area
Boston
Chicago
Phoenix
Dallas
Atlanta
Seattle
Orange County
Sacramento
"We analyzed home search activity on our site over the past year to find out where people are most interested in buying homes," said CEO Lanny Baker. "Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston have the most Saved Home searches on our website. And these three metros were among the healthiest in 2013, outperforming the nation in year-over-year median home price growth and shortest days on market, based on a year's worth of data collected in our Housing Trends Reports.
"Demand for Chicago homes has also started to increase over the past few months with stable growth in pricing, a 25% decline in inventory year-over-year and a 31% decline in median days on market as of the end of November 2013," noted Mr. Baker.
The Top 10 Metros to Watch in 2014 based on ZipRealty.com Saved Home searches are:
Los Angeles
San Francisco Bay Area
Boston
Chicago
Phoenix
Dallas
Atlanta
Seattle
Orange County
Sacramento
Are Pope Francis, Bill De Blasio and Barack Obama Right About Capitalism?
By Bill Bonner
Pope Francis in the Eternal City... Bill De Blasio in the Big Apple... President Obama in the White House...
From the pulpit to the Oval Office to City Hall – capitalism is coming under attack in 2014.
Obama has made income inequality a central bugaboo for the last two years of his presidency. De Blasio is hot on the theme, too. "A Tale of Two Cities" was his campaign theme.
De Blasio figured there were more votes in the poor city than in the rich city... and that the folks on the po' side of town, mainly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, were getting sick and tired of watching the folks in Manhattan make money. He was right on all counts.
Nothing is more galling that watching a neighbor get rich... unless the neighbor is your brother-in-law. Then it's intolerable.
In the present circumstances, the poor have a legitimate beef. They claim the rich are getting richer unfairly. They've got a point. The rich own stocks and bonds; the poor don't.
Thanks in no small part to manipulation by the Fed, US stocks are worth $3.7 trillion more than they were at the start of last year. Through no effort on their part, wealthy stock owners now have a huge additional claim to the world's wealth.
Pope Francis in the Eternal City... Bill De Blasio in the Big Apple... President Obama in the White House...
From the pulpit to the Oval Office to City Hall – capitalism is coming under attack in 2014.
Obama has made income inequality a central bugaboo for the last two years of his presidency. De Blasio is hot on the theme, too. "A Tale of Two Cities" was his campaign theme.
De Blasio figured there were more votes in the poor city than in the rich city... and that the folks on the po' side of town, mainly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, were getting sick and tired of watching the folks in Manhattan make money. He was right on all counts.
Nothing is more galling that watching a neighbor get rich... unless the neighbor is your brother-in-law. Then it's intolerable.
In the present circumstances, the poor have a legitimate beef. They claim the rich are getting richer unfairly. They've got a point. The rich own stocks and bonds; the poor don't.
Thanks in no small part to manipulation by the Fed, US stocks are worth $3.7 trillion more than they were at the start of last year. Through no effort on their part, wealthy stock owners now have a huge additional claim to the world's wealth.
Money Is a Placeholder
Money is just a placeholder, after all. It tells you how you stack up against other people.
The amount of available goods and services is always more or less limited. If you gain wealth faster than the increase in output, you must be taking it away from someone else. You have more; your neighbor has less.
At a rate of GDP growth of 2% a year, the US economy adds about $350 billion in wealth. So, if stockholders gained $3.7 trillion, they had to take most of the money from others. They gained $3.35 trillion more than GDP growth. These are new claims against old wealth.
In other words, stockholders win. Others lose.
Someone has to be able to buy the nicest house on the block. Someone has to be able to buy the fanciest car or take the most luxurious vacation. Someone has to win the great game of economic life.
Kicking Butt
The rich are not only ahead in capital gains, they are also kicking butt in every other income category.
Only the top 10% of households made any real income gains over the last 10 years. All the rest lost ground. And the top 1% has done even better – thanks largely to the big increases in stock and real estate prices.
So what's wrong with that?
Nothing. Except this sort of underhanded conniving with the feds gives capitalism a bad name. It's not the capitalists who have gotten the most loot from the feds' bailouts, ZIRP and QE. It's the cronies.
Too bad, but people think the rich are capitalists and that capitalists are rich. Not so. A real capitalist takes losses as well as gains. He makes mistakes... and pays for them himself.
Sometimes it's not about the money. Often, he doesn't know how much he's got... and doesn't care. It's the journey he likes, not necessarily the destination.
The capitalist is misunderstood. So is capitalism. It is not so much a system; it is what happens when there is no system. It is what people get up to when they are left to their own devices.
Good? Bad?
We don't know... but it's better than being told what to do by some jackass with his own agenda.
Bill Bonner founded Agora, Inc in 1978. It has since grown into one of the largest independent newsletter publishing companies in the world. He has also written three New York Times bestselling books, Financial Reckoning Day, Empire of Debt and Mobs, Messiahs and Markets.
Bernanke's Frustrated? ... Well Boo-Hoo
By, Chris Rossini
In a speech given on Jan. 3,The Maestro The Hero, Ben Bernanke, mentioned an area that has puzzled him in his central planning adventures:
First of all, as Murray Rothbard pointed out in Man, Economy & State:
Rothbard sets it straight on how things should work:
In this corner of the Internet, The Hero is not going to get encouragement like "Go get 'em next time Ben!" .... or "Invest in stronger computers that can crunch those numbers faster".... or "Work Krugman harder next time to come up with the right combination to the lock."
Sorry...there are plenty of other outlets that will assist in keeping the delusions alive.
Here, we'll tell the truth. Bernanke, as well as every central planner before and after him, is engaged in a futile act. Central Planning of economic life only leads to the destruction of economic life. There are no side roads, or short cuts that will work. It's a one way, step-by-step slog, to a dead end called economic ruin.
Bernanke thinks he has "frustrations"?
How about the rest of the world, that have to live lives as lab rats in his grand "experiments". How about economic life being like a constant ride through a washing machine?
Boom / Bust / Boom / Bust / Boom / Bust ...
How about the "frustration" of constantly watching your bills go up? With every TRILLION that the Fed creates in its "experiments," it sticks a dagger into our wallets and bank accounts.
How about the "frustration" of having to get a second or even third job? Or what about the "frustration" of chronic unemployment because the Fed won't let the market clear all of the malinvestments that the central bank itself has created? What about the "frustration" of watching loss producing crony companies stay in business because of the Fed bailouts.
It's one thing to sit in a marble palace and be "frustrated" to see your delusions of grandeur not work out. But the real "frustration" lies with the population at large (minus the cronies, of course) who have to suffer the abuse until the day finally comes when we can End The Fed.
Chris Rossini is on Twitter, Facebook & Google+
In a speech given on Jan. 3,
Disappointing productivity growth accordingly must be added to the list of reasons that economic growth has been slower than hoped.Now, to the average person, that may seem like an innocent statement. The use of words are something you'd expect to hear from those who "run the economy." But to close observers, it's really a disastrous mess.
First of all, as Murray Rothbard pointed out in Man, Economy & State:
“What is so good about growth?” The economists, discoursing scientifically about growth, have illegitimately smuggled an ethical judgment into their science—an ethical judgment that remains unanalyzed, as if it were self-evident. But why should growth be the highest value for which we can strive? What is the ethical justification? There is no doubt about the fact that growth, taken over as another dubious metaphor from biology, “sounds” good to most people, but this hardly constitutes an adequate ethical analysis. Many things are considered as good, but on the free market every man must choose between different quantities of them and the price for those forgone. Similarly, growth, as we shall presently see, must be balanced and weighed against competing values. Given due consideration, growth would be considered by few people as the only absolute value...So when Bernanke says that "economic growth has been slower than hoped," the question must be asked: "Hoped by whom?"....And the answer is Bernanke & his central planning buddies.
Rothbard sets it straight on how things should work:
In a free market, for example, every person chooses how much future growth he wants as compared to present consumption. (my emphasis)Bernanke then pulls out the excuse card to explain why his "hopes" were not met:
Incidentally, the slow pace of productivity gains early in the recovery was not evident until well after the fact because of large data revisions--an illustration of the frustrations of real-time policymaking. (my emphasis)Should we be pulling out our hankies? Or perhaps a violin?
In this corner of the Internet, The Hero is not going to get encouragement like "Go get 'em next time Ben!" .... or "Invest in stronger computers that can crunch those numbers faster".... or "Work Krugman harder next time to come up with the right combination to the lock."
Sorry...there are plenty of other outlets that will assist in keeping the delusions alive.
Here, we'll tell the truth. Bernanke, as well as every central planner before and after him, is engaged in a futile act. Central Planning of economic life only leads to the destruction of economic life. There are no side roads, or short cuts that will work. It's a one way, step-by-step slog, to a dead end called economic ruin.
Bernanke thinks he has "frustrations"?
How about the rest of the world, that have to live lives as lab rats in his grand "experiments". How about economic life being like a constant ride through a washing machine?
Boom / Bust / Boom / Bust / Boom / Bust ...
How about the "frustration" of constantly watching your bills go up? With every TRILLION that the Fed creates in its "experiments," it sticks a dagger into our wallets and bank accounts.
How about the "frustration" of having to get a second or even third job? Or what about the "frustration" of chronic unemployment because the Fed won't let the market clear all of the malinvestments that the central bank itself has created? What about the "frustration" of watching loss producing crony companies stay in business because of the Fed bailouts.
It's one thing to sit in a marble palace and be "frustrated" to see your delusions of grandeur not work out. But the real "frustration" lies with the population at large (minus the cronies, of course) who have to suffer the abuse until the day finally comes when we can End The Fed.
Chris Rossini is on Twitter, Facebook & Google+
Who Is In the Koch-Backed Political Network? Here Are the Players
The Koch-related organizations have been doing some heavy spending to promote various energy-related programs. (The Koch fortune at its base is about energy) The organizations also spent advertising money in 2012 on behalf of Mitt Romney. No money, for Ron Paul, though. From WaPo (my highlights)
The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics identified a coalition of allied conservative groups active in the 2012 elections that together raised at least $407 million, backed by a donor network organized by the industrialists Charles and David Koch. Most of the funds originated with two groups, the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and TC4 Trust, both of which routed some of the money through a Phoenix-based nonprofit group called the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR).
Americans for Prosperity , the Virginia-based nonprofit that finances grass-roots activities across the country and ran an early and relentless television ad assault against President Obama during the 2012 campaign. More than $44 million of the $140 million the organization raised in the last cycle came from the Koch-linked feeder funds.
The 60 Plus Association , which casts itself as a conservative alternative to AARP. The group reported spending $4.6 million on ads against Obama and House Democrats in 2012.
American Commitment , a new group that reported spending nearly $1.9 million on spots attacking Obama and congressional Democrats in 2012 and that runs online petitions against the federal health-care law and in support of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The American Energy Alliance , the 501(c)(4) arm of the Institute for Energy Research. The advocacy group, whose president is a former Koch Industries lobbyist, ran a 17-state bus tour in 2012 highlighting the benefits of domestic energy production. The organization got $2 million from Freedom Partners and CPPR in 2012 but has seen increased levels of support from other donors in recent years, according to a person familiar with its operations.
The American Future Fund , a Des Moines-based nonprofit that poured more than $25 million into ads against Obama and congressional Democrats in 2012. Nearly $63 million of its $68 million war chest in 2012 came from network feeder funds.
The Center for Shared Services , an organization in Alexandria that serves as a human resources hub for the network.
Concerned Veterans for America , which in 2012 held events spotlighting the unemployment rate among veterans and the difficulties members of the military face in casting ballots. The group was funded almost entirely by TC4 in 2012.
Concerned Women for America , a conservative Christian women’s activist group that received more than $8 million from Freedom Partners. The organization ran a social-media campaign and get-out-the-vote effort aimed at young women in 2012.
Evangchr4 Trust, a pastor outreach effort that gave nearly $1.2 million to CitizenLink, an advocacy arm of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. CitizenLink spent more than $2.5 million on ads on behalf of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans in 2012.
Generation Opportunity , a nonprofit aimed at millennials that ran a national get-out-the-vote effort in 2012 emphasizing the unemployment rate among youths.
The Libre Initiative Trust , a Mission, Tex.-based group aimed at promoting “the principles and values of economic freedom” to Latinos. It started in 2011.
Public Engagement Group Trust, a low-profile nonprofit based in Arlington County that says its mission is to raise public awareness of issues such as government spending and free markets. It received nearly $3.5 million from Freedom Partners and TC4.
Public Notice , a policy nonprofit that highlights the impacts of government spending. Its executive director, Gretchen Hamel, was listed as a program leader for TC4 on the group’s first tax filing.
WSJ Attacks Comment Trolls; All Readers Will Be Required to Use Real Names When Commenting
From WSJ:
Within the next few weeks, The Wall Street Journal is revamping its commenting and profile systems to create more engaging, relevant and thoughtful conversations.
Some key differences between today's platform and the new one:
• Commenters will have upgraded, visually rich public profiles. We will retain as much of your old profile information as possible. Your connections, groups and commenting history will be saved for future use.
• On public profiles, the full commenting history of the profile-holder will be visible. Should you wish to make previous comments private, you can delete them individually, notify moderator@wsj.com to request bulk deletion, or put your profile into private status.
• With our new technology, conversations among readers will feel as if they're unfolding in real time. Comment length is coming down. We'll ask you to make your point in under 1,000 characters.
• All readers will be required to use their real names when commenting on articles and, for the first time, on blogs.
George Will Gives De Blasio Three Years Before New Yorkers Start Begging For Something Else
George Will said that it won't be long before New Yorkers are longing for the days before Bill de Blasio became mayor.
"I give him three years," Will said on Fox News. "And people will be begging for return to something else."
Will said he hopes de Blasio implements a progressive agenda because "there is nothing better for American conservatism than periodic examples of untrammeled liberalism."
(Via Talking Points Memo)
"I give him three years," Will said on Fox News. "And people will be begging for return to something else."
Will said he hopes de Blasio implements a progressive agenda because "there is nothing better for American conservatism than periodic examples of untrammeled liberalism."
(Via Talking Points Memo)
Neocon Liz Cheney Pulls Out of Wyoming Senate Race
This is a good sign for all of us. The daughter of the evil Dick Cheney never got any significant following in Wyoming.
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