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"Here's the big problem with almost all the current rhetoric about the housing crisis: It presumes that the goal should be to get house prices rising again.  The problem with that idea is that, even after a 25% decline, house prices are still way too high. " Even if there is a government mechanism that could stop house prices from plummeting and artificially pump them up again, therefore, it would just postpone the inevitable....." Henry covers the infamous Robert Schiller Housing Graph tracking home prices since 1890 to the present. He also includes an excerpt from James Quinn's acerbic but highly informed article. Mr. Quinn spares nothing in his loathing of congress, Barney Frank and Obama.

America's other important foreign-policy goal, Mr. Obama wrote, was reducing global poverty: the root cause, in his view, of terrorism and political extremism around the world. By "sharing more of our riches to help those most in need," by building up the social and economic "pillars of a just society" both at home and abroad, America could bring security and stability to the entire world-if, he added, the task was undertaken "not in the spirit of a patron but in the spirit of a partner-a partner mindful of his own imperfections." In short, instead of being the world's swaggering policeman, America would become the world's self-effacing social worker. Obama's democrat opponents espoused the same compromising apologetics, blame America first, peace in our time style give us a new start voices, focusing on international cooperation and multilateralism, exhausting every avenue of diplomacy before resorting to military action, "avoiding false choices driven by ideology," and devoting our resources to problems like global warming and Third World poverty. If pursued sincerely and consistently, such a course, Hillary was confident, would keep us safe, restore America's image, and win the respect of the planet. Or would it? For a little historical perspective, it might be useful to look at the last president who embraced exactly the same analysis of America's foreign-policy problems and enacted exactly the same strategy for resolving them. Hello Jimmy Carter you idiot!

President Bush's speech at the Manhattan Institute defending Capitalism . All i can say is, it's about time someone stood up for American Capitalism. "All this leads to the most important principle that should guide our work: While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today's problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people. In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right equate the free-enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure. It's true this crisis included failures -- by lenders and borrowers and financial firms, and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free-market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems, make reforms, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people all across the globe. Capitalism is not perfect. But it is by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy.

I've been reading John Mauldin's newsletter for some time now.  The guy is so grounded, and his writing style is fluid.  Mostly though i appreciate the depth of background information that surrounds the simplicity of his explanations.  Note his connections to George Friedman, Niall Ferguson David Rosenberg, Lacy Hunt and Gary Shilling.  Quite a murders row of economic thinking.  anyway, John's newsletter has become the bottom line of my economic thinking. excerpt:     "Our immersion in the details of crises that have arisen over the past eight centuries and in data on them has led us to conclude that the most commonly repeated and most expensive investment advice ever given in the boom just before a financial crisis stems from the perception that 'this time is different.' That advice, that the old rules of valuation no longer apply, is usually followed up with vigor. Financial professionals and, all too often, government leaders explain that we are doing things better than before, we are smarter, and we have learned from past mistakes. Each time, society convinces itself that the current boom, unlike the many booms that preceded catastrophic collapses in the past, is built on sound fundamentals, structural reforms, technological innovation, and good policy." - This Time is Different (Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff) When does a potential crisis become an actual crisis, and how and why does it happen? Why did most everyone believe there were no problems in the US (or Japanese or European or British) economies in 2006? Yet now we are mired in a very difficult situation. "The subprime problem will be contained," said now controversially confirmed Fed Chairman Bernanke, just months before the implosion and significant Fed intervention. I have just returned from Europe, and the discussion often turned to the potential of a crisis in the Eurozone if Greece defaults. Plus, we take a look at the very positive US GDP numbers released this morning. Are we final

Obama and the Federal reserve are out of bullets......... The only thing that will work is Cut, Cap and Balance - the TEA Party Patriot formula that passed the House during the run up to the Natioanl Debt Limit SCAM, only to be immediately tabled and discarded by the ruling elites in the Bankster, Democrat and Repubican establishment.  With 69% of the taxpaying public in support of the Balanced Budget Amendment, one would have thought the ruling elites would have shown a bit more respect for Cut, Cap & Balance.  What we got however was anything but.   In this article Long time liberal - big government - let me into the elite ruling class advocate Henry Blodgett looks into the chasm, wondering how to pull back from the brink impending disaster. excerpt:  there are also several very important differences between this market crash and the ones a few years ago: ........... The Fed has fired most of its bullets (interest rates are already at zero) ............. Our budget deficit is already out of control, and Congress has had it with "stimulus" ............... The public has had it with bailouts That means the government's ability to do anything about this market crash is severely limited. Yes, we'll almost certainly have a "QE3." And maybe that will prop things up a bit. But it won't fix the fundamental problems clogging the economy, just as QE1 and QE2 didn't permanently fix anything. (The only thing that will fix our economy is debt-reduction, discipline, and time.)............

Wow.  The hedge fund guys are now turning away from big government socialism and the forceful seizure and redistribution of wealth as the solution to all problems.  So why do these guys keep pouring millions of dollars into Obama's re-election?  Is it protection money?  Or influence peddling? excerpt: It's increasingly difficult to avoid that conclusion that while Washington burns, President Obama is fiddling away by insisting that the only solution to the nation's problems -- whether unemployment, the debt ceiling or deficit reductions -- lies in redistribution of wealth. Perhaps the difference between President Obama and many Americans is that the president sees prosperity as a sign of "unfairness" that needs to be corrected by government via higher taxes and increased regulation. Perhaps a plan that led the way forward by expanding oppportunities rather than redistrbuting incomes and emphasizing growth and prosperity for all would be met with less political resistance.

Porter discusses inflation and the disastrous impact the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is having on the wealth of Americans.  An interesting chart he provides is the one pricing the Stock Market in GOLD.  Everything should be priced and evaluated in terms of GOLD instead of Federal Reserve paper.  The world would be a better place. there are only two repubican presidential candidates calling for an end of the Bankster Cartel; Ron Paul and Rick Perry.  The rest are with Obama, deep in the Bankster pocket.  Very sad.  But then, the Occupy Wall Street movement is camped out on Wall Street, while the Tea Party movement is Occupying the heart of the Bankster criminal empire - the Federal Reserve Banks.  Both movements seem to be protesting the same criminal Bankster problem.  But OWS has been fooled by the ol "nothing up my sleeve" illusion. excerpt: Here's the fact: America's standard of living is falling at a faster pace today than at any time since the Great Depression. Specifically, the real median income is down 9.8% since the fall of 2008. Additionally, Americans have lost roughly $5.5 trillion in asset value, or about 8.6% of their wealth. When you talk about a depression, what you're really talking about is a collapse in the standard of living. That's what's happening today, right now, in our country. But people continue to go about their lives as though nothing is happening. Certainly, our politicians don't want to draw attention to the problem. Instead, they are behind the campaign to "paper over" these losses with schemes like "quantitative easing." These schemes do nothing to make our economy more productive. They're designed instead to make prices rise so people (hopefully) won't notice how poor they're becoming. If you've been reading my newsletters since 2008, none of this is a surprise to you. I've been warning month after month, year after year, that the government's efforts to paper over our bad debts won't work. And they won't work for tw

"But there's a problem. The state power we oppose is not identical to the establishment we reject. You can overthrow the establishment and still be left with a gigantic machinery of legalized exploitation. All the agencies, laws, regulations, and powers are still in place. And now you have a problem: someone else is in charge of the state itself. You might call it a new establishment. It could be even more wicked than the one you swept away. Indeed, it usually is. Maybe always. Anatomy of the Establishment What is an establishment? It is a network of large and cooperating interest groups that have developed a stable relationship with state power. It includes finance, organized labor, public bureaucrats, government contractors, big businesses with quid pro quo relationships with regulators and politicians, political families with a strong stake in the election process, intellectuals at state-friendly think tanks and universities, and so on."

Socialist (and populist) Venezuela is under siege by right wing businessmen and the U.S. government, with two attempted coups in the last few years, one earlier this year. Hoarding of goods by businessmen opposed to the government in an attempt to undermine government support has been a big problem. The profit-capping measures just announced are directed at that problem. 

"Russia has just taken significant steps that will break the present Wall Street oil price monopoly, at least for a huge part of the world oil market. The move is part of a longer-term strategy of decoupling Russia's economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, today the Achilles Heel of the Russian economy. Later in November the Russian Energy Ministry has announced that it will begin test-trading of a new Russian oil benchmark. While this might sound like small beer to many, it's huge. If successful, and there is no reason why it won't be, the Russian crude oil benchmark futures contract traded on Russian exchanges, will price oil in rubles and no longer in US dollars. It is part of a de-dollarization move that Russia, China and a growing number of other countries have quietly begun. The setting of an oil benchmark price is at the heart of the method used by major Wall Street banks to control world oil prices. Oil is the world's largest commodity in dollar terms. Today, the price of Russian crude oil is referenced to what is called the Brent price. The problem is that the Brent field, along with other major North Sea oil fields is in major decline, meaning that Wall Street can use a vanishing benchmark to leverage control over vastly larger oil volumes. The other problem is that the Brent contract is controlled essentially by Wall Street and the derivatives manipulations of banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and Citibank. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/"

"Doug Casey on American Socialism"  .  Awesome interview, especially the discussion on Liberalism and how the socialist Norman Thomas decided to co-opt the term as an effective replacement for the disreputable socialism.  Links to the Thomas 1932 socialist platform that Casey points out has pretty much been put into place.   Good discussion.  Focus on an article published by socialist apologist and idiot, Allan Colmes.

I agree that Colmes is far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. In my opinion, he was largely a Fox News invention to give Shawn Hannity a far weaker opponent to argue against that Hannity's idiocy could still overcome. There are in reality liberals that Hannity could never have gone toe-to-toe with. (That's not an endorsement of liberalism; it's commentary on the quality of Hannity's arguments.) The show was mostly a variant of the straw man logical fallacy; the fact that Colmes lacked the ability to think critically or communicate effectively made Hannity "win" the pseudo-debate in the eyes of those unable to think critically themselves. I have some criticism of Casey's remarks that apply more generally to my experience of strict Libertarians and perhaps even farther to strict adherents to any "ism." My criticism boils down to a couple of examples of hard issues usually avoided by strict Libertarians. -- The Disabled: When discussing Social Security disability benefits, Casey changes the subject from the genuinely disabled to a short rant about those whose disability claims are bogus and the "ambulance chasing" lawyers who pursue their claims. But if pressed to the wall and forced to answer, I strongly suspect that Casey would admit that there are people, likely the majority of Social Security disability benefits, whose claims are genuine. The net effect of his relevant argument: an impression that he has a Darwinian view that he would leave the disabled dying in the streets without sustenance or medical care. That kind of society is unacceptable to me. Perhaps it is to Casey too, but if so I think it was incumbent on him to offer a solution for the genuinely disabled. (In fairness, I'll note that at one point Casey hinted but did not forthrightly say that he would favor financial assistance for single mothers in Harlem.) -- Medical Care: I agree that our health care system is badly broken. But again Casey is long on criticism but short on realistic idea

Looks very much as if the Clintons' problems with the FBI are not over, notwithstanding their election defeat. This is a must-read.

Harry Binswanger defends laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand Objectivism.

The major problem with Ayn Rand Objectivism is that it's an "ism." The Utopian ideal it is based on has never existed in reality and likely never will; its principles have never been tested. Moreover, I will argue that Binswanger is incorrect in arguing that the anti-capitalist phenomenon in America began with creation of the Federal Reserve; it dates much farther back. The economic basis for the Revolutionary War was largely the Crown-granted monopolies granted to the first great British "companies" (corporations), which had the effect of forcing North American colonists to pay monopoly rents for common goods and kept American ship owners from importing those goods from elsewhere to sell at a lower price. The Founding Fathers were strongly against privately-owned corporations and government-granted monopolies, with only two exceptions, copyrights for literary works and patents for inventions. The Constitution's prohibition against government-granted monopolies is implicit in its allowance for only two narrowly-defined types. The Founding Fathers' writings explicitly discussed the difference between "natural" monopolies and those created by government or anti-competitive conduct. During the early years of the nation corporations were permitted by the States, but only for public purposes, usually for public works such as bridges or roads for which there was a need to amass capital. These early American corporations were usually chartered only for the time required to complete the public work and to recover the invesment and a small profit, e.g., from tolls for using a bridge or road. Many of the early state constitutions explicitly limited the lifetime of corporations. However, such early opposition to corporations gradually eroded; corporate purposes were expanded, corporations were granted perpetual life, and the corporate form of doing business became much more widespread. Here, it is important to recognize that corporations are market artificialities c

This has gone way too far.  The 2012 elections must be nullified and rescheduled.  Tens of millions of American citizens have been systematically targeted, their civil and Constitutional rights destroyed, and their voices and votes politically eliminated by a massive government conspiracy.  The 2012 election is a fraud.  And nothing short of complete nullification and recall, and the termination of the IRS will do the great Republic justice. excerpt: Scandal: A retiring IRS lawyer implicates the IRS chief counsel's office, headed by an Obama appointee, as well as the head of the IRS' exempt organizations office. The targeting included a Tea Party Senate candidate. In Thursday's hearing before the House Oversight Committee, 72-year-old retiring IRS lawyer Carter Hull implicated the IRS chief counsel's office headed by William J. Wilkins, who attended at least nine White House meetings, and Lois Lerner, head of the exempt-organizations office, in the IRS scandal. In so doing, he made clear the targeting of Tea Party groups started in Washington and was directed from Washington. A tax-law specialist with 48 years of IRS experience, Hull testified that Lerner, the former head of the exempt organizations division, demanded that he send some of the reviews of Tea Party groups to the IRS chief counsel's office in Washington. The chief counsel is one of two political appointees in the IRS. According to Hull's testimony, Lerner, who famously pleaded her Fifth Amendment rights before the same committee, gave an atypical instruction that the Tea Party applications undergo special scrutiny that included an uncommon multilayer review that involved a top adviser to Lerner as well as the chief counsel's office. Hull's name came up earlier in the testimony of Holly Paz, a D.C.-based supervisor in the IRS's tax-exempt status division, who reported to Lerner. It was on May 22, the day after Paz was interviewed by investigators, that Lerner refused to answer questions from

Good interview with Phil Zimmerman, the inventor of PGP, and founder of Silent Circle eMail Service.  Which is being shut down because of the what the Feds did to LavaBit. What concerns me most about this illegal and systematic invasion of privacy is the massive potential for blackmail and extortion.  Think of what the IRS illegally did to tens of millions of Americans, targeting them because of their religious and political views, and seeking volumes of highly personal information far beyond reasonable requirements.   What happens when the politicians in power start using the IRS and NSA for political purposes - like what we just saw in the 2012 elections? When I was working on the wiki-Word and SurDoc projects, we were very concerned about having our documents and designs hosted or passing through competitor (Microsoft and Google) servers and email systems.  At the time I thought I was just being paranoid.  Now we know differently.  We had every reason to be concerned.

I don't agree that whistleblowers need a secret system for their complaints. Secrecy is the problem, not the solution.In a supposedly democratic republic, every bit of government secrecy runs directly contrary to the citizen's right to be know what their government is up to.  All of the NSA reform measures in Congress share a fundamental flaw: they focus on what the NSA is allowed to do in secret. Any sane legislative approach would begin by identifying and clarifying what digital privacy rights citizens have and the obligation of government agencies and the private sector to report violations to their victims. Then one can proceed to examine how intelligence agencies might function within those parameters.  But the approach in Congress has been a catfight over "NSA reform" with secrecy accepted as the norm and without consideration of citizens' privacy rights, not even their Constitutional rights. But it is our privacy laws and their enforcement that needs attention, not directions to the Dark Government that is still allowed to remain in the dark. In other words, it is the public that should be informed of whistleblowers' revelations, not selected members of Congress, not secret courts, not some Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board whose public reports are only summaries with all data they examine hid from view.  Bring that Dark Government into the sunlight and then real reform can happen but not before.

+1 The Constitutional and Natural rights of citizens come first. The legality of the NSA activities as well as other gov ops follows. This is an excellent point you make Paul! I hope others take up the cross and realize what an important point you are making in your comment.

Nothing new here. Remember when Donald Rumsfeld announced the day before 9-11 that the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj1rT4bszWg It was the same way in Viet Nam. During my entire 27 months there, we could not be issued socks. We had to write home to ask family or friends to buy socks and send them to us. They could buy them at military surplus stores in the U.S., regulation Army field socks with cushion soles, but we couldn't get them from the Army. "An army travels on its feet," but no socks. Socks were not the only supply chain failures, of course. If you can't manage to get socks to your soldiers because they've been declared surplus, maybe you'd have problems accounting for expenditures too, ya' think?