NSA to Control the Stock Market … Spy agency can easily manipulate the market through latest surveillance hub … An upcoming surveillance hub monitoring all investment transactions in real-time will allow the National Security Agency unparalleled ability to manipulate the stock market. – Infowars via DrudgeDominant Social Theme: Buy and hold is the name of the game. The stock mark...Read More

Economics Economists, Show Your Assumptions … What if I told you that jumping off a cliff is entirely safe, except for gravity? Would you find my prediction insightful or useful? Strange as it may seem, this is precisely the kind of logic that underpins many of the models that economists build to help them understand the world — and even to make policy recommendations on things such as...Read More

Final fed climate report will present dire picture … The Obama administration is more certain than ever that global warming is changing Americans' daily lives and will worsen – conclusions that scientists will detail in a massive federal report to be released Tuesday. – APDominant Social Theme: Times are grim and getting hotter.Free-Market Analysis: The US government is repor...Read More

Inside Monsanto … The company is using its biotech muscle to genetically engineer crops — but also beef up traditional cross-breeding. Say the term "genetically modified organism," or GMO, and you're bound to get some strong opinions. But what is it? And should we be afraid? Like it or not, humans have been in the business of genetically changing organisms since we first...Read More

In the meantime they had been in deep and friendly conversation with three masked men with Kalashnikovs. "We are just making sure everyone remains calm," explained a sergeant. "These guys are being provoked, they are angry." Who is provoking them? I asked. "The Ukrainian army, of course, the rest of us want none of this bloodshed," the policeman responded. – UK...Read More

How to Teach Better Teachers … U.S. schools don't have enough great teachers. There are various reasons for that, chief among them tenure protections that prevent principals from cutting loose low performers and union contracts that require the worst teachers to be paid the same as the best. But the trouble begins even before teachers arrive in the classroom: Education schools at U.S. un...Read More

The surprise success of Thomas Piketty … The surprise success of the French economist Thomas Piketty's income disparity blockbuster Capital in the 21st Century has forced battlelines to be drawn in the world of political economics. Piketty's unremarkable contention, after having crawled through two centuries of data, is that the inequitable distribution of wealth in Western society h...Read More

Silver looks like gold as slump defies more car-part use … Silver is being undermined by its association with gold. While makers of everything from jewellery to solar panels are buying the most silver in nine years, prices are languishing. Investors are dismissing industrial demand and instead focusing on the waning appeal of precious metals as a haven, with the Federal Reserve paring econom...Read More

The Dow Jones industrial average rose to an all-time high on Wednesday after investors assessed more corporate earnings, the latest move from the Fed and an unexpectedly weak reading on economic growth in the first quarter. Sealed Air, a food packing company, and C.H. Robinson, a freight company, were among stocks that rose after reporting earnings. On Wednesday: The Dow Jones industrial average r...Read More

House Budget Committee to Hold Hearing on Poverty … Is the federal government responsible for lifting millions of Americans out of poverty or trapping them in it? That question has become a political Rorschach test this year, the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty. On Wednesday, Representative Paul D. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is holding...Read More

Regulatory Costs Are World's No. 10 Economy … After years of rapid growth during the Obama administration, the cost of federal regulations is now bigger than the entire economies of all but nine countries in the world. That's according to the latest annual report on the regulatory state issued by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, titled "Ten Thousand Commandments...Read More

Angela Merkel's Vice Chancellor Stuns, Declares Germany's 'Energiewende' To Be On 'The Verge Of Failure' … The green energy orgy in Germany is over. The music has stopped and the wine that once flowed freely has long run out. The green energy whores and pimps can go home. In a stunning admission by Germany's Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor to Angela Merkel,...Read More

An online Risorgimento … "IF WE want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." The words, uttered by a Sicilian aristocrat on the eve of Italian unification in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's classic "The Leopard", neatly sum up the sentiment at NETmundial. The big internetgovernance powwow held in São Paulo on April 23rd-24th brought together 1,2...Read More

Monsanto and Big Food Losing the GMO and 'Natural' Food Fight … Food and farm activists in Vermont, backed by a growing movement across the country, are on the verge of a monumental victory – mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods and a ban on the routine industry practice of labeling GMO-tainted foods as "natural." – HuffingtonPostDominant Social Them...Read More

Immigration Overhaul for 2014: Decidedly Not Dead … A bipartisan overhaul of immigration, considered dead in the water just a few weeks ago, is not only alive, according to the House Republican leading efforts to broker a deal — it's gaining steam. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., told CQ Roll Call that pro-rewrite calls earlier this week from two Illinois Republicans, Reps. Adam Ki...Read More

Why the Obamacare fight never ends … "I know every American isn't going to agree with this law," President Barack Obama said about the Affordable Care Act at his April 17 news briefing, "but I think we can agree that it's well past time to move on." The Republican response? Same as General Anthony McAuliffe's reply when the German army demanded that U.S. force...Read More

Why even $1M may not be enough for retirement … You've been saving like a miser to get ready for retirement. You've pinched pennies, kept that last car for what seems like an eternity. And now you've banked a cool $1 million for your retirement years. Think you're set? Well, you very well might be. Then again, you still might be short. … "The good news is there are...Read More

A Top Hospital Opens Up to Chinese Herbs as Medicines … Christina Lunka appeared nervous and excited as she sat in the Chinese herbal therapy center recently opened by the Cleveland Clinic. The 49-year-old had been to many doctors seeking help for ongoing issues that included joint pain and digestive problems. Now the Kirtland, Ohio, resident was hoping to find relief through herbal remedies...Read More

Bundy Standoff Is A Fox News Costume Drama … One thing about that mangy posse of anti-government crackpots camped out at Cliven Bundy's place in the Nevada desert: Most don't know a thing about cattle ranching. See, it's calving season across most of the country … While the BLM was wise not to confront the mob, the current triumphalism among far-right zealots can't be s...Read More

The Privatization Backlash … For decades, city and state governments have seen contracting as a cost-saving panacea. But past experience has left some of today's policymakers more skeptical … – The AtlanticDominant Social Theme: Free markets are failures.Free-Market Analysis: The Atlantic magazine has discovered that "privatization" doesn't work.Of course, priva...Read More