Deficit and Debt Are Caused by Baby Boomers, Not Socialism … Yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a lengthy report proposing 103 ways to cut the federal deficit. The report contains plenty of red meat for partisans – from block-granting low-income assistance programs for savings of $404 billion over the next decade, on the right, to imposing a greenhous...Read More

Janet Yellen [defends] Federal Reserve System ultra-easy monetary policy … Janet Yellen, President Barack Obama's nominee to lead the US Federal Reserve, offers a stout defense on Thursday of the central bank's aggressive monetary easing before a Senate panel that includes some tough Republican critics. – The Economic TimesDominant Social Theme: The Fed has a job to do. Let'...Read More

A strain of bird flu that scientists thought could not infect people has shown up in a Taiwanese woman, a nasty surprise that shows scientists must do more to spot worrisome flu strains before they ignite a global outbreak, doctors say. On a more hopeful front, two pharmaceuticals separately reported encouraging results from human tests of a possible vaccine against a different type of bird flu th...Read More

Bank of England says the UK recovery has taken hold … Mark Carney: "For the first time in a long time, you do not have to be an optimist to see the glass is half full" … Bank of England governor Mark Carney says the UK recovery has "taken hold" and unemployment will fall sooner than it had forecast. The comments came in the Bank's latest quarterly inflation repo...Read More

A Bitcoin Exchange Holding $4.1 Million For 1,000 Customers Has Simply Vanished … A Chinese Bitcoin exchange that held up to $4.1 million in users' accounts has gone offline and everyone involved with it has vanished, according to CoinDesk. – Business InsiderDominant Social Theme: Bitcoin is a suspicious kind of money.Free-Market Analysis: We've written several articles somewha...Read More

The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push … The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply. Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield. It wasn't supposed to be this way. With the Iowa political c...Read More

Typhoon Haiyan 'the result of climate change' … The Philippines delegate at the UN Climate Change talks that began on Monday has blamed Typhoon Haiyan on climate change, and urged sceptics to 'get off their ivory towers'. Naderev "Yeb" Sano, representative for the Philippines at the UN Climate Change talks, broke down in tears as he addressed delegates in Warsaw. Mr...Read More

Reports of the survival of the eurozone may have been greatly exaggerated … Last week's surprise interest rate cut by the European Central Bank (ECB) may have been taken as good news by the markets, but it was largely a response to the looming danger of deflation in the eurozone. And that is not good news at all. It is a severe problem of economic forecasting that if you manage to identi...Read More

The lessons from Obamacare's flawed Web launch … As the president has recognized, the failure of his administration to deliver a functioning website that Americans can use to enroll in Obamacare represents an inexcusable error. Having succeeded after more than a century of failed efforts in achieving the progressive dream goal of legislating universal health insurance in America, it is t...Read More

Bernanke Says Failing Bank Process Needed to Reduce Crises … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said a process under development that would allow regulators to take down a failing bank will help ensure investors discipline weak firms and prevent them from taking risks without consequence. "As we try to make the financial system safer, we must inevitably confront the problem of mor...Read More

Paranoia Has Undermined United States Claim to Liberal Democracy … Agent Carrie Mathison is a topical figure. The main character in the American TV series "Homeland," played by the wonderful Claire Danes, shows her true relevance in the first few episodes, in which Mathison is nervously sitting at home, observing and listening in on the life of a terror suspect on a large screen. H...Read More

Twitter Surges in Trading Debut After $1.82 Billion Share Sale. Twitter Inc. jumped 73 percent in its trading debut, as investors paid a premium for its promises of fast growth. The stock rose to $44.90 at the close in New York from the initial public offering price of $26, delivering the biggest one-day pop for an IPO that raised more than $1 billion since Alibaba.com Ltd. debuted in 2007, accord...Read More

Politics Revealed: Obama Campaign Bundler Helping Fund Libertarian in Tight Va. Gubernatorial Race … A major Democratic Party benefactor and Obama campaign bundler helped pay for professional petition circulators responsible for getting Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert C. Sarvis on the ballot – a move that could split conservative votes in a tight race. Campaign fina...Read More

China seeks world role for 'people's money' … With deals from London to Singapore, China is seeking a greater role for its yuan currency in global markets to challenge the hegemony of the almighty dollar. The most attention-grabbing reform planned for Shanghai's new free trade zone is free convertibility of the yuan – also known as the renminbi, or "people's mo...Read More

Virginia, Alabama Voter Choices Show Tea Party Declining … In the closing days of his losing campaign for Virginia's governorship, Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli called the contest a referendum on Obamacare. Virginia voter Lee Killen saw it instead as a referendum on the Tea Party – and he voted no. Killen, a Republican-turned-independent from Fairfax, cast his ballot f...Read More

Private Equity Played Large Role In Rush Of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) So Far In 2013 … Initial public offerings (IPO) in the United States have taken off this year, with October seeing the most IPOs since 2007, as 33 companies raised more than $12 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. – International Business TimesDominant Social Theme: Ain't capitalism grand?Free-...Read More

Greek protesters rally against IMF and EU inspection. Anti-austerity demonstrators jeer, heckle and throw coins at auditors from bailout troika amid fears of more public sector cuts … Only hours before, the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, had resolutely declared that Greece was not at war with the international bodies keeping the debt-stricken country afloat. But on Tuesday, inspector...Read More

Twitter Raises IPO Price Range, Looks To Sell Shares For $23-$25 … Twitter's roadshow must be going pretty well. The social network has been pitching its forthcoming initial public offering to institutional investors over the last week-plus and raised the price range for the deal Monday morning according to an updated SEC filing. Twitter now aims to sell shares for between $23 and $25 ap...Read More

In Alabama Race, a Test of Business Efforts to Derail Tea … With only days to go before a special Republican primary runoff for Congress here in South Alabama, the national business lobby is going all in … In the first test of its post-government-shutdown effort to derail Tea Party candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put on a rally on Tuesday in the warehouse of an aluminum plant...Read More

International panel's leaked report predicts more illness, war, disease with global warming … Starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease already lead to human tragedies. They're likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change, a leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Pane...Read More