How a junk bond bubble is driving a buyout and merger boom … The merger and buyout boom of 2013 is upon us! Some of America's biggest companies are coupling up faster than frisky teenagers at their first unchaperoned party. On Thursday alone, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and private equity firm 3G Capital announced a $23 billion purchase of H.J. Heinz Co., the iconic producer...Read More

Dr Fredric Wertham Lied And Lied And Lied About Comics … The Illinois News Bureau reports, (with the most condescending and predictable headline you can imagine, even for Bleeding Cool) that Dr Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction Of The Innocent, the book that inspired government hearings about the content of comic books, saw sales plummet from the bad publicity, and eventually leading to t...Read More

The West's War Against African Development Continues … Africa's classic depiction in the mainstream media, as a giant basketcase full of endless war, famine and helpless children creates an illusion of a continent utterly dependent on Western handouts. In fact, the precise opposite is true – it is the West that is reliant on African handouts. These handouts come in many and var...Read More

Reformed UN formula for making planet greener … A new United Nations plan to involve all nations in marshalling science to fix environmental problems ranging from toxic chemicals to climate change will be put to the test at talks in Nairobi. The 40-year-old UN Environment Programme is to open its annual governing council to all the world's almost 200 nations, up from a current group of 5...Read More

Close to 40 masked intruders stormed into the facilities of a gold mine project in northern Greece Sunday morning, setting machinery and offices on fire, AP reports.The Skouries project in the Halkidiki peninsula, run by a subsidiary of Canadian Eldorado Gold (TSX: ELD) (NYSE:EGO), has been the target of numerous and -at times- violent protests by locals and activists who strongly oppose the gold-...Read More

Me playing the organ at Staplehurst United Reformed Church, Kent.I am only an amateur and by no means a pro so wanted to point this out and hope you are still able to get the jist of the amazing skills of the John Compton Organ Company Ltd.The organ was originally built in 1935 by the John Compton Organ Company Ltd for the Congregational Church at Whistable, Kent.It was moved here in 1981 and inst...Read More

The silver to gold ratio is the number of ounces of silver equal in value to one ounce of gold.Silver to Gold Ratio Today: 54:1Silver to Gold Ratio Ten Years ago: 80:1Silver to Gold Ratio for over 200 years: 15:1Silver to Gold Ratio expected in the future: 10:1 or even 5:1Conclusion: You can make 5 to 10 times more money if you buy physical silver, rather than gold, as silver's gains outpace the r...Read More

Christopher Dorner – the former Los Angeles police officer and fugitive accused of killing several people, including one police officer and a sheriff's deputy … died this week in a cabin fire while on the run. A rambling manifesto Dorner issued had many gripes, but chief among them were that racism, abuse of power and corruption ran rampant in the Los Angeles Police Department and...Read More

Christopher Dorner – the former Los Angeles police officer and fugitive accused of killing several people, including one police officer and a sheriff's deputy … died this week in a cabin fire while on the run. A rambling manifesto Dorner issued had many gripes, but chief among them were that racism, abuse of power and corruption ran rampant in the Los Angeles Police Department and...Read More

The Fed discovers chicanery: James Saft … Acknowledging that sometimes banks chisel clients and bank employees chisel banks may sound obvious to you, but for the Federal Reserve this is a pretty big step forward. Jeremy Stein, a member of the Board of Governors of the Fed, gave a speech last week in which he said that sometimes it may be necessary for the fed to raise interest rates to contr...Read More

Rebuilding our economic backbone … We're getting beat by Estonia. Not that there's anything wrong with the tiny state on the Baltic Sea. But the nation that built the Hoover Dam, pioneered the Interstate Highway System and created the best aviation system in the world, is rapidly sliding toward the bottom of the list when it comes to infrastructure. Infrastructure is the economic bac...Read More

WikiLeaks is a Rare Truth-teller. Smearing Julian Assange is Shameful … WikiLeaks is a rare example of a newsgathering organisation that exposes the truth. Julian Assange is by no means alone. Last December, I stood with supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in the bitter cold outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Candles were lit; the faces were young and old and from all over the...Read More

The Fed discovers chicanery: James Saft … Acknowledging that sometimes banks chisel clients and bank employees chisel banks may sound obvious to you, but for the Federal Reserve this is a pretty big step forward. Jeremy Stein, a member of the Board of Governors of the Fed, gave a speech last week in which he said that sometimes it may be necessary for the fed to raise interest rates to contr...Read More

Rebuilding our economic backbone … We're getting beat by Estonia. Not that there's anything wrong with the tiny state on the Baltic Sea. But the nation that built the Hoover Dam, pioneered the Interstate Highway System and created the best aviation system in the world, is rapidly sliding toward the bottom of the list when it comes to infrastructure. Infrastructure is the economic bac...Read More

WikiLeaks is a Rare Truth-teller. Smearing Julian Assange is Shameful … WikiLeaks is a rare example of a newsgathering organisation that exposes the truth. Julian Assange is by no means alone. Last December, I stood with supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in the bitter cold outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Candles were lit; the faces were young and old and from all over the...Read More

If you're making long term bets with billions of dollars even your worst-case forecast has to be pretty positive.And if you're talking spades of money and eye-watering lead times few things come close to building an iron mine from scratch.Sandy Chim, CEO of Century Iron Mines, is making exactly these bets with a greenfield project in the Labrador Trough.The iron ore business is all about China.I...Read More

As the world's advanced economies grow at half the speed of the pre-crisis years amid persistently high unemployment, governments are turning to a new set of monetary-policy makers who in word — and they hope deed — are more aggressive than their predecessors. A revolution that began with the arrival in November 2011 of Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank now is gathering spe...Read More

Pope Benedict XVI's successor: Church shift to developing world could see first black Pope … Two Africans are among the early contenders to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting the dramatic shift of the Roman Catholic Church to the developing world [including] Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana. – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: There is nothing to priestly prophecies regarding th...Read More

White House Must Respond to Petition Seeking Swartz Prosecutor's Firing … A whitehouse.gov petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration remove Aaron Swartz's prosecutor in the aftermath of the internet activist's suicide has surpassed 25,000 signatures. That means the Obama administration is obliged to enter the debate over whether authorities — including li...Read More

The birth dearth/empty cradle/baby bust is upon us, threatening consequences just as dire as the overpopulation bomb that Paul Ehrlich predicted would cause mass global starvation in the 1970s. The growing percentage of elderly in the population, the root cause of many of our problems, will soon render the United States economically feeble. This dire prophecy of underpopulation has gradually made...Read More