Even if SOPA passes in its current form, largely intact and full of overreach opportunities, there's no reason to believe this will be the last (or even the most overreaching) legislation crafted at the behest of the content industries.
The -AA's long history of overreaction to various "threats" (read: technological advancements) has been ... (more)
Gold’s biggest rout in three months means traders are the least bullish since July and Dennis Gartman, the economist who sold the last of his metal on the day the slump began, warned of further declines.
Ten of 21 surveyed by Bloomberg expect the metal to gain next week, the lowest proportion since July 29. Three were neutral. While bullion’s slide of as much as 9 percent this week took its drop from the record $1,923.70 an ounce reached in September to almost 20 percent, the comm... (more)
The latest data show that book sales are way up this season. So much for the prediction that books will be killed by technology. On the contrary, technology has enabled the great literature of the ages and the present to be put in the hands of everyone. I can't think of a better time to begin refurbishing Laissez-Faire Books (founded in 1972), because it is the market that laissez-faire celebrates that has made all the literature we love more accessible than ever.
Jon Corzine told the House Agriculture Committee, "I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date." The public is outraged that the former CEO of bankrupt global financial-derivatives broker and prime dealer in US Treasury securities MF Global doesn't know where the missing $1.2 billion in client funds went.
Gold fell after the Fed “statement failed to hint at further quantitative easing despite acknowledging slowing global growth,” Suki Cooper, an analyst at Barclays Capital in New York, wrote in a report. - Bloomberg News
College education in America is a bad joke. Instead of preparing the next generation of leaders for the jobs of tomorrow, the college education "industry" has become a giant money making scam. We constantly preach to our high school students that they "need" to go to college and we tell them to not even worry about how much it is going to cost because a college education is "always" worth the money. Then we lend them outrageous amounts of money so that they can pay the gigantic bills for the ... (more)
For most of his time as a national political figure, Barack Obama has been careful to cloak his core socialist leanings behind a veil of pro-capitalist rhetoric. This makes strategic sense, as Americans still largely identify as pro-capitalist. However, based on his recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the President appears to have reassessed the political landscape in advance of the 2012 elections. Based on the growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the recent defeat of Republicans in s... (more)
DISGUSTED by an increasingly invasive state, America's most capable entrepreneurs retreat to Galt's Gulch, a libertarian commune. That was the theme of Ayn Rand's magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged", a sacred text for libertarians ever since it was published in 1957. Actually creating such an enclave has been the dream of many fans of small government (or of none at all). Several have had a try at it, but their efforts have always ended in disaster (see table).
Millions of American citizens have already left the United States in search of a better life. As the economy continues to crumble and as our society slowly falls apart, millions of others are thinking about it. But moving to another country is not something to be done lightly. The reality is that there are a vast array of social, cultural, economic and safety issues to be considered. If you have never traveled outside of North America, then you have no idea how incredibly different life in o... (more)
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, talks about the outlook for equities and his investment strategy. Faber speaks with Lisa Murphy and Adam Johnson on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)
Three months ago, Zero Hedge presented the first of many narratives that started the thread of explaining the "unmitigated disaster" that would ensue should the Euro break up, which in the words of authors Stephane Deo and Larry Hatheway, would leads to such mutually assured destruction outcomes as complete bank failure and/or civil war or far worse. Because... (more)
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a letter to four senior lawmakers today that recent news articles about the central bank’s emergency lending programs contained “egregious errors.”
While Bernanke’s letter and an accompanying four-page staff memo posted on the Fed’s website didn’t mention any news organizations by name, Bloomberg News has published a series of articles this year examining the bailout. The latest, “Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed ... (more)
INTERNATIONAL. Investment gurus Jim Rogers and Marc Faber agree to various degrees on many issues but the one thing separating them this week is the future direction of the Chinese economy and if this could have a devastating impact on commodities around the world.
Both Faber and Rogers have been warning about the effects of monetary and fiscal policies on the US economy, since the recent rally has been mostly based on printed money, a kind of 'reverse Robin Hood policy' of govern... (more)
Highridge Futures Fund LP, a customer of the MF Global Inc. brokerage, said its $50 million account with the defunct company is “missing.”
James Giddens, the trustee liquidating the brokerage, has “failed and refused” to provide any information about the whereabouts of the account, Highridge said in a filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Highridge asked the judge handling the case to order Giddens to locate and transfer the account, containing mostly cash and also u... (more)
Fri 02 Dec 11 - Marc Faber's big China short. Forget Europe, says Faber, it's China that's in for a major slowdown, with CNBC's Simon Hobbs and the Money In Motion traders.
What you are about to read should absolutely astound you. During the last financial crisis, the Federal Reserve secretly conducted the biggest bailout in the history of the world, and the Fed fought in court for several years to keep it a secret. Do you remember the TARP bailout? The American people were absolutely outraged that the federal government spent 700 billion dollars bailing out the "too big to fail" banks. Well, that bailout was pocket change compared to what the Federal Reserve d... (more)
"You Got this Occupy Wall Street crowd that wants to have a communist revolution," says investment guru and outspoken defender of free enterprise Peter Schiff, "but hopefully we can have more of a free-market...second American revolution and understand all the pain we're about to endure is because of government. It's not because of capitalism."
Gold mining stocks are trading at their cheapest level in at least nine years even as the industry's profits are estimated to almost double this year and bullion trades close to its historic high.
