Over 2,000 incidents of sexual abuse and physical assaults have been reported at an Australian detention center for asylum seeker in Nauru.  A shocking leaked document shows the horrific level of abuse suffered over the last two years at the center on tiny Nauru, one of two detention centers run by the Australian government. Yahoo News reports: The closely protected camps, and Australia’s hard-line immigration policy against illegal boat arrivals, have been widely criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups.

According to so-called experts, the Romanian (as he described himself) hacker Guccifer 2.0 is really a Russian (even though there is still not a shred of evidence to confirm this) who several weeks ago provided a trove of 20,000 emails to Wikileaks, which exposed the corruption at the Democratic National Committee as it rigged the primary election on behalf of Hillary, further revealing just how deeply in bed the DNC and the "independent" media were.

Accommodative monetary policy by the Fed has crushed bond income for insurers.  According to Bloomberg, 2015 investment income at North American insurers dropped below 2011 levels.

Unsurprisingly, in their stretch for yield, insurers added to energy bond positions in 2015 to offset the funding gap.  Now, the collapse of oil prices has apparently left North American life insurers in a bit of a pickle with distressed debt holdings having doubled in a matter of 6 months as IG energy bonds turned to junk. 

Submitted by David Galland via GarretGalland.com,

The 1950s were a simple, romantic, and golden time in America.

California beaches, suburbia, and style. Atlas Shrugged was published, NASA was formed, and Elvis rocked the nation. Every year from 1950–1959 saw over 4 million babies born. The nation stood atop the world in every field.

It was an era of great economic prosperity in The Land of the Free.

Aside from a brief pause during the "great recession" of 2009, Midwest farmland prices have been bubbling up for over a decade with annual price increases of 15%-30% in many years.  Private Equity and low interest rates no doubt played a role in creating the farmland bubble as "excess cash on the sidelines" sought out investments in hard assets (see "Is TIAA-CREF Investing In Farmland A Harbinger Of The Next Asset Bubble?").  No matter the cause, data continues to indicate that the farmland bubble is bursting.