With the Fed hiking rates in order to signal a "return of confidence" to the economy, one - the most important - aspect of a recovering economy continues to be absent: rising wages.

As the following chart showing the annual growth in wages of production and non-supervisory workers (who make up 83% of the US workforce) reveals, wage growth is not only well below the Fed's goal of 4.5%, at 1.7% it is below the Fed's goal of 2% inflation, suggestion that on a real basis wages would be declining if the Fed had attained its 2% inflation mandate.

Despite official pleas for “calm” following the death of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Iranians are in no mood to stand down. 

Perhaps the Ayatollah's calls for "divine vengeance" have incited a riot or perhaps the Shiite world has simply had enough of the House of Saud, but whatever the case, crowds once again gathered outside the Saudi consulate in Mashhad on Sunday where riot police tried in vain to disperse the mob with water cannons just hours after angry protesters torched the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Submitted by Jeremy Choate via Sufficient Reason blog,

This essay is a bit of departure from my usually reasonable and logical approach to important issues.  That’s not to say that the essay isn’t well-reasoned and is bereft of logical argumentation, but I freely admit that it’s polemical, in nature.  Sometimes you’re just pissed, and you need to vent.  Here’s my vent…

On Saturday, militants seized a remote government outpost following a protest by hundreds of angry citizens. 

That could very easily be the opening line for a story about a Mid-East country beset by civil war. Instead, it’s a description of what happened in Oregon yesterday. 

It all started back in 2001 when Dwight Hammond and his son Steven set fire to leased government land in what they said was an effort to beat back invasive plant species and - ironically - prevent wildfires. They set more fires in 2006 and were later convicted of arson. 

It used to be the provenance of "conspiracy theorists" - alleging that central banks have manipulated, rigged or otherwise broken the "efficient market." That is no longer the case.

As we previously showed, now even the big banks admit it.