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.

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares of Sinclair & Co.

The US Economy: Still On Track?

Raw materials and goods need to be transported regardless of how modern or sophisticated an economy is.

Every week the Association of American Railways (“AAR”) posts a free report on rail volumes transported across North America by major category. This provides some decent clues on the condition of the US economy, almost in real time.

Let’s see what the latest report covering virtually all of 2015 is telling us.