Submitted by James Brovard via The Mises Institute,
In Iraq and Afghanistan, US military officers routinely handed bundles of cash to local residents to buy influence and undermine resistance to the American occupation. Such payments came in especially handy after US troops inadvertently killed innocent civilians or sheep. Billions of dollars were shoveled out with little or no oversight as part of the Pentagon’s “Money as a Weapon System” program.
Late last month, we reported that ISIS has cut its fighters’ salaries in half due to “exceptional circumstances the caliphate is facing.”
Those “exceptional circumstances” include Russia’s unrelenting aerial campaign against the group’s illicit oil trafficking business in Syria. The US-led “coalition” likes to take credit for helping to cripple the oil trade, but in reality it was Vladimir Putin (and Zero Hedge) that put the issue in the spotlight in November.
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
After a series of stunning declines through the month of January and the first half of February, global financial markets seem to have found a patch of relative stability at least for the moment. But that does not mean that the crisis is over.
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Laws are effective only to the extent they are enforced. A law on the books has little impact if prosecution is highly unlikely.
The US Economy Has Not Recovered And Will Not Recover
Paul Craig Roberts
The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated.
Jobs offshoring benefitted corporate executives and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.