DISCLAIMER: this essay was written in the spirit of April Fool's Day.
Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The basic idea is that giving each household, regardless of wealth or income, $1 million each will spur consumption so mightily that inflation will skyrocket.
Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,
Those who lost out on the Fed’s “wealth effect.”
Here’s a mystery: Has this “wealth-effect” economy that the Fed so beautifully engineered since the Financial Crisis gotten a lot riskier, scarier, and uglier in some profound ways for lower-income Americans, those making $30,000 or less a year?
One of the questions that Gallup posed was this:
The war in Yemen just marked its second anniversary.
"What war" you may ask given the lack of mainstream media coverage?
Here's Planet America's Chas Licciardello to explain how the war is causing one Yemeni child to die of malnutrition every 10 minutes, and what America's role in the conflict is...
I can’t avoid linking that to earlier periods of American poverty (see the photos below), says The Automatic Earth's Raul Ilargi Meijer, times in which ‘leaders’ thought it appropriate to let large swaths of the population live in misery, so everyone else would think twice about raising their voices. A tried and true strategy.
Before you begin to mention the grandiose gains in the stock market since Obama took office, bear in mind a few things.
1. The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to zero percent, making bonds and interest bearing accounts untenable for retirees, effectively forcing people into stocks. Also, the Fed's balance sheet went from ~$750b to $4.5t over that time frame -- rigging both equity, currency, and bond markets over Obama's entire 8 year term.