America

With Russian stocks among the best performing in 2016 - and up dramatically since The White House issued its "sell" rating...

Since the end of the Cold War, we’re had a lot of very instructive experience in the Middle East. Back in 2010, I compiled the real-time analyses I had made of our policies and their results in a book titled America’s Misadventures in the Middle East. The book holds up well as an explanation for the origins and evolution of most of our difficulties in the region. Unfortunately, both the situation in the Middle East and our position there have continued to deteriorate.

Submitted by Alasdair Macloed via GoldMoney.com,

There is a growing fear in financial and monetary circles that there is something deeply wrong with the global economy. Publicly, officials and practitioners alike have become confused by policy failures, and privately, occasionally even downright pessimistic, at a loss to see a statist solution. It is hardly exaggerating to say there is a growing feeling of impending doom.

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

When a reporter for the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command interviewed Frank Zappa for the commands news syndicate, the story was held by a superior who demanded that Zappa – who had been rather hard on the army – answer one more question: just who does he think will defend the country without the army?

 

It turns out that thieves are smarter than politicians give them credit for, and thanks to Proposition 47 that passed in late 2014, this is something California is learning the hard way.

Proposition 47 downgraded drug possession and some theft crimes to misdemeanors in order to reduce prison and jail populations, and on that score, the referendum was successful.

However, as with most other targeted laws, Proposition 47 had other unintended consequences that were not considered.