Angry Birds

Ever since the Federal Reserve first got into the business of blowing massive equity bubbles back in the 1980's, Americans have shown a willingness to happily, if ignorantly, embrace each successive iteration to the rigged market.  Of course, as E-Trade recently confirmed via the following ad, making money in equities is a very simple two-step process: (1) get invested, (2) buy a yacht made of Cuban mahogany and party with models...why would anyone in their right mind pass that up?

Yesterday morning, with the US closed for holiday but with S&P futures trading modestly lower on the latest set of North Korean geopolitical fears, we asked "is this time different", referencing last week's similar setup, when futures gapped lower on Monday after the Kim regime shot a missile over Japan, only to surge into the end of the week.

Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,

"We don't want a unified Korean peninsula ... We [also] don't want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb."
—Hillary Clinton, 2013, speech to Goldman Sachs

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

As the grandfather of three young ones, ages 5 to 9, I get to see my fair share of kid movies: plenty of hijinks, lots of bathroom humor, and an endless stream of slapstick gags. Yet even among the worst of the lot, there’s something to be learned, some message being conveyed, or some aspect of our reality being reflected in celluloid.

Via Chris at CapitalistExploits.at,

Do you remember when you were growing up and all your friends were allowed Atari game consoles but you weren’t?

Well, I do and the things seemed as foreign to me as Venus. Mostly because the little time I managed to spend on the gaming consoles when my friends weren’t hogging them I found it all a bit silly. I never “got” computer games, and to this day still have poor comprehension of things like Angry Birds.