Business

After being force-fed more stimulus than John Belushi, and endless rounds of buying any and every asset that dares to expose any cracks in the potemkin village of fiat folly, Japan remains stuck firmly in what Abe feared so many years ago - a "deflationary mindset."

As Bloomberg reports, cash and deposits held by Japanese households rose for 42nd straight quarter at the end of June as the nation’s consumers continued to favor saving over spending.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

A day after Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio claimed that bitcoin was "definitely in a bubble" partly because he said the digital currency was too difficult to spend, CoinTelegraph is reporting that the first-ever bitcoin-only real-estate transaction has been completed in Texas.

The transaction "illustrates crypto's potential to transform how financial transactions are conducted," according to Futurism.com.

Authored by Jordan A. Thomas, chair of the whistleblower practice at the law firm of Labaton Sucharow

Crafted by an ad agency immediately following 9/11, the slogan “if you see something, say something” took hold with astonishing speed. The tagline reflected a tectonic cultural shift; the serious and growing need for public participation in the nation’s enforcement paradigm. In many ways, those six words have come to define a change in guard in which government has effectively deputized everyday citizens to be its eyes and ears.

We've spent a lot of time of late discussing the inevitable public pension crisis that will eventually wreak havoc on global financial markets.  And while the scale of the public pension underfunding is unprecedented, with estimates ranging from $3 - $8 trillion, there is another taxpayer-funded retirement benefit that has been promised to union workers over the years that puts pensions to shame...at least on a percentage funded basis.