Social Issues

Confirming the strong housing data reported earlier by Case-Shiller which showed the fastest pace of home price appreciation since 2014, moments ago the Census reported that New Home Sales rose 5.8% in March to an annual pace of 621K units, just shy of the highest print going back to January 2008, and solidly beating expectations of a 585K print. 

Unlike existing home sales, new home sales are benefiting from an increase in the supply of homes for sale. New home inventories increased 1.1% in March.

Authored by Alex Thomas via TheAntiMedia.org,

Late last week, lawyers representing the Cherokee Nation filed a lawsuit against major pharmaceutical companies, claiming they have pumped dangerous painkillers into Native American communities in Oklahoma. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the court filing and reported that the companies are accused of breaking laws by “failing to prevent the diversion of pain pills to the black market.”

Social Security, like America's trillions of dollars of underfunded public and private pensions, is nothing more than a ponzi scheme that will eventually fail.  Any system that relies on capital drawdowns to fund benefit obligations while the number of beneficiaries continues to soar is, by definition, a rather obvious ponzi.  That said, it's always easier to 'kick the can down the road' and hope for the best than to preemptively address the real problems that face retirees...after all, old people love to vote and taking away their retirement money is not a good way to earn their support.

In what may have been the biggest trolling of the United Nations in recent history, Saudi Arabia was elected via secret ballot in the UN Economic and Social Council to the 45-member UN Commission on the Status of Women last week. According to Reuters, twelve other countries were also elected by the council in Geneva to serve for a four-year term, ending in 2022: Algeria, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Iraq, Japan, South Korea, Turkmenistan, Ecuador, Haiti and Nicaragua.

When future historians look back at the beginning of the 21st century, they’ll note that we grappled with many big issues. They’ll write about the battle between nationalism and globalism, soaring global debt, a dysfunctional healthcare system, societal concerns around automation and AI, and pushback on immigration. They will also note the growing number of populist leaders in Western democracies, ranging from Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump.