Social Issues

Even as so-called 'sanctuary cities' around the country ramp up their efforts to thwart the Trump administration on enforcing immigration laws, despite the risk of losing their federal subsidies, arrests of illegal immigrants spiked 33% YoY in the first 52 days of Trump's presidency. 

Of course, for the Washington Post, such a spike in the enforcement of federal laws is highly disturbing and perhaps even a direct attack on the rights of sexual assault victims.  

Authored by Derek Hunter via DailyCaller.com,

Wellesley College made news last month when professors declared “speakers with ‘objectionable’ views are not only offensive to students, but actually diminish their liberty.” Now, the student newspaper at the elite private college has taken it a step further – justifying violence against anyone who “either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs” to accepted progressive norms, saying “then hostility may be warranted.”

Via Disobedient Media

Japan's demographic "time-bomb" has been widely documented in recent years: as we discussed most recently in February, as troubling as Japan's deflationary economic quagmire is, the biggest threat facing Japan has little to do with its balance sheet and everything to do with its demographics, for the simple reason that not only is Japan's population the oldest it has ever been, as well as the oldest on average in the entire world, but is now also officially shrinking.

Via Global Macro Monitor blog,

We have been busy crunching some very interesting data on pension funds from the most recent Federal Reserve’s,  Flow of Funds Accounts.    Check out the charts below.

Interestingly,  the last time Private and State & Local Government Pensions were fully funded was at the end of the stock market bubble in 2000.  Pensions were 25 percent overfunded in 1999.