United States

Over one year ago, when the "conventional wisdom" punditry was dreaming up scenarios in which the Fed could somehow hike rates to 3% and in some magical world where cause and effect are flipped, push the economy to grow at a comparable rate we said that not only is the Fed's tightening plan going to be aborted as it represents "policy error" and tightening in the middle of a global recession, but it will result in the Fed ultimately cutting rates back to zero and then, to negative.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Well, they got that right. Detecting that “parts of the U.S. jobs report for January seem fishy”, MarketWatch offered this pictorial summary:

Exclusive: After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni “allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe…

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Submitted by Pam Martens and Russ Martens via WallStreetOnParade.com,

Last night ABC began its two-part series on the Bernie Madoff fraud. Viewers will be reminded about how investment expert, Harry Markopolos, wrote detailed letters to the SEC for years, raising red flags that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme – only to be ignored by the SEC as Madoff fleeced more and more victims out of their life savings.