Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via The Daily Reckoning,
This is the reality: the American Dream is now reserved for the top 0.5%, with some shreds falling to the top 5% who are tasked with generating a credible illusion of prosperity for the bottom 95%.
The question about who still has access to the American Dream is starkly answered by this disturbing chart:
A rare blackout exercise and mass evacuation drill took place in North Korea last week according to NK News, citing "multiple sources." The wartime preparations were not visible in Pyongyang, but were seen in “secondary, tertiary cities and towns” on the eastern coast of the country.
Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s Treasury Secretary, in his first “Report on the Public Credit” in 1790,
put forth the concepts of “assumption” and “redemption.”
He argued that the federal government should assume the Revolutionary War debt
and pay those debts at “face value” in full to the bearers of such debt on demand.
In order to redeem the $75 million of bonds, Hamilton promoted the creation of a “sinking fund”
that would pay off five percent of the bonds annually.
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Sometimes it is possible to read or view something that completely changes the way one looks at things. I had that experience last week when I read an article at Lobelog entitled “A Plea for Common Sense on Missile Defense,” written by Joe Cirincione, a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee who now heads the Ploughshares Fund, which is a Washington DC based global foundation that seeks to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Just under a year ago, US home prices finally surpassed their prior all time highs, one decade after the 2006 bubble...
... and haven't looked back since. Which, all else equal, would be great news for America, where the bulk of middle-class wealth is not in the stock market contrary to conventional wisdom, but in its biggest, and most illiquid asset-cum-investment: one's home.