United States

Much like the historic run that nearly resulted in the collapse of the global financial system in 2009, home prices in the U.S. are once again looking more like an Amazon or Facebook stock price chart than a stable store of value that should probably grow roughly inline with overall inflation. 

And while these price gains are great news for the private equity firms that scooped up foreclosed homes after the last housing crisis, they're once again making it nearly impossible for the average American family to find affordable housing. 

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.