United States

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

"...we don’t need no stinkin’ facts..."

Background here.

By Kristen Breitweiser, one of the four 9/11 widows – known as the “Jersey Girls” – instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks. Follow Kristen Breitweiser on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kdbreitweiser.

There are still two to three days before the peak flooding - and damage - in Houston arrives, yet already Wall Street is trying to calculate how much the worst natural disaster in decades befalling the 4th largest American city will impact US GDP. Or rather boost it, because in two notes out late in the day Monday, one from Goldman and one from JPM, the authors come to two polar opposite conclusions: Goldman claims that the Houston natural disaster will reduce Q3 GDP by as much as 0.2%, while JPMorgan predicts that the "net impact on Q3 and Q4 GDP should be positive."

Authored by Craig Wilson via The Daily Reckoning,

Nomi Prins joined Sprott Money News for its Ask the Expert segment that covered the Federal Reserve system, Glass-Steagall reform and even the recent activity from the U.S Treasury.

Nomi Prins is a former Wall Street insider where she worked as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs among other major financial outlets. She is also a best-selling author who wrote All the Presidents’ Bankers, a book that examines the hidden alliances between Wall Street and Washington.

Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,

Some economists such as a Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman are of the view that if the US were to fall into a liquidity trap the US central bank should aggressively pump money and aggressively lower interest rates in order to lift the rate of inflation. This Krugman holds will pull the economy from the liquidity trap and will set the platform for an economic prosperity. In his New York Times article of January 11, 2012, he wrote,