Its Shanghai-based New Development Bank (NDB) represents the beginning of a significant challenge to predatory Western financial institutions – the IMF, World Bank and other loan shark lenders of last resort. The IMF was established to stabilize exchange rates linked to the dollar and bridge temporary payment imbalances. The World Bank’s mandate was to provide credit to war-torn developing countries. …
Donald Trump Is Fox News Incarnate. Why Republicans can’t disown their presidential frontrunner By Elspeth Reeve
Several media companies are struggling with how to deal with Donald Trump. He can’t be ignored on ideological grounds—many actual elected Republicans have said far worse things about undocumented immigrants. He can’t be ignored because of paperwork, because for once he filed with the Federal Elections Commission. So now some news outlets, from The Huffington Post to The Wall Street …
Coincidence Disorder Reaching Epidemic Levels – Levi Quackenboss
Parents of disabled children, desperate to blame someone for their bad genetics or inexplicable acts of God, have taken to social media in recent years as a “vocal minority” to blame their woes on life-saving measures whose side effects we all know are exceedingly rare: vaccines. As much as our hearts break for these parents raising non-verbal autistic children in …
Social Security: What Would Happen If the Trust Funds Ran Out? – Bruce Webb
Almost everyone who addresses this question assumes that the answer is pretty simple: if either of the Social Security Trust Funds goes to zero than benefits will automatically drop from ‘Scheduled’ to ‘Payable’ which translates to a 22-25% overnight cut depending on which Trust Fund we are talking about. But I had an interesting conversation with Andrew Biggs some years …
World’s Oceans Could Rise Higher, Sooner, Faster Than Most Thought Possible – Jon Queally
If a new scientific paper is proven accurate, the international target of limiting global temperatures to a 2°C rise this century will not be nearly enough to prevent catastrophic melting of ice sheets that would raise sea levels much higher and much faster than previously thought possible. “Parts of [our coastal cities] would still be sticking above the water, but …
For Love or Profit? The Different Worlds of the Pope and the President – Scott Klinger
President Obama is desperate to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, marshalling most Republicans and some Democrats last month to narrowly push through a pact that was earlier defeated in the House. Pope Francis is eager to save the earth, “our common home” from unbridled economic activity that the TPP would sanction and bless. On June 18, as the …
Governments Worldwide Will Crash the First Week of October … According to 2 Financial Forecasters by WashingtonsBlog
Two well-known financial forecasters claim that virtually all governments worldwide will be hit with a gigantic economic crisis in the first week of October 2015. Martin Armstrong is a controversial market analyst who correctly predicted the 1987 crash, the top of the Japanese market, and many other market events … more or less to the day. Many market timers think …
The Violence of Police Politics Posted By Steve Martinot
Insofar as the state, and the prison administration, know that solitary confinement drives people insane through isolation and torture, its use signifies that the state desires this outcome. That is a political desire, a desire to do irrevocable damage to people. It happens silently, as punishment for thinking autonomously, for self-respect against the violence of imprisonment, as a political stance. …
Which Advanced Country Has the Most Climate Sceptics? Hint: It’s Not the United States By Graham Readfearn
It’s not necessarily a competition you should be particularly keen to win, but which country in the world has the most climate change “sceptics”? Most people would probably hazard a guess at the United States, what with its preponderance of climate science denialist think tanks, conservative television and radio hosts and politicians who think it’s all a hoax. But a new study …
Private Health Care as an Act of Terrorism – Paul Buchheit
The FBI defines terrorism as “Acts dangerous to human life…intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” Much of the behavior of our current health care system meets that definition. The facts show intention on the part of corporations to intimidate the population by using market strategies to charge whatever they like for their medical products and services, and an effort to coerce the public into accepting the current system …

