STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS Showing 3451 - 10 of 10
Illinois Runs Out of Money as Gold Rises
October 16, 2015
In our other article today, we pointed out that the US Federal Reserve wasn't just wrestling with rate hikes but was facing a bigger challenge because people were gradually losing faith in the monetary system that the Fed represents. Within this context, Illino ...
Why British MPs May Support Legal Cannabis
October 15, 2015
The proverbial tide may be turning in Britain when it comes to legalization of cannabis. A government study has come to the conclusion that legalizing cannabis would be a tax windfall and also save £200m a year in various enforcement costs. The pressure is app ...
Simon Black Says You Need a Second Passport Now
October 15, 2015
Sovereign Man's Simon Black has been writing and distributing "case studies" focused on freedom issues and providing solutions for those who want to take action on a variety of topics. This analysis will focus on the benefits of a second passport. Black's case ...
Peter Schiff Says to Arbitrage the Fed
October 14, 2015
This is a longish article, but it has one basic point – a significant one worth repeating. The point is that the market has already "priced in" a rate hike. And it is Peter Schiff's belief that the market is wrong, and that investors can take advantage of tha ...
Is Gary North an Economic and Internet Optimist?
October 14, 2015
Our favorite economic curmudgeon – Gary North – is back with an insightful debunking of Matt Drudge's fears regarding the Internet and the recently agreed-upon TPP trade treaty, which contains a number of bad elements including a loony strengthening of copy ...
Technocratic Favoritism Versus Commodity Prices
October 13, 2015
Jim Rogers is usually bullish on commodities but this article asks if Rogers was wrong. We've been lucky enough to interview Rogers numerous times and we understand his bullishness. But read Rogers closely and you will see that his analysis includes factors oth ...
Ron Paul on the Cognitive Dissonance of the Political Class
October 13, 2015
This is a very good point that Ron Paul is making. The horrible tragedy in Afghanistan – where US pilots bombed a hospital and killed some 22 patients and doctors – was not even the subject of a formal apology when it happened. Contrast this reaction to the ...
The Incredible, Diminishing, Endlessly Discussed Rate Hike
October 12, 2015
Fischer, Janet Yellen and the rest of the Federal Reserve gang ought to print placards that say, "rate hike coming," as that way they wouldn't have to repeat themselves so much. However, here's a thought: There may be a method to the "madness" of constant delay ...
The Real Estate Bubble That Ate the World
October 12, 2015
When we think of real estate bubbles, we often think of Manhattan and London, because that's where the most egregious bubbles often emerge. We are informed by the media, as well, that these areas are most "in demand." And this perspective is fueled by reporting ...
Richard Ebeling: Monetary Central Planning and the State
October 11, 2015
The world has been slowly moving away from the idea and practice of direct government central planning after the disasters and corruption experienced and observed in Soviet-style socialist regimes in the twentieth century. But one legacy of the central planning ...
Let's Get This Show on the Road
October 10, 2015
Hello, my friends. Over the past few months I've been actively involved in several private business initiatives, which have and will continue to occupy the majority of my time and focus, but now I'll also be appearing in these pages regularly once again. As I w ...
Slave Labor in America
October 09, 2015
Abraham Lincoln, while no friend of liberty in other respects, at least ended slavery in the American South. That was a century and a half ago. Now another form of slave labor has become common. We don't see it or think about it because it hides behind prison w ...
No More 'Free Trade' Treaties: It's Time for Genuine Free Trade
October 09, 2015
It is erroneous to believe that free traders have been historically in favor of free trade agreements between governments. Paradoxically, the opposite is true. Curiously, many laissez-faire advocates fall into the government-made trap by supporting "free-trade" ...
Stealing Elections the High-Tech Way
October 08, 2015
After the many high-profile hacking incidents the last two years, it should be clear to all that virtually no automated system is intrusion-proof. Nothing can stop a highly motivated pirate who wants inside your system. What motivates the pirates? To date it ha ...
Gun Control and the Chimera of Perfect Security
October 08, 2015
Another nutcase has shot up a college again, killing nine people, before turning his gun on himself, as so many mass murderers are wont to do. As with most of these mass murders, everyone seems to have a theory as to why the killer did what he did. Every enviro ...
Survey Says: Americans Trust No One
October 07, 2015
The Gallup Organization goes to great lengths to tell us what we already know. Their latest national polling, for instance, says "Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Historical Low." The greater surprise is the other side of the coin. Some 40% of Americans thi ...
‘Neutralizing’ John Lennon: One Man Against the ‘Monster’
October 07, 2015
John Lennon, born 75 years ago on October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon. He was also a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare t ...
A Tale of Two Killings
October 06, 2015
If the local sheriff had his way, none of us would know that Chris Harper Mercer was the one who killed nine people and then himself at an Oregon community college. The sheriff thinks putting the name in print or saying it aloud somehow glorifies Mercer's actio ...
Time to End Monetary Central Planning
October 06, 2015
Editor's Note: Dr. Richard Ebeling's latest book, Monetary Central Planning and the State, published by the Future of Freedom Foundation, is now available. The 228-page digital book is available for Kindle. … There is no way to describe current Federal Reser ...
Secret Service Can't Keep Secrets
October 05, 2015
The U.S. Secret Service looks more like a rogue agency every day. Between agents partying with prostitutes, others drunkenly driving through White House gates and yet others leaving the mansion's front door unlocked, it's fair to wonder when they will "accident ...
I Wish Nobody Was Bombing Syria
October 05, 2015
The US regime change policy for Syria has been a catastrophe. More than 200,000 killed and an entire country reduced to rubble at least partly because President Obama decided that "Assad has lost his legitimacy." How is it that the president of a country 6,000 ...
The Menace of Egalitarianism
October 05, 2015
A sharp Martian visiting Earth would make two observations about the United States – one true, the other only superficially so. On the basis of its ceaseless exercises in self-congratulation, the US appears to him to be a place where free thought is encourage ...
Stolen Files – 'Thieves Emporium' 13
October 04, 2015
Synopsis: In her search for her missing husband, Fawn has found that a stolen file on him is for sale in the Thieves Emporium. Gathering all the information she can on it, as well as other files like it that are also for sale, she asks a friend (Nairobi) who ru ...
'Production Versus Plunder' Part 27 – The Great Common Law
October 03, 2015
A great problem of our era is that law no longer guarantees justice, or even gets terribly close to it. Our law is far removed from its original roots, where it was produced by average people, for their own needs. Once taken over by rulership, law becomes merel ...
Generals Manipulate Media, Media Complies
October 02, 2015
When top generals talk about protecting military secrets, the average citizen will think some important subject must be at stake: troop movements, weapons capabilities, intelligence sources and the like. The public presumes its generals are men and women of int ...
The Coming Corporate Crime Wave
October 02, 2015
In a recent appearance before Congress, Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates declared that the US Department of Justice is going to ratchet up its prosecution of individuals employed in corporations as part of a larger push against “white collar crime ...
Planned Parenthood, Social Peace and the Libertarian Approach
October 02, 2015
The controversy raging over Planned Parenthood is one of the most acrimonious public discussions in recent memory. While the immediate issue concerns the disposition of fetal tissue after abortion (pregnant women can have tissue donated for medical research), t ...
Orwellian UN Picks a Surprising Human Rights Judge
October 01, 2015
To the so-called neoconservative advocates of "realistic" foreign policy, Israel can do no wrong and Iran can do no right. What do they think about Saudi Arabia? Mostly they pretend it doesn't exist. This saves them from having to explain how Saudi Arabia is a ...
How Many Bailouts Will Obamacare Receive Before It's Scrapped Entirely?
October 01, 2015
As state governments continue to buckle under the weight of skyrocketing insurance claims, one has to wonder just how long the Obamacare charade can continue. A New York Times article from July of this year reports that the new health insurance customers, benef ...
District Attorneys Gone Prison-Happy
September 30, 2015
U.S. prisons are stuffed to the rafters, often with non-violent offenders. By all kinds of measures, we incarcerate far more people than most of the world. Why? The standard assumption blames aggressive drug law enforcement and mandatory sentencing laws. New re ...
‘Minority Report’ Is 40 Years Ahead of Schedule: The Fictional World Has Become Reality
September 30, 2015
We are a scant 40 years away from the futuristic world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT team ...
Pentagon-Protected Pedophiles
September 29, 2015
That evil acts occur when nations go to war is no surprise. Soldiers arrive already expecting it, their leaders having described the enemy as vermin worthy of death. What some American troops found in Afghanistan is different. It was not an evil they brought wi ...
Crony Capitalism the Cause of Society's Problems
September 29, 2015
Since the economic downturn of 2008, the critics of capitalism have redoubled their efforts to persuade the American people and many others around the world that the system of individual freedom and free enterprise has failed. These critics have insisted that i ...
Obama Deifies American Hegemony
September 29, 2015
Today is the 70th anniversary of the UN. It is not clear how much good the UN has done. Some UN Blue Helmet peacekeeping operations had limited success. But mainly Washington has used the UN for war, such as the Korean War and Washington's Cold War against the ...
The Age of Conditional Ownership
September 28, 2015
"After all, it's their car," says the author of today's excerpt. This is incorrect. No one "owns" his or her car, if ownership means the right to do what you want with the object you own. What we really have is a sort of long-term conditional lease. The so-call ...
Congress and the Fed Refuse to Learn From Their Mistakes
September 28, 2015
This month marks the seventh anniversary of the bursting of the housing bubble and the subsequent economic meltdown. The mood in Congress following the meltdown resembled the panicked atmosphere that followed the September 11th attacks. As was the case after Se ...
'Thieves Emporium': Part 12 – FEMA Death Certificates
September 27, 2015
Synopsis: Nairobi Bombay, a blogger for an anonymous Internet site, is investigating reports that unusually large numbers of people are dying in the new homeless camps. Meanwhile, Dancing Fawn also uses anonymous Internet links in an attempt to track down her m ...
'Production Versus Plunder' Part 26 – The Natural Progress of Things
September 26, 2015
"The natural progress of things," Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground." Today we'll see how this process began in Europe, and one of the first steps in the evolution of European law. THE GUILDS Medieval guilds ...
The Pope without a Country
September 25, 2015
We do not know what Pope Francis and President Obama discussed during their 45-minute private Oval Office meeting this week. It would be nice if he heard Obama's confession, but they would likely have needed more time. Their conversation, whatever it was, will ...
The Economics of Hillary Clinton
September 25, 2015
In a recent Labor Day speech to union workers in Illinois, Hillary Clinton declared that if she is elected president of the United States, she would make sure that “some employers go to jail for wage theft and all the other abuses they engage in.” Her incen ...
Innovation is No Excuse!
September 24, 2015
Bitcoin promoters who long for recognition got their wish last week. It is not an official currency, nor is it likely to become one. The cryptocurrency is an official commodity, though. Whether this is good news remains to be seen. The designation resulted from ...
Canine Lives Matter
September 24, 2015
A seven-year old story that occurred in Prince George's County, Maryland, has stuck in my mind more firmly than any other as an example of the indiscriminate barbarism that can happen at the hands of the police state's knuckle-draggers. The story is this: A pa ...
Breaking News: Governments Lie!
September 23, 2015
The story we excerpt today is almost two years old. The topic, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, is interesting but what it reveals about governmental deception is even more so. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post obtained top-secret documents detailing CIA drone ...
The Crisis of the Now: Distracted and Diverted from the Ever-Encroaching Police State
September 23, 2015
Caught up in the spectacle of the forthcoming 2016 presidential elections, Americans (never very good when it comes to long-term memory) have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over militarized police, police shootings of unarmed citizens, asse ...
Corporate Democracy Doesn't Work, Either
September 22, 2015
We all know that the various forms of democratic governance don't work nearly as well as advertised. Representatives usually turn corrupt in short order, no matter how the people select them. They devolve into oligarchy under a democratic façade. The same is t ...
Low Interest Rates Cannot Perpetuate a House of Cards
September 22, 2015
When is the price of some marketable good or service at or near zero? When either the supply of it is so plentiful that virtually any demand, no matter how great, can be satisfied or when no matter how large or small the supply of it may be, people's demand for ...
Texas Police Are Alarmingly Sensitive
September 21, 2015
Last week's much-publicized and completely unnecessary arrest of young Ahmed Mohamed brought to light an alarmingly (pun intended) broad Texas law against so-called "hoax bombs." The statute is an open invitation for police to detain anyone for anything. In Tex ...
Blame America? No, Blame Neocons!
September 21, 2015
Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union "all America's fault"? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is i ...
'Thieves Emporium': Part 11 – The Emporium
September 20, 2015
Synopsis: Dancing Fawn, an abandoned mother with few options, has discovered a little piece of cyberspace where all communications are anonymous and untraceable. After setting up a business there, she decides to explore a bit and maybe find out why the place is ...
'Production Versus Plunder' Part 25 – Europeans See to It Themselves
September 19, 2015
It is a striking fact that as central power increases, human initiative decreases. (Regulation forbids adaptation.) When private actions are punished, fewer of them are seen. Individual initiative, however, stands at the base of human progress. We need more of ...
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