Disaster Is Inevitable When The Two Decade-Old Stock Bubble Bursts

Six years after the Global Financial Crisis, the U.S. stock market continues to soar to new heights with nary a pullback or correction. In this piece, I will explain why the stock market is experiencing a new bubble that is actually another wave of the bubble that has existed since the mid-1990s.
A two-decade old bubble? Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Most people will consider this assertion preposterous, but the facts don’t lie. Though the U.S. stock market has been experiencing a bubble for two decades, it will not last forever. I believe that the ultimate popping of this bubble will have terrifying consequences for both investors and the global economy that is tied so closely to the stock market.
The SP500 stock index has more than tripled since its low in 2009, but that doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods. On the contrary, this is the calm before the storm.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2015/04/05/disaster-is-inevitable-when-the-two-decade-old-stock-bubble-bursts/?utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix 

Hillary Clinton Makes It Hard to Follow the Money

One way to evaluate presidential candidates is to follow the money. To whom is a politician beholden? To what extent are her personal financial interests at odds with the public interest? Which moneyed groups is he unlikely to flout?
Republicans and Democrats have their respective (if sometimes overlapping) fundraising bases. Very rich individuals sometimes support a given candidate. And then there's Hillary Clinton, whose relationship to money is even more complicated.
Her family's foundation is one complicating factor. "The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration," the Washington Post reported last month.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/hillary-clinton-makes-it-hard-to-follow-the-money/388988/ 

We Send Teachers to Prison for Rigging the Numbers, Why Not Bankers?

The New York Times ran the story on April Fools’ Day of a jury convicting educators of gaming the test numbers and lying about their actions to investigators.

ATLANTA — In a dramatic conclusion to what has been described as the largest cheating scandal in the nation’s history, a jury here on Wednesday convicted 11 educators for their roles in a standardized test cheating scandal that tarnished a major school district’s reputation and raised broader questions about the role of high-stakes testing in American schools.

On their eighth day of deliberations, the jurors convicted 11 of the 12 defendants of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. Many of the defendants — a mixture of Atlanta public school teachers, testing coordinators and administrators — were also convicted of other charges, such as making false statements, that could add years to their sentences.

This was complicated trial that took six months to present and required eight days of jury deliberations. It was a major commitment of investigative and prosecutorial resources. But it was not investigated and prosecuted by the FBI and AUSAs, but by state and local officials. In addition to the trial success, the prosecutors secured 21 guilty pleas.

Atlanta’s public schools, of course, did not engage in “the largest cheating scandal in the nation’s history.” The big banks’ cheating scandals left the Atlanta educators in the dust.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/04/bill-black-send-teachers-prison-rigging-numbers-not-bankers.html

Marxists and Crony Capitalists Driving the Information Highway Bus

By the time self-acclaimed whistleblower Edward Snowden blew the cover on the National Security Agency (NSA) forever more known as ‘Spies are Us’, it was already way too late for the privacy of online online private citizens.

Privacy, like commonsense and government altruism, doesn’t live here anymore.

Before NSA, we were already big-time data-based with every nuance and details of our private lives spied upon and standby stored by Google, FaceBook and other unsavory social networks on the take.

Blowback from the Snowden exposed NSA has über dominated the Big Brother spydom we’ve been talking about ever since.  Public outrage was guaranteed mostly because the NSA is a billion dollar government agency.

Little did we know when Snowden dropped his NSA bombshell that the IRS was spying on American citizens too, especially TEA Party members that the current administration regards as “bigoted”,  “bible-thumping””, “racist” dissidents.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/70890

Robert Menendez: 'I Am Outraged' Over Federal Corruption Charges

A 14-count indictment of corruption charges doesn't faze Sen. Robert Menendez.

Entering a press conference Wednesday to loud applause and shouts of support, the New Jersey Democrat said he's "angry" at the charges leveled against him Wednesday by the Justice Department, calling investigators "dead wrong."

"I am outraged that prosecutors at the Justice Department were tricked into starting this investigation three years ago with false allegations by those who have a political motive to silence me," Menendez said. "I will not be silenced. I'm confident at the end of the day I will be vindicated and they will be exposed."

The Justice Department indicted Menendez on 14 federal corruption charges. The charges, including conspiracy and bribery, are linked to his relationship with longtime friend and donor Salomon Melgen, an ophthalmologist in Florida. He's accused of accepting gifts from Melgen, who also was charged, in exchange for political favors. Read more about what's in the 68-page indictment here. (It's a doozy.)

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/bob-menendez-i-am-outraged-over-federal-corruption-charges-20150401

A Tale of Two Budgets: Democratic Socialism vs. Capitalist Prosperity

Long gone are the days when former Alabama Governor George Wallace could say there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. As their recently budget proposals confirm, the two parties are hurtling in opposite directions at an accelerating pace.

President Obama’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year wants to increase federal spending over the next ten years by more than 75 percent, or $2.7 trillion, from $3.5 trillion in 2014 to a record smashing $6.165 trillion by 2025. He proposes to spend an all-time record $50 trillion over those ten years.

The Republican budget proposal developed by new House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price and adopted by the entire Republican House reduces spending growth over the ten years by $5.5 trillion. For the single year of 2025, President Obama actually proposes to spend over a trillion dollars more than Tom Price’s House budget does, and more than $7 trillion more over the next decade.

President Obama proposes in his budget to increase taxes by more than 80 percent from 2014 to 2025, or a whopping $1.8 trillion over the next ten years. Chairman Price proposes no tax increase at all over that period.


Read more at http://spectator.org/articles/62267/tale-two-budgets-democratic-socialism-vs-capitalist-prosperity

Our Impotent Congress

What exactly is the purpose of the separation of powers? Some two hundred and twenty-seven odd years ago, it was the security deposit we set down on republicanism. The division of authority in government, setting branches against one another in a healthy tug of war, all while being made to mind the inclination of the voter, was the safety valve of a healthy republic. No I’m not talking about democracy, which is really the overly lauded majoritarianism of rent-seekers and ideologues, but instead I’m speaking to the necessary requirements of republicanism. Republicanism is really the model for governmental efficiency, and the optimal scheme for protecting and enlarging the sphere of liberty and opportunity that all citizens can come to enjoy.

Congress has an important part to play in this republic, especially considering that the most direct outlet of republicanism is the expression of the people’s general will through their representatives, and that this representation is the only direct and legitimate method of checking the power of bureaucratic rent-seekers and executive-branch abusers.

F.H. Buckley, an academic from the law school at George Mason University, the institution that has famously economized on costs while still hiring luminaries such as Gordon Tullock and Nobel laureate James Buchanan, wrote a masterpiece titled The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, warning of the enlargement of both the far-reaching powers of the administrative state and the aggrandizement of executive power. While there have been more than enough book reviews of Buckley’s more recent work, I use the book more as a commendable reference guide and legally-minded review of the recent abuses and trends of the anti-representative age.



http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/our_impotent_congress_.html