Politics Philip Weiss – Neoconservatives warm up to Trump (maybe they have an agenda)

The word has gone out that Donald Trump’s foreign policy is up for grabs, and the neoconservatives are humming with pleasure over this news, and lobbying quietly and not so quietly. You can hardly blame them for sucking up to Trump: neoconservatives are hawks who care about Israel more than anything, and it is vital to them to secure Israel’s …

Leid Stories—New WikiLeaks Docs Reveal Even More Clinton Foundation Turmoil and Money-Grubbing Scams—10.24.16

Charles Ortel, former Wall Street financial analyst and leading expert on the Clinton Foundation, discusses more evidence of what he calls “bright-line” fraud by the charity and its multiple affiliates. The new bombshell revelations are based on thousands of insider emails and related documents released by WikiLeaks over the weekend.

Charles Hugh Smith – A Psychiatric Diagnosis of the U.S. Market: Schizophrenic Disconnect From Reality

If you think a delusional market is healthy, it’s time for a psychiatric exam. What diagnosis would an experienced psychiatrist offer when presented with the bizarre behavior of the U.S. stock market? We assume that the wild mood swings of greed and fear are “normal” for markets devoted to short-term profit and speculation, but the stock market’s disconnect from reality is …

Deirdre Fulton – Report Shows US Corporate Tax Dodging Still Rampant, Still Legal

A new report released Tuesday reveals how “U.S.-based multinational corporations are allowed to play by a different set of rules than small and domestic businesses or individuals when it comes to paying taxes”—to the tune of more than $100 billion every year. The analysis from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Citizens for Tax Justice, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic …

HENRY GIROUX – Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance

What happens to a society when thinking is eviscerated and is disdained in favor of raw emotion? [1] What happens when political discourse functions as a bunker rather than a bridge? What happens when the spheres of morality and spirituality give way to the naked instrumentalism of a savage market rationality? What happens when time becomes a burden for most people and surviving becomes more crucial than trying to lead a life with dignity? What happens when domestic terrorism, disposability, and social death become the new signposts and defining features of a society? What happens to a social order ruled by an “economics of contempt” that blames the poor for their condition and wallows in a culture of shaming?[2] What happens when loneliness and isolation become the preferred modes of sociality? What happens to a polity when it retreats into private silos and is no longer able to connect personal suffering with larger social issues? What happens to thinking when a society is addicted to speed and over-stimulation? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers not just as an ideal but also as a reality, and individual and social agency become weaponized as part of the larger spectacle and matrix of violence?[3]

Deutsche Bank and the global financial crisis

Deutsche Bank’s shares plunged to record lows this week, sparking talk of a government bailout to avert a new financial crash. The turmoil surrounding Germany’s biggest bank demonstrates that all of the contradictions of the global financial system that led to the meltdown of 2008 are once again erupting. Now, however, these contradictions are fuelling and intersecting with economic and …

Nomi Prins – Madoff in the White House? How Trump’s Conflicts of Interest Could Become Ours

Imagine for a moment that it’s January 2009. Bernie Madoff, America’s poster-child fraudster, has yet to be caught. The 2007-2008 financial crisis never happened. The markets didn’t tank to reveal the emptiness beneath his schemes. We still don’t know what’s lurking in his tax returns because he’s never released them, but we know that he’s a billionaire, at least on …

Michael Snyder – Painful To Watch: This Is The Weakest U.S. Economic ‘Recovery’ Since 1949

Most of us have never witnessed an economic “recovery” this bad.  As you will see below, the average rate of economic growth since the last recession has been the lowest for any “recovery” in at least 67 years.  And unfortunately, the economy appears to be slowing down even more here in 2016.  On Friday, I talked about how the U.S. economy …