Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Paul Krugman: Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
Bill Moyers | Paul Krugman | 04/16/14

Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn’t a household name, although that may change with the English-language publication of his magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Yet his influence runs deep. It has become a commonplace to say that we are living in a second Gilded Age -- or, as Piketty likes to put it, a second Belle Époque -- defined by the incredible rise of the “one percent.” But it has only become a commonplace thanks to Piketty’s work. In particular, he and a few colleagues (notably Anthony Atkinson at Oxford and Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley) have pioneered statistical techniques that make it possible to track the concentration of income and wealth deep into the past -- back to the early 20th century for America and Britain, and all the way to the late eighteenth century for France. ... Read more

Georgia Governor Signs 'Unprecedented' Gun Rights Bill
HP | Paige Lavender | 04/23/14

House Bill 60, also known as The Safe Carry Protection Act, will allow licensed gun owners to carry their firearms into public places, including bars, nightclubs, schools, churches and government buildings. ...

... The National Rifle Association has praised the bill as "the most comprehensive pro-gun reform legislation introduced in recent state history" and called it a “historic victory for the second amendment.” ... Read more

Far More Asteroids Have Hit The Earth Than We Thought, Astronauts Say
HP | Benjamin Hart | 04/19/14

On Tuesday, the B612 Foundation, which is devoted to preventing the next deep impact, will present data from a nuclear-weapons test warning satellite showing that far more asteroids have hit earth in the past few years than previously thought, the organization announced on its website.

The data, collected from a nuclear missile detection system that picks up large blasts on earth, shows that since 2001, asteroids have caused 26 explosions on the scale of an atomic bomb. ... Read more

Far More Asteroids Have Hit The Earth Than We Thought (04/20/14) [1:58]

Flash Boys Has Been Dethroned At The Top Of The Amazon Bestseller List By Thomas Piketty's Capital "exposing capitalism's fatal flaw"
ZeroHedge | author | 04/23/14

And to think all it took was 147 years of 'capitalism' for the circle to be complete from Das Kapital's labor-vs-capital Marxist manifesto to Thomas Piketty's Capital "exposing capitalism's fatal flaw"

Hmmm. What could account for that? Could it be the last broadcast of the “Lawrence Welk Show?” Or the blast off of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon? Or could it have something to do with the mysterious D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of the plane he hijacked, never to be seen again? A timeline of 1971 offers so many possibilities. But, say, what about the possibility that it was in the middle of 1971, in August, that America closed the gold window at which it was supposed to redeem in specie dollars presented by foreign central banks. That was the default that ended the era of the Bretton Woods monetary system.

That’s the default that opened the age of fiat money. Or the era that President Nixon supposedly summed up in with Milton Friedman’s immortal words, “We’re all Keynesians now.” This is an age that has seen a sharp change in unemployment patterns. Before this date, unemployment was, by today’s standards, low. This was a pattern that held in Europe (these columns wrote about it in “George Soros’ Two Cents”) and in America (“Yellen’s Missing Jobs”). From 1947 to 1971, unemployment in America ran at the average rate of 4.7%; since 1971 the average unemployment rate has averaged 6.4%. Could this have been a factor in the soaring income inequality that also emerged in the age of fiat money? Read more