Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

House Republicans move to contain fallout from Scalise, Grimm controversies
WashingtonPost | Ed O'Keefe | 12/30/14

Republican leaders moved forcefully on Tuesday to control the damage from a pair of scandals that have suddenly disrupted the party as it prepares to take full control on Capitol Hill.

In back-to-back moves, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pushed out Rep. Michael G. Grimm (R-N.Y.), who pleaded guilty last week to federal tax-evasion charges, and backed Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who acknowledged that he once ­addressed a white-supremacist group before coming to Congress. ... Read more

The 10 Best Night Sky Photos From The Department Of The Interior's Instagram Account
HP | author | date

We already know the Department of the Interior's Instagram game is on point, but these gorgeous shots of the night sky are something else.

The agency manages more than 500 million acres of public lands across the country -- more than enough space to find a perfect starscape. It may be winter, but there's still plenty to explore during the season at one of America's 59 national parks. ... For Great Photos

Turning Money Into Millions of Miniature Billboards
Ben & Jerry: All I want for Xmas... Is a Pocket Stamp! [1:42]
HP | Ben Cohen | 12/30/14

Today we're witnessing the desecration of our Constitution in the United States. Supreme Court rulings such as Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC have allowed corporations and billionaires to spend their fortunes jockeying for power in our political system. The effect has been astoundingly harmful to our country's commitment to fair elections and democratic values. It has resulted in a government that is more responsive to the wealthy elite than to the many.

We the people need to fight back. The Stamp Stampede is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit grassroots organization dedicated to a form of monetary jiu jitsu: using money to get big money out of politics. There are now over 30,000 Stampeders who have purchased rubber stamps in order to revamp their bills with messages like "Not To Be Used For Buying Elections" and "Corporations Are Not People." Every bill is seen by approximately 875 people per year. Together we're making millions of impressions to create a mass visual demonstration of support for reasonable reforms to take back our government. ... Read more
StampStampede.org website

The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room
Bloomberg | Liam Vaughan | 12/29/14

... An hour away by train, in London's financial district, the lake's owners ply their trade. Wharf Pool was purchased for about 250,000 pounds ($388,000) in 2012 by Richard Usher, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) trader at the center of a global investigation into corruption in the foreign-exchange market, and Andrew White, a currency trader at oil company BP Plc. (BP/)

With revenue of almost $400 billion last year and operations in about 80 countries, BP trades large quantities of currency each day. Traders at the company regularly received valuable information from counterparts at some of the world's biggest banks -- including tips about forthcoming trades, details of confidential client business and discussions of stop-losses, the trigger points for a flurry of buying or selling -- according to four traders with direct knowledge of the practice. ...

... "The Cartel" that was set up by Usher and included dealers at JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. (C), Barclays Plc and UBS Group AG. (UBSN). ... Read more

The $9 Trillion US Dollar Carry Trade Blew Up Oil, Russia, and Brazil... What's Next?
ZeroHedge | author | 12/29/14

As we have emphasized repeatedly, Oil's crash is being misinterpreted by many investors. When it comes to Oil, OPEC matters, as does Oil Shale, production cuts, geopolitical risk, etc. However, the reality is that all of these are minor issues against the MAIN STORY: the $9 TRILLION US Dollar carry trade.

Drilling for Oil, producing Oil, transporting Oil... all of these are extremely expensive processes. Which means... unless you have hundreds of millions (if not billions) of Dollars in cash lying around... you're going to have to borrow money.

Borrowing US Dollars is the equivalent of shorting the US DOLLAR. If the US Dollar rallies, then your debt becomes more and more expensive to finance on a relative basis. There is a lot of talk of the "Death of the Petrodollar," but for now, Oil is priced in US Dollars. In this scheme, a US Dollar rally is Oil negative.

Oil's collapse is predicated by one major event: the explosion of the US Dollar carry trade. Worldwide, there is over $9 TRILLION in borrowed US Dollars that has been ploughed into risk assets. Energy projects, particularly Oil Shale in the US, are one of the prime spots for this. But it is not the only one. Economies that are closely aligned with commodities (all of which are priced in US Dollars) are getting demolished too.

Just about everything will be hit as well. Most of the "recovery" of the last five years has been fueled by cheap borrowed Dollars. Now that the US Dollar has broken out of a multi-year range, you're going to see more and more "risk assets" (read: projects or investments fueled by borrowed Dollars) blow up. Oil is just the beginning, not a standalone story. ...

World's 400 Wealthiest Add $92 Billion In 2014 As Alibaba Surges
Bloomberg | Peter Newcomb | date

The richest people on Earth got richer in 2014, adding $92 billion to their collective fortune in the face of falling energy prices and geopolitical turmoil incited by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The net worth of the world's 400 wealthiest billionaires on Dec. 29 stood at $4.1 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the planet's richest.

The biggest gainer was Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), China's largest e-commerce company. Ma, a former English teacher who started the Hangzhou-based company in his apartment in 1999, added $25.1 billion to his fortune, riding a 56 percent surge in the company's shares since its September initial public offering. Ma, 50, with a $28.7 billion fortune, briefly passed Li Ka-shing as Asia's richest person. ... Read more

The Republican's Magical Mystery Tour (Starting Next Week)
HP | Robert Reich | 12/28/14

*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]

Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For
ZeroHedge | author | 12/12/14

Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. ... Read more

How US Banks Are Lying About Their European Exposure; Or How Bilateral Netting Ends With A Bang, Not A Whimper
ZeroHedge | author | old, 11/01/11

... Which explains why the banks are if not lying, then taking advantage of a gullible public to misrepresent their exposure by as much as a factor of ten!

Five banks -- JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Citigroup Inc. (C) -- write 97 percent of all credit-default swaps in the U.S., according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The five firms had total net exposure of $45 billion to the debt of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, according to disclosures the companies made at the end of the third quarter. Spokesmen for the five banks declined to comment for this story. ...

... With banks on both sides of the Atlantic using derivatives to hedge, potential losses aren’t being reduced, said Frederick Cannon, director of research at New York-based investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.:

“Risk isn’t going to evaporate through these trades,” Cannon said. “The big problem with all these gross exposures is counterparty risk. When the CDS is triggered due to default, will those counterparties be standing? If everybody is buying from each other, who’s ultimately going to pay for the losses?” ... Read more

The Destruction Of The Middle Class Is Nearing The Final Stages
ZeroHedge | author | 12/24/14

The events of the past few months seem astounding when taken in all at once. The plan to destroy the U.S. dollar and the American middle class is moving at an ever increasing speed.

Elizabeth Warren's real beef with Antonio Weiss: What her fight against him is actually about
Salon | David Dayen | 12/23/14

The nominee to a key Treasury position is part of a larger affront to America's middle class. Here's why

The Senate adjourned last week without dealing with the nomination of Antonio Weiss for Treasury Department undersecretary for domestic finance, the No. 3 position in the agency. Weiss' nomination has sparked a backlash among progressive Democrats, particularly Sen. Elizabeth Warren, largely because of his two-decade career making international merger deals at the boutique investment bank Lazard.

Warren believes that Weiss not does carry the necessary experience for the Treasury position, which oversees many elements of financial reform. She also believes that continually plucking top government officials out of Wall Street closes off alternative perspectives and ensures policies favorable to their interests ... Read more

That's rich! Why so many wealthy Americans think they're middle class
Salon | David Sarota | 12/21/14

By Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's reckoning, being a millionaire does not constitute living high above the ranks of ordinary people. Lew said last week that back when he was in the private sector enjoying six- and seven-figure pay packages, "My own compensation was never in the stratosphere."

Lew made that pronouncement as he sought to defend President Barack Obama's embattled Treasury undersecretary nominee Antonio Weiss from charges that as a financial executive, he is out of touch with the interests of regular people. Lew was seeking to cast his own lot with the ranks of ordinary Americans at a time of growing economic inequality. But in doing so, Lew shed light on a uniquely American phenomenon -- the tendency of extraordinarily rich people to cast themselves as everyday members of the middle class. ... Read more

"The nuts hated him": How the Bush dynasty -- and its evolution -- explains America
Salon | Jeff Smith | 12/20/14/span>

Jeb Bush's announcement of a presidential campaign exploratory committee -- and the gauntlet immediately thrown down by movement conservatives -- might sound familiar to longtime political observers. But this is not merely because of its similarity to obstacles overcome by John McCain or Mitt Romney. It's because the reception was nearly identical to that his own father received 51 years ago when he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Indeed, the modern Republican Party's evolution can be traced along the branches of the Bush family tree, as the ambitions of Bush men compelled a perpetual repositioning to appeal to the party's activist base. ... Read more

Russia Moves to Stave Off Panic Among Depositors After Rescuing Bank
Bloomberg | Ksenia Galouchko | 12/23/14

Lawmakers rushed legislation through the lower house of parliament today allowing the Deposit Insurance Agency to buy stakes in banks before they face bankruptcy proceedings to keep the system stable. While the ruble strengthened for a third day as the government told state-run exporters to sell foreign currency, it's still down 30 percent in three months. Standard & Poor's said today it may cut Russia's credit rating to junk in part because of concern about the banking system.

"Urgent measures are needed for the stabilization of the banking system to avoid a panic among the population and a run on banks," Vitaly Isakov, a money manager at Otkritie Asset Management in Moscow, said by e-mail. "There are fears about certain banks' ability to survive in the current situation." ... Read more

"Greatest Fools" Or "Smartest Men In The Room"?
ZeroHedge | author | 12/23/14

US Stocks are massively outperforming the rest of the world this year...

So why are expectations for GDP growth in the US now lower than the World...?

Oprah Interviews Beth Holloway: On Where Are They Now?
magazine | author | date

The man suspected of killing Natalee in 2005, Joran van der Sloot, has never been charged with her murder, but he is currently in prison for the 2010 murder of another young woman. Exactly five years to the day that Natalee disappeared (May 30), van der Sloot killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Peru hotel room, under circumstances eerily similar to Natalee's case.

... "At that time that that was all happening, Joran had reached out [to me]," Beth says. "He was trying to extort money out of me, trying to sell me Natalee's remains, which... just shocks the conscious." Van der Sloot allegedly had offered to reveal the location of the teen's remains in exchange for $250,000. ...

... Despite serving a 28-year prison sentence, van der Sloot got married to a Peruvian woman in a prison ceremony in July and became a father when his wife gave birth less than three months later. ... Read more
Oprah | Beth Holloway: Where Are They Now? (12/21/14) [4:16]

Natural Gas Suggests $33 Oil
ZeroHedge | author | 12/23/14

In the last couple of months, the sharp reversion in oil prices has certainly caught the world's attention. While the majority of economists and analysts continue to expect incorrectly that falling oil prices are a positive input to economic growth, the reality is that it is not. The negative impact to economic growth from the decline in oil prices are quite considerable when you consider that almost 40% of all the jobs created since 2009 have been in energy related industries. While the economists and analysts are hopeful for a sharp recovery in oil prices, the current decline in oil prices is nothing more than a return to historical normalcy. ... Read more

Belarus In Full-Blown Hyperinflation Panic: Blocks News, Online Stores; Bans All FX Trading For 2 Years
ZeroHedge | author | 12/22/14

"We have to do something with these Belarussian rubles," exclaims one Belarussian as she shops to turn worthless rubles (BYR) into physical assets. As AFP reports, The Belarussian currency was dragged down by the slide of the Russian ruble last week, leading authorities to impose draconian measures, forbid price increases even for imported goods, and warn people against panic. Now, however, in an effort to stem the flood of hyperinflating domestic prices, authorities have blocked online stores and news websites to stop the run on banks and shops as people scramble to secure their savings. One of the blocked news websites noted, it "looks like the authorities want to turn light panic over the fall of the Belarussian ruble into a real one," calling the blockages "December insanity." ... Read more

Bank Revenues Plummet 17% In October And November According To Citi
ZeroHedge | author | 12/22/14

It appears that the Q4 earnings season "bloodbath" predicted by harbinger Jefferies is right on track. According to Citigroup, Q4 is shaping up to be nothing short of a disaster for bank earnings. To wit: "Primary revenues decreased 17% yoy over Oct-Nov, notably impacted by weaker lending trends, per Dealogic industry data. Issuance revenues also declined while advisory revenues increased slightly. Loans revenues fell 61% yoy over Oct-Nov with leveraged finance particularly lower, given weaker market conditions [Note: market hit all time highs in both October and Novemer?!]. ... Read more
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Grow Your Way Out Of Debt? Don't Make Us Laugh...!
ZeroHedge | author | 12/22/14

The private sector -- the part that pays the bills -- is only $12 trillion. Total debt -- government, corporate and personal -- in the US is now $58 trillion (misreported yesterday as $59 trillion… but what's a trillion dollars between friends?). That's nearly five times the real economy that supports it. Assuming an annual interest rate of 2%, even if you could contain debt increases to 3% of GDP a year, the productive part of the economy would have to grow at 5% just to stay even. If the average interest rate were to rise to that level again -- and sooner or later it will -- it would take $3 trillion to service America's debt -- or one-quarter of private sector output. That can't happen. The wings would fall off first. ... Read more
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Fed (Federal Reserve) Delays Volcker Rule, Giving Wall Street Another Holiday Gift
HP | Zach Carter | 12/18/14

Christmas came early for Wall Street this year. The Federal Reserve on Thursday granted banks an extra year to comply with a key provision of the Volcker Rule, a move that gives financial lobbyists more time to kill the new regulation before it goes into effect.

The Volcker Rule is a key element of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that bans banks from engaging in proprietary trading -- speculative deals that are designed only to benefit the bank itself, rather than its clients. Thursday's move by the Fed gives banks an additional year to unwind investments in private equity firms, hedge funds and specialty securities projects. The central bank also said it plans to extend the deadline by another 12 months next year, which would give Wall Street a two-year reprieve through the 2016 presidential election. ... Read more

Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties -- Why Our Politics Is in Worse Shape Than We Thought
AlterNet | Walter Dean Burnham | 12/17/14

The way many pundits tell it, the Democratic debacle in the 2014 midterm elections sounds like a perfect storm of bad breaks. The President was aloof. The party's message was weak and muddled, in some races focused almost entirely on gender issues. Meanwhile record or near-record breaking waves of political money (for off year elections) cascaded through the political system while voter turnout plunged to levels last seen in 1942.

The real story is much uglier: 2014 was fundamentally a democratic debacle. It likely heralds a new stage in the disintegration of the American political order. Though Republicans jubilate now, the trend is probably as threatening to them as it is to the Democrats. The reason is stark: Increasing numbers of average Americans can no longer stomach voting for parties that only pretend to represent their interests. ... Read more

4 Signs the Arctic Is Getting Baked by Climate Change
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 12/17/14

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth.

If you're looking for the ground zero of climate change, head to the Arctic. Nowhere else on Earth is changing as quickly or as dramatically; air temperatures there are rising twice as fast as at lower latitudes. In the summer of 2012, Arctic sea ice reached the lowest level ever recorded, shrinking to less than half the area it occupied a few decades ago. Ice has rebounded somewhat in the two years since, but it is still on a downward trajectory of about 13 percent per decade and could disappear altogether in summer months by 2030. ... Read more

Paul Krugman Shows How Putin's Burst Economic Bubble Is the Essence of Crony Capitalism
AlterNet | Janet Allon | 12/19/14

Alas, "swaggering strongman" Putin is hitting a bit of a snag, writes Paul Krugman in his column today. "Mr. Putin never had the resources to back his swagger," Krugman says. "Russia has an economy roughly the same size as Brazil's. And, as we're now seeing, it's highly vulnerable to financial crisis -- a vulnerability that has a lot to do with the nature of the Putin regime."

The ruble started sliding in August when Putin sent troops to Ukraine and has started downright plunging in recent weeks, Krugman points out. "And all indications are that the Russian economy is heading for a nasty recession."

The global plunge in oil prices has not helped, but it does not explain the bottom dropping out of the ruble. So what's going on? ... Read more

*RingOfFire | Wall Street Thinks Elizabeth Warren Is The Devil (12/18/14) [1:49]

*ThomHartmann | Politics, Energy and the Fragile World Economy... (12/18/14) [32:19]

The Stampede is tens of thousands of Americans legally stamping messages on our Nation's currency to #GetMoneyOut of Politics. As more and more stamped money spreads, so will the movement to amend the Constitution.

The Stampede is tens of thousands of Americans legally stamping messages on our Nation's currency to #GetMoneyOut of Politics. (current) [2:59]

How Does It Work
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
How Does It Work.

Yes, It's Legal!

Many people assume that it's illegal to stamp or write on paper currency, but that's not the case. It's illegal to destroy paper currency or deface it so much that it's no longer recognizable and has to be taken out of circulation. But that's definitely not what we're up to. You can read what Ben Cohen's lawyer had to say about it, download it here. If your intent is to make the money unusable, it's illegal; but we want our bills to be used over and over again! Also, it is illegal to put a commercial advertisement on money. But we are putting political messages on the bills, not commercial advertisements. Because we all want these bills to stay in circulation and we're stamping to send a message about an issue that's important to us, it's legal!

Legal Statement by Ben Cohen's Lawyer.pdf

Handy Dandy Guide to Stamping
Handy Dandy Guide to Stamping.pdf

How Does It Work
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
How Does It Work.

OccupyGeorge.com website

*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

Jeb Bush's Reverse Midas Touch
ThinkProgress.org | Josh Israel | older,11/21/14

A "self-made man"

Eight years ago, Bush -- best known by the acronym "Jeb" -- departed from Florida's governor's mansion determined to boost his $1,288,000 net worth in the private sector. Since, he has made millions in corporate board fees, speaking gigs, and consulting payments -- but, much like his tenure before getting into public life, has done so with a series of companies that have found their way into legal or financial quagmires. ... Read more

Money-Hungry Lawmakers Undermine the Will of the People
HP | Ben Cohen | 12/16/14

Just when you thought the influence of big money in politics hit a fever pitch this year with our $4 billion midterm, our lawmakers snuck in a closing reminder that money reigns supreme in Washington.

Congress approved a $1.1 trillion end-of-year spending bill, known as "Cromnibus," full of handouts benefiting the super-rich. It was a glaring power grab by wealthy special interest groups and evidence of their corrupt grip on our lawmakers. ...

... The Stamp Stampede is nearly 30,000 citizens that are mad as hell and doing something about it. We're legally rubber stamping paper currency with messages like "Not To Be Used for Bribing Politicians" in order to create a mass visual demonstration of support for common-sense reform that ends the culture of corruption in Washington. With hundreds of new people joining every day, we're creating a petition on steroids to take back our democracy. ... Read more

Ben and Jerry Talk About Stamping Money Out of Politics (11/19/13) [2:58]

BenCohen Stampede Pledge (06/27/13) [0:41]

Russians Rush To Stores As Country Fears Bank Run
HP & AP | Nataliya Vasilyeva | 12/17/14

Russian consumers flocked to the stores Wednesday, frantically buying a range of big-ticket items to pre-empt the price rises kicked off by the staggering fall in the value of the ruble in recent days.

As the government considered ways to ease the selling pressure on the ruble, which has slid 15 percent in just two days and raised fears of a bank run, many Russians were buying cars and home appliances -- in some cases in record numbers -- before prices for these imported goods shoot higher. ... Read more

The Left Must Derail Hillary Clinton in the Primaries
BillMoyers & Harper | John R. MacArthur| 12/12/14

As a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016 appears ever more likely, it's a good moment to ask what alternative exists to lying down and letting such a campaign drown the body politic.

... What about the rest of us? Is it inevitable that we swallow the nomination of the neo-liberal Clinton, whose support of Bush's Iraq madness (not to mention Obama's Afghan and Libyan stupidity) and her husband's recklessly pro-"free trade," pro-banker, pro-deregulation politics ought to send reasonable liberals fleeing? Is it predestined that principled conservatives accept the anointment of the thoroughly fraudulent Jeb, whose support of his brother's interventionist folly, along with his own outrageous meddling as governor of Florida to "rescue" brain-dead Terri Schiavo, should give pause to even the greediest oil baron seeking patronage from a Republican administration? ... Read more

Russia's Economy Is In Big Trouble, Russia's Ruble Slides To Historic Lows
HP & AP | Nataliya Vasilyeva | 12/16/14

A massive interest rate hike by Russia's Central Bank on Tuesday failed to stem the selling pressure on the ruble, which slid another 20 percent to new historic lows.

The surprise Central Bank decision to raise the rate to 17 percent from 10.5 percent came in the middle of the night on Tuesday and represented a desperate attempt to prop up the troubled currency. The ruble has fallen sharply in recent weeks as a result of sliding oil prices as well as the pressure from Western sanctions over Russia's involvement in Ukraine. ... Read more

TRNN | Hudson Report: Russia Rejects South Steam Pipeline through Europe (12/15/14) [12:31]

Kevin Yoder MIA After Tucking Wall Street Bailout Into Government Spending Bill
HP | Jennifer Bendery | 12/15/14

For all the anger among progressives about a Wall Street bailout provision that made its way into the just-passed $1.1 trillion government spending bill, there's been little attention on the person who put it in there.

Yoder, a second-term congressman whose largest contributors are in the finance industry, introduced the provision last summer. It was literally written by Citigroup executives, but Yoder took their language and rolled it into an amendment to a spending bill in a House subcommittee meeting. It got swept into the year-end spending package because it "was within the scope of negotiations" on it, according to an Appropriations Committee aide.

The provision, which prompted a fiery speech by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), undoes a rule that prevents big banks from relying on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to bail them out if things go sour when they trade risky assets. The rule was put into place as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which overhauled the financial regulatory system after the 2007-2008 financial crisis stemming from banks making extremely risky bets and losing. The government had to bail them out with taxpayer money, and Yoder's provision paves the way for another possible bailout. ... Read more

Massive release of Fukushima radioactive waste being planned -- Gov't Official: I was overwhelmed by amount of contaminated water from reactors, we must dump it into ocean
ENENews | author | 12/13/14

NRA head signals massive release of tainted water to help decommission Fukushima site -- The head of Japan's nuclear watchdog said contaminated water stored at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant should be released into the ocean… Shunichi Tanaka, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, made the comment Dec. 12 after visiting the facility… "I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of tanks (holding water tainted with radioactive substances)," Tanaka told reporters, indicating they pose a danger to decommissioning work. "We have to dispose of the water… We also have to obtain the consent of local residents in carrying out the work, so we can somehow mitigate (the increase in tainted water)… While (the idea) may upset people, we must do our utmost to satisfy residents of Fukushima," Tanaka said, adding that the NRA would provide information to local residents based on continuing studies of radioactive elements in local waters. ... Read more

What's in That Huge, Lobbyist-Driven Spending Bill?
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 12/11/14

Last Sunday, Rebecca Shabad reported for The Hill that good government groups were "bracing for surprises in the massive government-funding bill" that must be passed this week in order to avoid a government shutdown. K Street lobbyists were drooling over the $1 trillion dollar budget authorization, and saw it as "a final chance… to find a vehicle for their priorities."

... The provision that's drawn the most criticism is a measure that would weaken the already watered-down Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. It's a proposal that, according to The New York Times, was essentially written by lobbyists for Citigroup and targets a central provision of Dodd-Frank that limits taxpayers' exposure by requiring banks to isolate some of their riskiest bets in business units that aren't insured by the federal government. The idea was to try to prevent Wall Street from making the kind of reckless trades that fueled the last crisis. ... Read more

The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States
HP |Miles Mogulescu | 12/13/14

Early Friday evening Sen. Elizabeth Warren took to the Senate floor and gave a plain-spoken, barn-burning speech that could make history and put her into serious contention to be the next President of the United States. ...

... "Democrats don't like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don't like Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street bailouts. And yet here we are, five years after Dodd-Frank with Congress on the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for the middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again" ... Read more

What the World Is Saying About the CIA Torture Report
Bill Moyers | author | 12/11/14

The Senate torture report shook up the Washington establishment. But it's an international story -- the CIA's network of black sites was spread around the world, from Thailand to Morocco. Here are some of the comments: ... Read more

Taper Tantrum 2.0: Emerging Currencies Are Crashing
ZeroHedge | author | 12/15/14

More bloodbath. Wherever we look today, things are not going well. While we have become used to day after day of Oil Producers' FX collapsing, today we see the tumble in Emerging Market FX rates begin to accelerate in a very Taper-Tantrum-esque manner. While the Ruble at 64 is grabbing headlines, Turkish Lira is utterly collapsing along with Indonesia and India overnight. Read more

Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits
RollingStones | Matt Taibbi | 12/13/14

Gosh, the Democrats are really pushing hard to save a key portion of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, aren't they? Like tigers, or Siamese fighting fish they battle! Thrilling to watch!

Oh, wait, that's what they aren't doing. Actually what we're watching in the "Cromnibus" budget fight, is a stage-managed surrender that was inevitable pretty much from the moment the ink began to dry on the so-called sweeping reform of Wall Street the Democrats passed years ago.

The dominant media narrative this past week has been that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, firmly saddled in her high horse, is trying to hold up the passage of the budget over a trifle. In reality, the so-called "Citigroup" provision to kill a rule designed to prevent future bailouts (so named because it was allegedly written by Citigroup lobbyists) is potentially quite an evil and destructive little thing. But the nitpicking counter-spin is already coming hot and heavy.

"It's a marginal regulation," said Patrick Brennan of the National Review, about the Dodd-Frank rule Warren wants to keep. Brennan bro-ishly dismissed "Liz" as an "indefatigable academic" who is "picking a fight that really can't be said to help or hurt the economy," a political fight that is "hardly a hill to die on."

Republicans like South Carolina Senator Linsey Graham derided Warren's gambit as an immature squabble and blasted Democrats in the House who followed her line of thinking. "Don't follow her lead," he said. "She's the problem." ... Read more

Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For
ZeroHedge | author | 12/12/14

Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. ... Read more

California Storm Hits South After Drenching North
HP & AP | Andrew Dalton | 12/12/14

A dangerous storm system blamed for two deaths in Oregon, thousands of power outages in Washington and flooded roadways in the San Francisco Bay Area pushed into Southern California on Friday, causing mudslides and evacuations.

A powerful squall line led the storm's pre-dawn charge, lashing the region with wind-driven rain. Rain fell at the rate of 1 to 2 inches an hour, triggering flash flooding, the National Weather Service said. The main front followed with rain falling at rates of a tenth to about a third of an inch per hour. ... Read more

Bill Moyers | John R. MacArthur of Harper's Magazine says: Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street (12/12/14) [25:25]

Who Controls the World: James B. Glattfelder at TED (11/28/12) [14:38]

VICE | The Architect of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Program (12/10/14) [25:00]

Democrats Revolt Against 'Wall Street Giveaway' In Deal To Prevent Government Shutdown
HP | Zach Carter | 12/10/14

Democrats on Wednesday raged against a government funding bill that would provide taxpayer subsidies to risky Wall Street derivatives trading. "The House of Representatives is about to show us the worst of government for the rich and powerful," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the Senate floor. She urged her colleagues not to support a "deal negotiated behind closed doors that slips in a provision that would let derivatives traders on Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out by the government when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system."

... "[It's] an awful invitation for another financial disaster," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, told reporters Wednesday. "A number of us are very concerned." ... Read more

How Wal-Mart Fabricated And Lied About Its "Strong" Chinese Sales For Years
ZeroHedge | author | 12/11/14

For many, if not most, companies and especially retailers, the great wildcard that is the "massive" Chinese market with the potential of hundreds of millions of buyers in the country's nascent middle class, has been a slam dunk when it comes to boosting stock prices. After all, what can go wrong? America's largest retailer was one of those hoping to capitalize on just this shareholder euphoria for Chinese exposure, and just like everyone else, it milked its Chinese exposure for many years. And then, unexpected everything did go wrong: as Bloomberg explains, "After years of heralding China as one of its best markets, Wal-Mart in August said its performance there was among the worst in its major countries." How is that possible? Read on to find out how Wal-Mart fabricated, lied and misled investors for years using every single trick in the book and then some. ... Read more

Washington's coming budget battles
BillMoyers & Robert Reich | Robert Reich | 12/09/14

Congress reaches deal for $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill
Reuters | David Lauder | 12/10/14

Congressional negotiators unveiled a $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill that aims to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Thursday and punts an immigration showdown between Republicans and President Barack Obama until February.

As the funding deadline loomed, Republicans successfully negotiated a number of policy provisions into the measure, including easing of regulations ranging from the environment to financial derivatives trading. ... Read more

20 Key Findings From the Senate Report on CIA Torture
BillMoyers | author | 12/10/14

After months of wrangling with intelligence officials, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of its 6,700-page report on the CIA's detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush.

The report paints a portrait of the CIA as an agency gone rogue. It, along with two private contractors, skirted congressional oversight by lying about the severity of the torture techniques being employed, and the value of the information that was gathered in the process. ...

Elizabeth Warren's Latest Wall Street Attack Was Her Boldest Yet
NewRepublic.com | David Dayen | 12/09/14

If anyone thought that Senator Elizabeth Warren would ease up on her battle with the White House over Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance nominee Antonio Weiss, they can put such thoughts to bed. In a speech today at the "Managing the Economy" conference in Washington organized by several financial reform coalitions, Warren made clear that her fight is about much more than one nominee at the Treasury Department. She crafted a direct challenge to three decades of bipartisan collusion between government and Wall Street, in a highly unusual manner for any politician, let alone one recently drafted into the Senate Democratic leadership. The Weiss affair has become secondary to this bigger competition for what principles will shape the Democratic Party, and what role Warren will play in it. ...

"These Are Astonishing Figures, Evidence Of A 1930s-Style Depression"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/10/14

What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56pc of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83pc of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another.

These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves.... Read more

With CIA Torture Report Set For Controversial Release, Washington Braces For Fallout
HP | Ali Watkins | 12/08/14

The White House confirmed Monday that a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's post-9/11 torture program would be released Tuesday, despite reports that some in the Obama administration had pressured the panel to delay the document's controversial release. ...

... Tuesday's release will mark the end, for now, of the bitterly fought battle over the document waged between the White House, its chief intelligence agency and the Senate panel. Even though the committee voted in April to declassify the report's summary, the public revelation was held up by protracted disputes over information that the White House and CIA wanted to keep secret, but that the Senate committee wanted to publicize. After months of tense negotiations, the two sides came to an agreement last week. ... Read more

Even The BIS Is Shocked At How Broken Markets Have Become
ZeroHedge | author | 12/08/14

... It started in June of 2013, when Jaime Caruana, certainly the most prominent doom and gloomer at the BIS (who also was Governor of the Bank of Spain from 2000 to 2007 when this happened) asked if "central banks [can] now really do "whatever it takes"? As each day goes by, it seems less and less likely... [seven] years have passed since the eruption of the global financial crisis, yet robust, self-sustaining, well balanced growth still eludes the global economy.... low-interest policies have made it easy for the private sector to postpone deleveraging, easy for the government to finance deficits, and easy for the authorities to delay needed reforms in the real economy and in the financial system. Overindebtedness is one of the major barriers on the path to growth after a financial crisis. Borrowing more year after year is not the cure...in some places it may be difficult to avoid an overall reduction in accommodation because some policies have clearly hit their limits." ... Read more

"Rectal Feeding," Threats to Children, and More: 16 Awful Abuses From the CIA Torture Report
MotherJones | Nick Baumann | 12/09/14

A new report from the Senate intelligence committee says the CIA pureed hummus and put it in a detainee's rectum.

On Tuesday morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary of its years-long investigation into the CIA's detention and interrogation program. President George W. Bush authorized the so-called "enhanced interrogation" program after the 9/11 attacks. The United States government this week has warned personnel in facilities abroad, including US embassies, to be ready in case protests erupt in response. The full report includes over 6,000 pages and 35,000 footnotes. You can read it here. Here are some of the lowlights: ... Read more

Citigroup: The Original Gangsta
TruthDig | Robert Scheer | older, 06/14/14

Japan's Recession Deepens as Election Looms for Abe: Economy
Bloomberg | Keiko Ujikane | 12/07/14

Japan's recession was deeper than initially estimated as company investment unexpectedly shrank, a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he campaigns for re-election on his economic credentials.

The economy contracted an annualized 1.9 percent in the July to September period from the previous quarter, weaker than the 1.6 percent drop reported in preliminary data. The result was also below every forecast in a Bloomberg News survey that showed a median 0.5 percent decrease. Read more

California Drought, High Temperatures Create Worst Conditions In 1,200 Years
Reuters & HP | author | 12/07/14

A combination of record high temperatures and sparse rainfall during California's three-year drought have produced the worst conditions in 1,200 years, according to a study accepted for publication by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The state has gone through numerous periods of dry weather, with as little or less rainfall as the past few years, but scientists looking at the cumulative effects of temperature, low precipitation and other factors said that it all adds up to the worst conditions in more than a millennium. ... Read more

Up Close and Personal With George W. Bush's Horrifying Legacy
TruthDig | Robert Scheer | older, 06/18/14

With Q3 Buybacks Surging, These Are The Top 20 Repurchasers Of Their Own Stock
ZeroHedge | author | 12/08/14

As it turns out our conclusion that it's all over was premature (with the Fed getting some breathing room thanks to desperate corner offices eager to pump up their CEO's equity-linked compensation), and as the just concluded Q3 earnings seasons confirms, what went down, promptly soared right back up, with stock repurchases in Q3 surging by 30% following the 30% drop in Q2, and nearly offsetting all the lost "corporate wealth creation" in the second quarter, with the total amount of stock repurchases by S&P 500 companies jumping from $112 billion to $145 billion, just shy of the Q1 record, and the second highest single quarter repurhcase tally going back to 2007, and before. ... Read more
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The Story Behind the Story of Those Huge Corporate Tax Cuts
BillMoyers | Joshua Holland | 12/03/14

Last week, Igor Volsky reported for Think Progress that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had struck a deal with House Republicans to give corporate America a massive tax giveaway just weeks after the midterm elections. The agreement, wrote Volsky, “would permanently extend relief for big multinational corporations without providing breaks for middle or lower-income families.” Writing in The Washington Post, Jared Bernstein, a former economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, called the package ”a dog’s breakfast of permanent tax breaks mostly for businesses that would add over $400 billion to the 10-year budget deficit without doing anything for low-income, working families.”

He wasn’t alone in panning the deal. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Volsky that the cuts would be “fiscally irresponsible.” The 10-year, $444 billion package includes a few provisions that were popular with Democrats, but would phase out existing tax credits for clean energy development. Mostly, it’s a boon for some of the top corporate tax-avoiders in America. Some 90 percent of the cuts would benefit their bottom lines. One of the biggest beneficiaries would be GE, which, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, claimed tax refunds of $3.1 billion on $27.5 billion in profits between 2008 and 2012. That means the company had a negative tax rate of 11 percent. Other big winners would include Wall Street financial firms, pharmaceutical companies and computer and Internet businesses. ... Read more

10 Corporate Tax Dodgers You Should Know About
BillMoyers | author | 05/29/14

	Bank of America - runs its business through more than 300 offshore tax-haven subsidiaries. It reported $17.2 billion in accumulated offshore profits in 2012. It would owe $4.3 billion in US taxes if these funds were brought back to the US.
	Citigroup - had $42.6 billion in foreign profits parked offshore in 2012 on which it paid no US taxes. It reported that it would owe $11.5 billion if it brings these funds back to the US. A significant chunk is being held in tax-haven countries.
	ExxonMobil - had a three-year federal income tax rate of just 15 percent. This gave the company a tax subsidy worth $6.2 billion from 2010-2012. It had $43 billion in offshore profits at the end of 2012, on which it paid no US taxes.
	FedEx - made $6 billion over the last three years and didn’t pay a dime in federal income taxes, in part because the tax code subsidized its purchase of new planes. This gave FedEx a huge tax subsidy worth $2.1 billion.
	General Electric - received a tax subsidy of nearly $29 billion over the last 11 years. While dodging paying its fair share of federal income taxes, GE pocketed $21.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts from Uncle Sam between 2006 and 2012.
	Honeywell - had profits of $5 billion from 2009 to 2012. Yet it paid only $50 million in federal income taxes for the period. Its tax rate was just 1 percent over the last four years. This gave it a huge tax subsidy worth $1.7 billion.
	Merck - had profits of $13.6 billion and paid $2.5 billion in federal income taxes from 2009 to 2012. While dodging its fair share of federal income taxes, it pocketed $8.7 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts from Uncle Sam between 2006 and 2012.
	Microsoft - saved $4.5 billion in federal income taxes from 2009 to 2011 by transferring profits to a subsidiary in the tax haven of Puerto Rico. It had $60.8 billion in profits stashed offshore in 2012 on which it paid no US taxes.
	Pfizer - paid no US income taxes from 2010 to 2012 while earning $43 billion worldwide. It did this in part by performing accounting acrobatics to shift its US profits offshore. It received $2.2 billion in federal tax refunds.
	Verizon - made $19.3 billion in US pretax profits from 2008 to 2012, yet didn’t pay any federal income taxes during the period. Instead, it got $535 million in tax rebates. Verizon’s effective federal income tax rate was negative 2.8 percent from 2008 to 2012.

http://thinkbynumbers.org

When one thinks about government welfare, the first thing that comes to mind is the proverbial welfare queen sitting atop her majestic throne of government cheese issuing a royal decree to her clamoring throngs of illegitimate babies that they may shut the hell up while she tries to watch Judge Judy. However, many politically well-connected corporations are also parasitically draining their share of fiscal blood from your paycheck before you ever see it. It's called corporate welfare. The intent here is to figure out which presents the greater burden to our federal budget, corporate or social welfare programs. ... Read more

STUDY: U.S. Spends $59 Billion on Social Welfare...$92 Billion on Corporate Welfare
wepartypatriots.com | author | 09/21/12

A recent blog post by Mike Sinn for Think by Numbers questions if the government spends more on social welfare or corporate welfare. The GOP has attempted to turn the political discussion surrounding the upcoming election into a debate about President Obama and social welfare, while progressives have done the same with Mitt Romney and corporate welfare. But who is right!? There have got to be...facts...haven't there!?

According to analyzed numbers from the year 2006, the government spends $59 billion (3% of its total budget) on social welfare and $92 billion (5% of total budget) on corporate welfare. Perhaps more interesting is that in 1996, when new welfare reforms were signed into law by President Bill Clinton, both caseloads AND child poverty significantly dropped, saving the government gobs of money: ... Read more

Anywhere But Here: Las Vegas and the Global Casino We Call Wall Street
BillMoyer | Rebecca Solnit | 12/02/14

... Lake Las Vegas, the subject of Michael Light's aerial photographs in Lake Las Vegas/Black Mountain, is such an explicitly European fantasy that a replica of Florence's famous Ponte Vecchio bridge crosses a stretch of its artificial lake, and the houses are mostly in the stucco-and-tile-roof mode called "Mediterranean." From near the earth you see into yards and houses, terra cotta roofs, pieces fitting together like a puzzle, tight to each other, despite the expanse all around, or you see the texture of the earth that has been groomed and scraped and graded into something you can drop a mansion onto. From a little ways higher, you see the layout of the streets, like a fingerprint pressed into the landscape, the whorls and cul-de-sacs of the curvilinear layouts beloved of developers. ... Read more

It's All Coming To An End, Bill Gross Warns
ZeroHedge | author | 12/04/14

Bill Gross, the legendary bond investor is absolutely spot on in the following paragraph from his latest, December, investment outlook:
How could they? How could policymakers have allowed so much debt to be created in the first place, and then failed to regulate their own system accordingly? How could they have thought that money printing and debt creation could create wealth instead of just more and more debt? How could fiscal authorities have stood by and attempted to balance budgets as opposed to borrowing cheaply and investing the proceeds in infrastructure and innovation? It has been a nursery rhyme experience for sure, but more than likely without a fairytale ending. ... Read more

The Next Big Climate Question: Will India Follow China?
NYTimes | Michael Greenstone | 12/02/14

For more than 20 years, international climate talks have been dominated by a schism between those who created the problem of climate change (largely the United States and nations of the European Union) and those who would greatly contribute to it moving forward (largely China and India). But as climate negotiators meet in Lima, Peru, this week and next, and news reports are full of gloomy predictions that the negotiations will produce little, there are increasing signs that this stalemate may have been broken. This emerging shift is due in large part to China and its decision to break ranks and join the United States in making commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ... Read more

Mikhail Gorbachev Blames American 'Triumphalism' For Bringing About A New Cold War
HP | Paul Vale | older 02/12/14

Mikhail Gorbachev has blamed America for bringing about a new Cold War, warning that "militarists" are pushing Europe to the brink of conflict by building fences around his country.

Speaking to the Russian state-owned news agency Tass on Monday, the 83-year-old former Soviet President said that "triumphalism" emanating from Washington had led to rising tensions between East and West, though he added there was still time to resolve the growing dispute before it led to direct conflict. ... Read more

Why Gorbachev Feels Betrayed By The Post-Cold War West
WorldPost & HP | Nathan Gardels | older, 11/07/14
Read more

Russia Recession Signs Mount as Central Bank Stems Ruble Losses
Bloomberg | Ksenia Galouchko | 12/03/14
Read more

6 Charts That Illustrate Vladimir Putin's World of Pain
Bloomberg | author | 12/03/14
Read more

Economist: I've Crunched the Numbers, and the American Dream Is Dead
AlterNet | Travis Gettys | 12/02/14

A California economics professor says he's crunched the numbers, and he has concluded that the American Dream is dead. Gregory Clark, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, found that social mobility had diminished significantly in the past 100 years.

"America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England or pre-industrial Sweden," Clark said. "That's the most difficult part of talking about social mobility, is because it is shattering people's dreams." ... Read more

Chomsky: Elites Have Forced America into a National Psychosis to Keep Us Embroiled in Imperial Wars
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 12/02/14

... A society in which this is the predominant voice can be maintained only through some form of national mobilization, which may range in its extent from, at the minimum, a commitment of substantial resources to a credible threat of force and violence.

Given the realities of international politics, this commitment can be maintained in the United States only by a form of national psychosis - a war against an enemy who appears in many guises: Kremlin bureaucrat, Asian peasant, Latin American student, and, no doubt, "urban guerrilla" at home. ... Read more

How Did the Gates of Hell Open in Vietnam?
AlterNet & TomDispatch.com | Jonathan Schell | 11/30/14

Now, in Kill Anything that Moves, Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were doing in Vietnam. The findings disclose an almost unspeakable truth. Meticulously piecing together newly released classified information, court-martial records, Pentagon reports, and firsthand interviews in Vietnam and the United States, as well as contemporaneous press accounts and secondary literature, Turse discovers that episodes of devastation, murder, massacre, rape, and torture once considered isolated atrocities were in fact the norm, adding up to a continuous stream of atrocity, unfolding, year after year, throughout that country.

It has been Turse's great achievement to see that, thanks to the special character of the war, its prime reality -- an accurate overall picture of what physically was occurring on the ground -- had never been assembled; that with imagination and years of dogged work this could be done; and that even a half-century after the beginning of the war it still should be done. Turse acknowledges that, even now, not enough is known to present this picture in statistical terms. To be sure, he offers plenty of numbers -- for instance the mind-boggling estimates that during the war there were some two million civilians killed and some five million wounded, that the United States flew 3.4 million aircraft sorties, and that it expended 30 billion pounds of munitions, releasing the equivalent in explosive force of 640 Hiroshima bombs. ... Read more and here

Inhofe's Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory: It's All About Barbra Streisand
magazine | author | date

The recent news on the front page of the New York Times was stark. As thousands of diplomats were gathering in Lima, Peru, to work on an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, scientists and climate-policy experts were warning: that it now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet's atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a large body of scientific research, that is the tipping point at which the world will be locked into a near-term future of drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels and widespread flooding--events that could harm the world's population and economy.

But with an effort under way in Lima to protect the difference, as the newspaper put it, "between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one," one fellow in Washington is readying himself to prevent any progress toward a climate accord: Sen. James Inhofe. The 80-year-old Republican from Oklahoma is one of the most notorious deniers of human-induced climate change. He has contended that God controls the Earth's climate, not homo sapiens, and he has quoted the Bible to make this point: "As long as the Earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night." And Inhofe, thanks to the recent elections, is in line to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans assume control of the Senate next month. He has vowed to do all he can to block regulations aimed at cutting emissions. ... Read more

52 Slow Cooker Recipes That You'll Never Want To Live Without
HP | Alison Spiegel | updated 12/02/14

It's the easiest, most effective way we know to draw out deep flavors and produce effortlessly succulent dishes, be they meat-heavy or completely meat-free. The time to get down with your slow cooker is now. Here are 52 recipes to try out: ... Read more

NOAA: 2014 is shaping up as hottest year on record
CNN | Shelby Lin Erdman | 11/30/14

The first ten months of 2014 have been the hottest since record keeping began more than 130 years ago, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That may be hard to believe for people in places like Buffalo, New York, which saw a record early snowfall this year. But NOAA says, despite the early bitter cold across parts of the United States in recent weeks, it's been a hot year so far for the Earth.

With two months left on the calendar, 2014 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record. ... Read more

The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels.

No Safe Place: How Cities Are Making it Illegal to Be Homeless
BillMoyers | author | older 08/13/14

It Costs $21,000 More to Ignore the Homeless Than It Does to Give Them a Home
BillMoyers | Scott Keyes | older 05/28/14

The Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets.

The study, conducted by Creative Housing Solutions, an Oklahoma-based consultant group, tracked public expenses accrued by 107 chronically homeless individuals in central Florida. These ranged from criminalization and incarceration costs to medical treatment and emergency room intakes that the patient was unable to afford.

Andrae Bailey, CEO of the commission that released the study, noted to the Orlando Sentinel that most chronically homeless people have a physical or mental disability, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. "These are not people who are just going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job," he said. "They're never going to get off the streets on their own."

There is a far cheaper option though: giving homeless people housing and supportive services. The study found that it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. That figure is 68 percent less than the public currently spends by allowing homeless people to remain on the streets. If central Florida took the permanent supportive housing approach, it could save $350 million over the next decade. ... Read more

Paul Krugman on Who Is Really to Blame for Europe's Dire Straits
AlterNet | Janet Allon | 12/01/14

Paul Krugman is guardely optimistic about the U.S. economy, which seems to be climbing slowly out of the deep trench of the global financial crisis. Not so with Europe, where, he writes, bad ideas have proven to have an enduring grip. Unemployment there is twice what it is in the U.S. and deflation looms. Like Japan before it, Europe appears to be having a lost decade.

Was this necessary? No, Krugman writes in Monday's column. And without mincing any words, he lands the blame squarely at the feet mostly of Germany, which has used its economic might to inflict austerity and other punitive monetary policies on the rest of Europe. ... Read more