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3 months ago we warned US economic growth faced a challenge more powerful than any Fed-sponsored miracle could handle and 3 weeks ago Yellen's worst nightmare began to loom on the chilly horizon. But tonight, from the depths of the night, the cruel monetary-policy-nullifying devil of Polar Vortex 2.0 arrives as all 50 states (yes even Hawaii) will see temperatures drop below freezing…

 

h/t @Grant_Gilmore

 

On the bright side, companies will have more than just strong dollar and weak foreign growth to blame for earnings weakness… weather is back baby!!

h/t @Met_mdClark

 

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Now, the only question is how the resultant tumble in Q4 GDP will be used by the Fed and econo-pundit talking heads to justify a further delay in rate hikes, which consensus expects to take place in Q2 2015 at the latest as a result of recent seasonally massaged "strong data", or better yet, force the Fed to resume liquidity injections once it is revealed that the ECB's intervention is limited to verbal jawboning, while Japan's runaway import cost inflation and plunging real wages lead to a revulsion against Abenomics and Abe in 2015, and a premature end to Japan's epic hyper-reflation experiment and the best laid plans of Goldman Sachs to boost "risk assets" and Goldman year end bonuses.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1u3ZLzi Tyler Durden

While forcing citizens to work for no money may appeal to European policy-makers as a solution to their youth unemployment problem (as we discussed here and here), it is a problem that covers a stunning 35.8 million people in the world who are classified as slaves, according to the latest data.

China, India, and Pakistan top the list of modern slave nations (in absolute terms), but Mauritania is the most 'slaved' nation with 4% of the population in some kind of bondage.

As Gallup notes, most modern slavery is not visible to the general public, and victims may not be easy to identify using standard survey methods. Poverty is a clear risk factor behind modern slavery: Poorer countries tend to have more slaves; but a host of other factors may be perpetuating the problem, including traditional institutions, attitudes, social systems or poor governance, as well as individual risk factors such as lack of education or unemployment.

 

The Walk Free Foundation defines modern slavery as the deprivation of individual liberty for the purpose of exploitation. This broad definition includes many slavery-related practices such as human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage, commercial sexual exploitation and the sale and exploitation of children.

Walk Free's GSI ranks 167 countries according to the estimated prevalence of modern slavery, using a combination of nationally representative surveys, secondary sources and extrapolation methods that take into account each country's vulnerability to modern slavery.

 

and it seems European governments are not doing too much about it (the letter grades represent government action)

 

But it seems Russia and Bahrain are the outliers with relatively high slavery given their wealth…

 

As Gallup concludes,

Obtaining reliable estimates of the extent of the problem of modern slavery is only the first step in eradicating it. Modern slavery will only end after the systematic causes and consequences of the problem are dealt with. First, victims must be identified and get the support they need to leave their situation. Criminal justice mechanisms need to be reinforced and coordinated to successfully prosecute perpetrators. Global supply chains need to be carefully monitored to avoid labor abuses by contractors and subcontractors.

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Unless of course this is the New World Order plan after all… do debt-serfs count?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xKaALC Tyler Durden

Despite The Fed’s Jim Bullard proclaiming last week that inflation expectations had rebounded (by which we assumed he meant the Dow), 5-year forward 5-year inflation expectations just dropped in the US to the lowest since 2008. The rest of the world is no better. In spite of promised and delivered policies Japanese and European inflation expectations are also near multi-year (if not all-time) lows… which must mean only one thing – we need moar money printing.

Inflation expectations falling everywhere… (the 5Y5Y fwd inflation breakevens are often cited as The Fed’s preferred market indication of inflation expectations)

 

So it must the Dow that Bullard is watching…

 

 

Charts: Bloomberg

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1yfSIaN Tyler Durden

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Internet Gambling Ban: A Winner for Sheldon Adelson, A Losing Bet for the Rest of Us

Ron Paul

Most Americans, regardless of ideology, oppose “crony capitalism” or “cronyism.” Cronyism is where politicians write laws aimed at helping their favored business beneficiaries. Despite public opposition to cronyism, politicians still seek to use the legislative process to help special interests. 

For example, Congress may soon vote on legislation outlawing Internet gambling. It is an open secret, at least inside the Beltway, that this legislation is being considered as a favor to billionaire casino owner, Sheldon Adelson. Mr. Adelson, who is perhaps best known for using his enormous wealth to advance a pro-war foreign policy, is now using his political influence to turn his online competitors into criminals. 

Supporters of an Internet gambling ban publicly deny they are motivated by a desire to curry favor with a wealthy donor. Instead, they give a number of high-minded reasons for wanting to ban this activity. Some claim that legalizing online gambling will enrich criminals and even terrorists! But criminalizing online casinos will not eliminate the demand for online casinos. Instead, passage of this legislation will likely guarantee that the online gambling market is controlled by criminals. Thus, it is those who support outlawing online gambling who may be aiding criminals and terrorists.

A federal online gambling ban would overturn laws in three states that allow online gambling. It would also end the ongoing debate over legalizing online gambling in many other states. Yet some have claimed that Congress must pass this law in order to protect states rights! Their argument is that citizens of states that ban Internet gambling may easily get around those laws by accessing online casinos operating in states where online gambling is legalized. 

Even if the argument had merit that allowing states to legalize online gambling undermines laws in other states, it would not justify federal legislation on the issue. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given any authority to regulate activities such as online gambling. Arguing that “states rights” justifies creating new federal crimes turns the Tenth Amendment, which was intended to limit federal power, on its head. 

Many supporters of an Internet gambling ban sincerely believe that gambling is an immoral and destructive activity that should be outlawed. However, the proposed legislation is not at all about the morality of gambling. It is about whether Americans who do gamble should have the choice to do so online, or be forced to visit brick-and-mortar casinos. 

Even if there was some moral distinction between gambling online or in a physical casino, prohibiting behavior that does not involve force or fraud has no place in a free society. It is no more appropriate for gambling opponents to use force to stop people from playing poker online than it would be for me to use force to stop people from reading pro-war, neocon writers. 

Giving government new powers over the Internet to prevent online gambling will inevitably threaten all of our liberties. Government bureaucrats will use this new authority to expand their surveillance of the Internet activities of Americans who have no interest in gambling, just as they used the new powers granted by the PATRIOT Act to justify mass surveillance. 

The proposed ban on Internet gambling is a blatantly unconstitutional infringement on our liberties that will likely expand the surveillance state. Worst of all, it is all being done for the benefit of one powerful billionaire. Anyone who thinks banning online gambling will not diminish our freedoms while enriching criminals is making a losing bet.

 

Link: Ron Paul Institute

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1HcFWjn williambanzai7

Since Ben Bernanke reminded the world of the existence of government printing-presses, echoed Milton Friedman’s “helicopter drop” solution to fighting deflation, and decried Japan for not being as insane as it could be… it has only been a matter of time before some global central bank decided that the dropping of cash onto the populace was the key to economic recovery. Having blown their wad on QQE (and been left with a triple-dip recession), it appears Japan has reached that limit. As Japan’s News47 reports, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed his cabinet to develop economic measures such as handing out ‘gift certificates’ to the poor to “support personal consumption directly.”

 

 

As Japan’s News47 reports (Via Google Translate),

Following the negative growth of the gross domestic product of the July-September period (GDP), Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to instruct the relevant ministries to develop new economic measures whereby income is handed out, such as gift certificates to the poor and to people building energy-saving housing, thought to support the personal consumption directly.

 

Abe also said mitigation measures for the energy price rise due to depreciation of the yen should be included.

 

Prime Minister in the express policy to dissolve the House of Representatives on the 18th, economic measures is expected to become the backbone of the ruling party commitment in the House of Representatives election.

 

The activation of consumption stimulus and regional economy and pillars, and founded the grants that local governments can use freely. Local governments to distribute the vouchers to people with low income.

 

Policy to revive the “housing eco-point” to grant the point in new construction and renovation of energy-saving housing.

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And so while some might liken it to EBT cards in the US… it appears this is simply a hidden way to directly hand out free money to those that spend and thus… increase inflation… So no need for firms to raise wages after all!??! Well played Abe.

 

h/t @L0gg0l and @Thoton

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xK33MV Tyler Durden

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

If only George Orwell could see us today.  When he wrote “1984” back in 1948, he probably never imagined that the “totalitarian, bureaucratic world” that he imagined would ever actually become a reality.  But that is precisely what is happening.  We live at a time when the government monitors billions of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about it.  We live at a time when corporations systematically collect our voiceprints and our televisions watch us.  We live at a time when reporters that try to dig into the misdeeds of the government have their computers hacked, and when nearly one out of every three Americans has a file in the FBI’s master criminal database.  The control freaks that run our society are absolutely obsessed with watching, tracking, recording and monitoring virtually everything that we do.  We truly are becoming a “1984” society, and if we continue on the path that we are currently on eventually our world will be transformed into something more hellish than anything that George Orwell ever imagined.

These days, virtually every type of government surveillance is taken to the extreme.  For example, there is definitely nothing wrong with normal undercover police work.  But these days, almost every single federal government agency conducts extensive undercover operations.  At this point, even the IRS and the Department of Agriculture rely on undercover operatives to spy on ordinary citizens.  So the next time you are visiting a tax preparer, buying a yacht or attending a peaceful political protest, the person standing next to you just might be a government spy…

The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show.

 

At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice.

 

At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers, accountants drug dealers or yacht buyers and more, court records show.

Government undercover work has become so extreme that sometimes undercover agents from one agency end up investigating undercover agents from another agency.  In fact, there have been times when agents from different government agencies have pulled weapons on each other without even realizing it…

The extent of those secret operations within the departments can be so high that it leads to severe overlap, such as one undercover agent investigating an alleged criminal, who also turns out to be a fed on duty, law enforcement officials said.

 

“There are all sorts of stories about undercover operations gone bad,” Jeff Silk, a longtime undercover agent and supervisor at the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in an interview. “People are always tripping and falling over each other’s cases.”

 

Silk added that in some instances, agents even draw weapons on each other before realizing they are on the same side.

The government also uses a vast array of electronic methods to spy on all of us.

For instance, it has recently been revealed that the Justice Department places devices that emulate cell phone towers on Cessna airplanes and flies them around major cities.  These devices are then used to trace the phones of potential targets…

The U.S. Department of Justice is putting devices that emulate cellphone towers in Cessna aircraft and flying them around the country to track the locations of cell phones, a practice that targets criminal suspects but may also affect thousands of U.S. citizens, according to a news report Thursday.

 

The program is run by the Department of Justice’s U.S. Marshals Service and has been in operation since at least 2007, according to the report in the Wall Street Journal, which cited two unnamed sources. The aircraft are flown out of at least five metropolitan-area airports and can cover most of the U.S. population, it said.

 

Cell phones are programmed to connect to whichever nearby cell tower has the strongest signal. The fake cell towers trick phones into thinking they have the strongest signal, then read the devices’ unique registration numbers when they connect, the Journal report says.

And of course this is just one example of how the government uses technology to monitor us.  For quite a few more examples, please see my previous article entitled “15 Signs That We Live During A Time Of Rampant Government Paranoia“.

At this point things have gotten so bad that even our public schools are training our children for life in a “Big Brother” police state.

When I was growing up, it would have been unthinkable for men with guns to come storming into a classroom.  But now it is a regular occurrence all across the nation.  And sometimes the students are not even told that a drill is taking place.  The following is an excerpt from a news story about one of these drills that just took place down in Florida…

Lauren Marionneaux, a seventh-grade student at Jewett Middle Academy, said it was about 9 a.m. Thursday when the principal announced the school was going on lockdown.

Students huddled into classrooms waiting for further instructions. Instead, they started hearing voices in the hallway.

 

“A lot of people started getting scared because we thought it was a real drill,” Lauren said. “We actually thought that someone was going to come in there and kill us.”

 

Two police officers burst into Lauren’s classroom with their guns drawn — one carrying, what Winter Haven police said, was an AR-15 rifle.

Would you want your little girl to feel like she is about to die?

I certainly would not.

But this kind of thing is done to condition our young people to life in a police state.  They are going to grow up thinking that it is normal for heavily armed men in dark suits to storm in and lock everything down.

Even though we are not in prison, we are being systematically trained to act as if we were.  Our police forces are being increasingly militarized, and all law enforcement authorities are now trained to bark orders at the general public and treat them like dirt.  Most of the population fears those in authority these days, and that is precisely how those in power want it.

And as John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute has pointed out, anyone that dares to resist this brutality is squashed like a bug…

For example, police arrested Chaumtoli Huq because she failed to promptly comply when ordered to “move along” while waiting outside a Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant for her children, who were inside with their father, using the bathroom. NYPD officers grabbed Huq, a lawyer with the New York City Public Advocate’s office, flipped her around, pressed her against a wall, handcuffed her, searched her purse, arrested her, and told her to “shut up” when she cried out for help, before detaining her for nine hours. Huq was charged with obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

 

Oregon resident Fred Marlow was jailed and charged with interfering and resisting arrest after he filmed a SWAT team raid that took place across the street from his apartment and uploaded the footage to the internet. The footage shows police officers threatening Marlow, who was awoken by the sounds of “multiple bombs blasting and glass breaking” and ran outside to investigate only to be threatened with arrest if he didn’t follow orders and return inside.

 

Eric Garner, 43 years old, asthmatic and unarmed, died after being put in a chokehold by NYPD police, allegedly for resisting arrest over his selling untaxed, loose cigarettes, although video footage of the incident shows little resistance on Garner’s part. Indeed, the man was screaming, begging and insisting he couldn’t breathe. And what was New York Mayor Bill De Blasio’s advice to citizens in order to avoid a similar fate? Don’t resist arrest.

Yes, we still have a bit more freedom than the poor souls in George Orwell’s “1984“, but our liberties and freedoms are eroding a little bit more with each passing day.

And just like in “1984”, most of the population has come to accept the status quo as the new “normal”.

So is there any hope that we will wake up, or will our society continue to march toward oblivion?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1vk3nEp Tyler Durden