The mainstream press was in full cry over Edward Snowden late last week, but there was big news regarding Iceland and the EU. Iceland's new government is no more apt to speed an entry into the EU than previous administrations. Representatives reaffirmed a decision to halt efforts to join the European Union. Reasons included worries over control of Iceland's resources and the continued euro crisis. Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson would not commit to EU pleas either for a rapid referendum ...

Actually, the IMF has been getting it resolutely wrong for decades. But we are supposed to accept its wisdom because it is large and the governments of countries around the world contribute to it. For us, that mostly shows the power of the Anglo-American alliance and the ability of the top men of that alliance to convince (intimidate) others into going along with the program. Of course, these days there is at least one other competitor waiting in the wings. The BRICs' leaders are beginning to ...

We expect the US to go to war fairly directly with Syria any time now. The only real suspense is how US, British and NATO leaders will justify it. All this palaver and breast-beating is just for show. The West, under its critical mass of generals, politicians and bankers, has been at war with great regularity, especially since the Great Recession began around 2008. The Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Yemen and now Syria have all felt the ill wind of drone attacks, depleted ...

At the end of this article, we'll reveal where the "malpractice" mentioned in this headline lies. But first, at the risk of repeating ourselves, let us remind readers, "We told you so." For years we've been writing that the Chinese Miracle is nothing more than the Japanese Miracle writ large and that it would have a similarly messy end. This seemed obvious to us, and increasingly to others. Some background. Western powers, especially the US, made a deal with Japan in which Japan printed money ...

In the previous article, we pointed out that Fitch just discovered what Daily Bell readers have known for years, that the Chinese Miracle isn't exactly what it seems to be. What created the "miracle" and continues to support it is an almost-impossible-to-comprehend credit bubble that has left a swath of mold-ridden, empty cities and vacant skyscrapers throughout China. But in this article, we see the other side of the Chinese dilemma ... the determination of Chinese leaders to fight back. These ...

Those who run TIME magazine are virtual card-carrying members of a globalist elite that constantly seeks a more internationalist business and economic environment. This "poll" can surely be seen as just another "limited hangout" designed to protect the agenda of those who own and run TIME. No, things in the US and the West generally are not good today. The EU in particular is struggling with all sorts of problems having to do with failing economies, a dysfunctional euro and ever-expanding ...

President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his "red line" and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government. Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important th ...

The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Richard Ebeling. Daily Bell: It seems like a symptom of a larger dysfunction. You wrote an article recently implying the US was slipping into fascism. Is that a present danger, in your view? Richard Ebeling: The "larger dysfunction," as you express it, arises out of a number of factors. The primary one, in my view, is a philosophical and psychological schizophrenia among the American people. While many on "the left" ridicule the ...

Over at The Atlantic, Zachary Karabell has discovered a double standard regarding corporate versus private "big data surveillance." We're approaching the issue all wrong, he writes. We should not accept that the issue is American freedom versus potential Big Brother government tyranny. What is really evident is that "we're willing to give private corporations data, but we refuse to offer government agencies the same courtesy. That contradiction highlights a muddled, overwrought and inconsistent ...

Naomi Wolf has doubts, too. A brilliant libertarian, she is seeing what we see regarding this affair. We've written about it already. You can see the article here: Is Snowden for Real? Doubts Set In Our doubts about Snowden have to do with the tremendous amount of publicity he's getting and also with the inevitable fractures that have emerged in the "back story." In this modern era of dominant social themes, you likely don't get Snowden's kind of vast coverage unless the powers-that-be behind ...

First Occupy Wall Street and now the G8 protests – the efforts at further demonizing free-markets seems to be failing. It has an old history, of course, going back to US hearings in the 1930s that created public markets, self-regulatory organizations and, in fact, greatly hyped the regulatory state itself. But as we have long pointed out, the next step was to have been taken after the latest great financial crisis. By now there should have been hearings in Washington, DC and elsewhere, special ...

Free-Market Analysis: The research by Morse and Tsoutsoura (see above) continues to make a splash and has been codified in this Spring issue of Chicago Booth magazine because it offers government officials a new way of calculating tax evasion. By using bank loan data, which presumably included income information, the two academics were able to figure out that the amount of income being reported to the government was a great deal less than the income being reported via loan documents. It doesn't ...

Is Hollywood relying on superheroes to create mass-marketed movies because society's dominant social themes don't work anymore? All human societies rely on cultural myths to provide the "glue" of commonality. But what can you say about a culture that uses made up heroes to provide it? Iron Man, Batman, Superman ... these individuals never existed, and yet they are far more real to young men and even some young women than flesh-and-blood heroes of a previous era. ...

The Internet does us the favor of occasionally freezing people's beliefs in a kind of intellectual amber. Even top pundits are revealed this way. R. Emmet Tyrrell, an eminent conservative commentator and longtime editor of The American Spectator, a droll and witty conservative publication, has now been appropriately frozen. We used to enjoy his wit and elegant writing style. Now we are better educated as to what lurks behind it. Savor this. Or don't. It is how Tyrrell ends the column excerpted ...

In both Britain and the US, public broadcasting is responsible for the cult of the politician. These programs regularly market the genius of Churchill, Lincoln and FDR. Other leaders are equivalently demonized. Bureaucracy is held up as absolutely necessary. There are in fact a host of dominant social themes that public broadcasting generally adheres to. Bigger is better. Scarcity is ubiquitous. Only government can overcome our problems and crises. Self-interest is bad. Selfless poverty is good ...

In an article yesterday, we pointed out that central banks are the unacknowledged aggregate sun of the financial solar system. In this article from Reuters we find further proof of this perspective. The editorial is stating just what we explained: That too much of the financial marketplace is influenced by bank policy and nothing more. According to this commentary, it used to be that a number of different items could influence Western stock and bond markets, not just banking policy. Ever since ...

This Bloomberg article is a good example of an emergent dominant social theme ... that private contractors work with the government for the good of the republic. The article actually quotes a top government man as saying this. Our question is ... what republic? Was it the intent of the US founding fathers that an almost complete lack of outside threats should spawn a multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-intel complex that has as its apparent main goal the scooping up of every electronic ...

Surely this is a trouble number, that only ten percent of the US population has any confidence in the US Congress. Of course, we are aware that these same individuals may have more confidence in their own congressperson than in the larger group. But still this is an abysmal number. Combine it with the disaffection that more and more are feeling for President Barack Obama and his administration and it would seem that the US's political institutions are having a kind of crisis of credibility. To ...

The development of economics and the development of astronomy share interesting parallels. Aristarchus of Samos – the Greek island that produced Pythagoras – was born in 310 B.C. Aristarchus set astronomy on the path that would have led to its correct development by postulating the Sun as the center of the universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun while revolving around its own axis; he also set the planets in the correct order of their distance from the Sun. Unfortunately, the ...

Here is a dominant social theme so subtle and powerful it is not even commented on. This article makes much of the Fed's Ben Bernanke's power when it comes to influencing markets. But the idea that one man and his backers should have so much clout is never even brought up. Instead, we get a long analysis about how Bernanke moved the markets and then how his speech helped throw it in reverse. Finally, we get a vague summation that the recent market sell-off, which has continued today, was just ...