Europe on the Fringe - Politics in the Age of a New Depression

Nicolas Sarkozy and challenger Francois Hollande face off today in a live French election TV debate. This is reportedly being seen as the climax of the campaign. With elections in France and Greece this weekend, the results have the potential to send shockwaves across theEuropean debt-landscape. We speak with former diplomat and investment banker, and founder of creditwritedowns.com, Edward Harrison about how politics in single countries could impact the global economy. This includes a conversation on the latest PMI numbers that show growth could be slowing across the globe, including in China.

A Rebellion at the Federal Reserve?

Chicago Federal Reserve president Charles Evans doesn't look the part of a heretic. But in the cozy, conservative club that is central banking, he certainly qualifies. While most of his colleagues at the Fed have recently taken an even more hawkish turn, Evans remains a champion of additional monetary stimulus. And on Tuesday he took an even bigger step: He became the first sitting Fed member to endorse nominal GDP (NGDP) level targeting. 

Sounds wonky? It is. But here's why Evans' suggestion is also extremely bold. The Fed famously has a dual mandate: It's supposed to promote the maximum level of employment consistent with its two-percent inflation target. In reality, this dual mandate often looks more like a single inflation mandate. NGDP level targeting would do away with this problem by rolling the mandates together. And right now, that would mean a much more aggressive Federal Reserve.

Frontline On Financial Fraud - Parts 1 and 2

Submitted by Tyler Durden: 

In one of the most complete documentaries undertaken on the financial crisis, PBS Frontline's "Money, Power, & Wall Street" series stretches from the origins of the credit derivative business with a bikini-clad pool-side Blythe Masters and her JPMorgan colleagues to the scary (but absolutely true) fact that the financial crisis never ended. The four-part series (of which we present the first two below) continues tonight at 730ET and the entire set of 20 in-depth interviews with the various players (from Sheila Bair to Rodgin Cohen with a smattering of Jared Bernstein and Dick Fisher in between)  can be found here. A must-watch series from beginning to end to get a grasp of how we got here (despite what Chairman Greenspan told us all this morning), where exactly we are now (in spite of today's FTMFW ISM print), and what we can expect in the next few years.

The chapter-headings alone generate enough insight into the documentary's depth and we will post the remaining two episodes tomorrow as soon as they are released.

Episode 1

Chapter 1 - A Brave New World of Banking

A group of young bankers make history with the creation of the credit default swap market

"No Work, No Shopping, Occupy Everywhere": May Day Special on OWS, Immigration, Labor Protests

As Occupy Wall Street plans nationwide protests marking International Workers’ Day, or May Day, we discuss the movement with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Chris Hedges; Amin Husain, editor of Tidal magazine and a key facilitator of the Occupy movement; Marina Sitrin, author of "Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina" and a member of Occupy’s legal working group; and Teresa Gutierrez of the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights. We also get an update from protests on the streets of New York City from Ryan Devereaux, former Democracy Now! correspondent, now with The Guardian.

Zuckerman To CNBC: "The Recession Never Ended"

Submitted by Tyler Durden:
Everyone's favorite perma-bullish stand-in for Cramer, Fast Money's Scott Wapner, seemed lost for words when Boston Properties CEO Mort Zuckerman laid down some basic truthiness on the state of the US economy "We have the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policy in the history of this country and here we are three years into the recession and it's not ended. I think we may be heading for an even weaker economy this year than people expect." 
The righteous REIT ruler went on to note that it is not just the US but Europe (ridiculously high unemployment rates) where he analogizes (rather picturesquely) that it reminds him of "the man who jumps off a 25-story building and as he's hurtling by the sixth floor he says 'don't worry, nothing has happened yet'." Wapner is silenced and changes the topic as we suspect he is stunned at the honest sentiment given the nominal three-year-highs in REIT indices. Truth is indeed stranger than fiat-fiction. Source

Should Britain be paying for its crimes of empire? - Africa Today

The real cost to human lives on the African continent had been covered and some of the atrocious crimes committed by colonialist had been destroyed until now. There were speculations of what had taken place by what truly happened has now been uncovered. Some had been left for reinterpretation of what empire did in Africa but the true story of what happened is now being unveiled due to the legal action brought against the British government by Kenya's Mau Mau tribe. Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.

Immortal Technique on OWS: Impact!

This is a May Day America hasn't seen in years. Even though this holiday originated in the US only to become popular worldwide, it hadn't been massively celebrated in its home country. Something changed this year, however, after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of American cities from coast to coast. The spirit of the Occupy Wall Street movement was alive and well once again in New York City on May 1

The Official Bankster Dictionary

Submitted by smartknowledgeu:

In the shady underground world of banking, doing wrong means doing right, up is down, and left is right. I often struggle to understand why so many people employed by the banking industry have so much difficulty reaching the same conclusion as the Economic Policy Journal’s Robert Wenzel that people employed by this modern day Slave Master called the global banking system should abandon their employers never to come back as “the moral and ethical thing to do” until the banking industry can change the system into from an immoral system of theft to a moral system of honesty. One of these reasons undoubtedly is due to the lies that the global banking cartel run by the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers have disseminated through the global and media academic system. Their propaganda has been so strong that with financial language, they literally have turned meanings upside down. So to help people understand financial language more clearly, with acknowledgement to WilliamBanzai7 for creating the first three chapters of the Offical Bankster Dictionary, below please find the macro installment of “The Official Bankster Dictionary” to help you understand what really is going on in the world of banking today.

Chorus of criticism: Netanyahu’s politics puts Israel ‘in mortal danger’

Former PM Ehud Olmert and the recently-resigned Kadima leader Tzipi Livni have joined the chorus of past and present senior Israeli politicians criticizing the government and its warmongering policy against Iran.

Livni announced her resignation as leader of the centrist liberal Kadima party on Tuesday, saying in her speech that Netanyahu’s government is putting the existence of the Jewish state “in mortal danger” by ignoring growing international discontent. 

“Israel is on a volcano, the international clock is ticking and you should not be the ‘chief of Shin Bet’ to understand that. The real danger is a politics that buries its head in the sand,” Livni said.

German clashes: May Day rallies turn violent - USA Police Teargas Protesters

Left wing protesters clashed with police in Berlin as a traditional May Day demonstration came to a halt far before reaching its intended end in the city center. Some demonstrators threw stones, bottles and firecrackers at the riot police, and officers responded with charges and batons. Arrests were made. The thousands strong demonstration had set off late on Tuesday afternoon from Berlin's neighborhood of Kreuzberg. Meanwhile in Hamburg, over one-thousand leftist activists gathered for the annual May Day protest march, local media reported. The demonstration - themed "No Alternative to Revolution"

London May Day and Occupy London

There is now a concern for Unworkers rights. The British Government is making a law that those without work, who are under the care of JSA (Job Seekers Allowance) must work for next to nothing. And so we see people targeting the companies that are participating in this...
It turned into a cat and mouse game, often the protesters did outwit the police.

Mike Shedlock tackles Paul Krugman and the Greenspan Contrarian Indicator (GCI)

So what is this austerity we keep hearing all about. Well, this isn't word of the day, but let's look at a quick definition:

noun, plural aus·ter·i·ties. 1. austere quality; severity of manner, life, etc.; sternness. 2. Usually, austerities. ascetic practices: austerities of monastery life.

Hmm...sounds pretty awful.