Nigel Farage on Merkel Visiting Greece Amid Protests

UK Independence party leader Nigel Farage on CNBC USA speaking about the fanaticism of the EU and the similarity to Communism. Source

Gold, Paper Money and America, Show 14 Dollars and Sense

By SchoonWorks: Central banking came to the US in 1913. Within 20 years, the Fed's money printing caused the Great Depression. After WWII, the US military bankrupted US gold supplies and now all paper money is fiat. Source

U.S. Income Inequality: It's Worse Today Than It Was in 1774 "With Slavery!"

Jordan Weissmann: Here's a finding that would have made for great occupy sign last year: American income inequality may be more severe today than it was way back in 1774 -- even if you factor in slavery.
That stat's not actually as crazy (or demoralizing) as it sounds, but it might upend some of the old wisdom about our country's economic heritage. The conclusion comes to us from an newly updated study by professors Peter Lindert of the University of California - Davis and Jeffrey Williamson of Harvard. Scraping together data from an array of historical resources, the duo have written a fascinating exploration of early American incomes, arguing that, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, wealth was distributed more evenly across the 13 colonies than anywhere else in the world that we have record of. 
Suffice to say, times have changed. 
Before we dive into their findings, a word of caution about the study. When economists reach back this far into the thinly recorded the past, they're not so much taking a snapshot of what life was like as they are making a messy collage, collecting the disparate bits and pieces of information we have available and fashioning them into a coherent picture. In this case, Williamson and Lindert use occupational directories, tax lists, post-revolutionary census documents, and earlier scholarship, among other resources to build approximations of what people earned when we were getting ready to start turning our muskets on the British. Inherently, such a process involves lots of conjecture.  
In the end, the pair find that the colonies were an exceedingly egalitarian place, financially, if not politically.

To Fight Hyperstagflation, Greece Will Allow Sale Of Expired Food Products

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Against a deflationary environment of austerity-driven wage and pension cuts combined with rising unemployment; food, commodity, and fuel prices continue to surge in Greece. The government has taken an unusual step - allowing the sale of expired food at lower prices. 
As Voz Populi reports, this act means the government has 'virtually admitted their inability to control prices" as the worst aspects of stagflation crush the Hellenic Republic. The regulation (allowing from one-week to one-month extensions of foods for sale post their eat-before-this-day-or-you'll-get-Salmonella date) has existed for many years, according to a ministerial decree and this action merely states that these foods must be sold at a lower price. Meat and dairy is excluded but this move is described as "an immoral act" as few believe prices will actually be reduced - since that is at the discretion of the merchant. As the National Food Agency notes: "This is also a moral dilemma, to divide consumers into two groups: those who can afford basic food and those who, because of poverty, are forced to resort to dubious quality food." We presume this will also reduce the drag on pension and healthcare costs as death rates will rise?

Staggering rise in Iraqi birth defects surge from US depleted uranium ammo

A new study's revealed a staggering rise in birth defects among Iraqi children conceived in the aftermath of the US led war. The findings were published by the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. It's suggested American and British ammunition has caused high rates of miscarriages and birth defects - including in the heart and brain. Professor Christopher Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risks believes the invaders should take responsibility for what they did. Source

How the neo-liberals perverted Adam Smith

What type of capitalism do we have today and to what extent does it need to be reformed? 
By Ian Fraser: The version of capitalism that is prevalent in the world today is globalized, oligopolistic, crony and blind to its own crisis of legitimacy.
It was given impetus by the likes of Milton Friedman and the ‘Chicago School’ in the 1960s and 1970s. They cherry-picked the ideas of the enlightenment thinker Adam Smith, and with the help of political followers such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and their successors spread their market fundamentalism throughout much of the rest of the world. Sadly however such people focused exclusively on Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ignoring his earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
As a consequence, a ‘winner takes all’ or ‘feral’ version of capitalism became the norm. In this version of capitalism which the historian Eric Hobsbawm has described as “a pathological degeneration of the Adam Smith line” companies focused so relentlessly on short-term profit maximisation that responsibility and civilised values — including caring for customers, caring for their staff and caring the environment — were jettisoned.
Once this sort of capitalism takes root, a race to the bottom generally ensues. Indeed, the pre-crisis frauds in the banking sector, including the manipulation of Libor and rackets such as payment protection insurance and interest-rate swaps sold to SMEs, suggest that, under this version of the capitalism, banks thought it perfectly acceptable to swindle billions of dollars from their own customers and counterparies.
And the drugs multinational GlaxoSmithKline saw nothing wrong with committing massive fraud and corruption in the pharmaceuticals sector, even when it meant playing with patients’ lives. A “light touch, limited touch” regulatory regime caused such firms to believe they were pretty much above the law.

OBAMA v ROMNEY - the Final Presidential Debate: RAP NEWS

By thejuicemedia: Juice Rap News - Episode 16: Electile Dysfunction. It's nearing the end of 2012, and bastion of world democracy (The United States of America) is displaying its free and open process of elections for the world to observe. As is customary every four years, the rigorous selection process has served up a number of philosopher kings and queens from which to choose. But why have so many choices when with a bit of effort you can whittle it down to two candidates and let the people pick from those? Especially when it makes for such scintillating debates.

Hezbollah Drone Is A Game-Changer + Braving Beirut Battles for Bread - Lebanese Girl

By 108morris108: Drone Message - If You Are Thinkin of Syria - Think Again - Hezbollah Drone is Resistance Not Audacity - When the Israeli ship was hit in 2006 from the Lebanese Coast, Hassan Nasrallah was saying in a live broadcast for people to look over there at that very moment.
The Drone is a game changer!

U.S. Rx Drugging Poor Children for "Social Justice"

Alex discusses the outlandish medical practice of misdiagnosing children with ADHD to justify psychotropic drug prescriptions with investigative reporter and writer Jon Rappoport.

Desperate RBS lobbying for tougher repossession laws - The Slog

Taxpayer-owned bank in dire straits as Santander deal collapses; more customers reveal fraud evidence.

Bank contractor sources revealed over last weekend that Royal Bank of Scotland lobbyists are hammering hard on the Coalition’s door with a view to getting draconian repossession laws passed. With fraud suits and gagging orders flying in every direction, Stephen Hester uttered the euphemism of the year by telling the media that the failure of the Santander retail purchases deal to complete was ‘disappointing’. Yesterday, financial opinion leaders were aghast at the thought of RBS effectively having its systemic gangsterism legalised.
“If you won’t entertain debt forgiveness,” said the banking insider who contacted the Slog two days ago, “then managing bad debt is actually an expensive and time consuming activity.” Especially for the customer. The source continued:
“In essence, the objective is for banks to be able to seize assets and collateral much sooner and to a greater extent than they can at the moment. They also want the current bankruptcy laws reviewed, the view being ‘people mustn’t be allowed to escape their obligations’.

Greek central banker's big pay-off

By Stephen Grey & Nikolas Leontopoulos:  The governor of the Bank of Greece was given a severance payment of 3.4 million euros when he left his former employer, a major bank that he now regulates, documents seen by Reuters show.
George Provopoulos was awarded the sum when he stepped down as vice-chairman of Piraeus Bank to become governor of Greece's central bank and a member of the board of the European Central Bank in 2008.
The scale of the pay-off, previously unknown to most Greeks, is likely to prove controversial, amounting to nearly 2.8 million euros ($3.6 million) after tax.
As governor of the central bank, Provopoulos, now 62, has played a key role in propping up Greece's banking system, which has received billions of euros in liquidity from the ECB and is in line for up to 50 billion euros of new capital from the bailout provided by euro zone countries and the International Monetary Fund.
The Greek central bank has also faced criticism over the recent rescue of the country's troubled state-run Agricultural Bank (ATE), which left-wing Greek MPs described as the "robbery of the century." In that deal the authorities decided to place ATE's non-performing loans into a ‘bad bank' and hand the rest of ATE to Piraeus.

The Top 15 Economic 'Truth' Documentaries - Chris Ferreira

1. Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis – Directed by Martin Borgs Based on the book “Financial Fiasco” by Johan Norberg this documentary depicts When the world’s financial bubble blew, the solution was to lower interest rates and pump trillions of dollars into the sick banking system. The solution is the problem, that’s why we had a problem in the first place. Featured guests; Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente, Dennis Hannon. ~46 min.