Damn interesting?

[charles royer]

The Dutch Tulip Bubble of 1637
The later part of the 20th century saw its share of odd financial bubbles. There was the real-estate bubble, the stock market bubbles, and the dot com bubble, just to name a few. In each instance of price inflation people paid exorbitant amounts for things that shouldn’t have been worth anything like the going price. And each time people stood around afterwards and said “What were we thinking?”

One has to believe that the same thought occurred to the Dutch in the 17th century when they settled down after their bout with tulipomania, wherein the humble tulip bulb began to sell for prices to make New York Realtors blanch.

As much as the tulip is associated with Holland, it is not native there. Rather it was introduced in 1593 by a botanist named Carolus Clusius, who brought it from Constantinople. He planted a small garden, intending to research the plant for medicinal purposes. Had Clusius’s neighbors been morally upright, the tulip might still be a rare exotic in the gardening world. Instead they broke into his garden and stole some of his bulbs in order to make some quick money, and in the process started the Dutch bulb trade
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-dutch-tulip-bubble-of-1637/
Just sayin!

[charles royer]

Lost decades
The Japanese tragedy
Japan is now 40 to 50 percent below what the world in 1991 would have estimated their GDP to be in 2012.

Do we attribute this to:

The forecasting community was just wrong--Japan was having adverse technology shocks that few foresaw, and so no matter what macro policies they followed and no matter what antibubble policies they followed their GDP today would be about what it is, for the prevailing potential estimates back in 1991 were just wrong?

If Japan had avoided its bubble and the resulting financial crisis, it would today have far higher GDP--but once the crisis happened, it ruined into an adverse supply shock and most of what has happened since was then predestined.

If only Japan had followed the Posen plan rapidly after their bubble burst, their world would be very different today and GDP in Japan would indeed be 30-40% higher than it is.

What is the best way to think about this?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/08/lost-decades

[charles royer]

Obama Administration Sticking it to Whitey
Is the Obama administration, or at least some officials in it, hostile toward whites? This is certainly an awkward, publicly unspeakable question -- and answering it is exceptionally difficult. Not easy to discern the motives of countless Washington bureaucrat
In a nutshell, thanks to Washington’s money and political pressure, thousands of poor blacks will now be re-located from Baltimore’s slums to upgraded housing in the surrounding, nearly all-white suburbs.

Baltimore County will spend $30 million over the next decade to help private developers build 1000 homes for low-income African American families in affluent suburbs. In addition, the country will create 2000 units of subsidized Section 8 housing where residents will have access to better schools and less crime (housing must be built or rented in racially integrated clusters to avoid creating new ghettoes).

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/obama_administratio...
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[Virginia Foulk]

Madison - 40/50 years did not have segregated housing areas, at least for blacks. Though areas were propagated by nationality - especially the Italians. And we did have a Mafia Boss in that area.  I met a black gal who started work at Oscar Mayer - 1967 - and she asked about the black district. We didn't have one. She and her family then located down the street from my family. 

Now Madison is segregated - not by policy, but by the population- they chose to segregate themselves, mostly.

[charles royer]

Regionalism: Obama’s Quiet Anti-Suburban Revolution
Yet even critics have missed the real thrust of HUD’s revolutionary rule change. That’s understandable, since the Obama administration is at pains to downplay the regionalist philosophy behind its new directive. The truth is, HUD’s new rule is about a great deal more than forcing racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs. (Regionalism, by the way, is actually highly controversial among minority groups. There are many ways in which both middle-class minorities in suburbs, and less well-off minorities in cities, can be hurt by regionalist policies–another reason those plans are seldom discussed.)

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354734/regionalism-obamas-quie...

[charles royer]

Democrats’ Slush Fund for Secret Earmarks Will Hide Wasteful Earmarks from Public Scrutiny - Last year, congressional Democrats promised to make majorchanges to the earmark process, and they have: it’s now harder than ever toidentify earmarks tucked quietly into spending bills, and impossible to removethem. In fact, after repeatedlypromising the “most honest” and “most open” Congress in history, Democraticleaders have moved to make the earmark process entirely secret - See more at: http://www.speaker.gov/general/fact-sheet-how-democrats-gutted-2006...

[charles royer]

Gay Group ‘More Powerful than the NRA,’ Warns North Carolina Governor
The embattled governor of North Carolina says the anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign is more powerful than the National Rifle Association, which is arguably the most powerful issue group in the United States.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/04/18/gay-group-powerf...

[charles royer]

what Burn is bitching about!
$225,000 to appear at the group's gathering in San Francisco. A group spokesman said Clinton was among former U.S. officials invited to share their experiences but said she was not paid as part of its lobbying activities.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents biotech and pharmaceutical firms, spent between $7 million and $8.5 million annually on lobbying since 2008, including contacts with the State Department — during Clinton's tenure — on the agency's biotech discussions with foreign governments. The trade group, which hosted Clinton for $335,000 at its event in San Diego in June 2014, has won more than $425,000 in federal payments since 2008 in work for the National Science Foundation and other agencies. The group did not respond to phone calls or emails for comment from AP.

The financial services and investment industry accounted for about $4.1 million of Clinton's earnings. Its ranks included not only Wall Street powerhouses like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp., but also private equity and hedge funds like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP and Apollo Global Management LLC and foreign-owned banks such as Deutsche Bank AG and the Canada Imperial Bank of Commerce. Goldman Sachs, which gave Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in 2013, and Morgan Stanley, which paid her $225,000 for one speech the same year, both spent millions lobbying the U.S. during Clinton's term at the State Department.

Nearly three dozen of Clinton's benefactors spent more than $1 million annually on contacts with officials and Congress during the same year they paid her to appear at their corporate or association events, according to federal lobbying records. Many earned millions more in government contracts — indications of the regulatory and policy stances the groups might advocate during a Clinton presidency.

General Electric, which paid her $225,000 for a speech in Boca Raton, Florida, in January 2014, has the most extensive government portfolio. GE has spent between $15.1 million and $39.2 million annually on lobbying. The company has won nearly $50 million in government work since 2008, including $1.7 million from the State Department for lab equipment and data processing during Clinton's tenure. The firm also lobbied the State Department all four years under Clinton on issues including trade and Iran sanctions.

As secretary of state, Clinton visited a GE aviation facility in Singapore and touted the State Department's role aiding GE industrial and military deals abroad. Clinton met with GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt once about the agency's efforts to salvage a planned business exposition in Shanghai and also talked with him by phone, according to her calendars.

A GE spokeswoman said, "GE works closely with the U.S. government and State Department, which often advocates for U.S. exporters."

Clinton sought to defuse the issue of her Wall Street speeches during a February debate with Sanders by explaining that she "spoke to heart doctors, I spoke to the American Camping Association, I spoke to auto dealers, and, yes, I spoke to firms on Wall Street."

Even the sponsors Clinton cited in her defense engaged in public advocacy — an indication of how many might seek favors if Clinton were elected.

The Cardiovascular Research Foundation, a fundraising group for cutting-edge heart medicine, paid Clinton $275,000 for a speech in Washington in September 2014. That same year, the organization joined other medical and health care groups in urging the Federal Drug Administration to reconsider its generic labeling rules. Foundation spokeswoman Irma Damhuis said Clinton was invited as a "recognized thought leader," adding that "decisions on keynote speakers are made without a political agenda."

The National Automobile Dealers Association paid Clinton $325,000 for a convention speech in New Orleans in January 2014. That same year, the trade group spent $3.2 million lobbying federal officials on taxes, automotive and trucking issues, labor and finance. A spokesman said the group's lobbying and convention activities were separate.

The camping group also paid for lobbying in recent years, including $40,000 in 2015 on Transportation Department administrative actions, according to federal records. The group's New York and New Jersey affiliate paid Clinton $260,000 for a March 2015 speech in Atlantic City.

Deirdre Petting, an executive with the national group, said its lobbying was separate from the affiliate's decision to invite Clinton for the event.

[kevin kiernan]

LOL..Gotta laugh...Helps stops the feeling of disgust...Disgusted at how many people can not figure out how in our faces she is with her criminal acts, and idiots just keep loving her..... How stupid can the human race be.

[charles royer]

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the former military psychologists who developed the CIA's interrogation program during George W. Bush's presidency, handing a major victory to a group of men who said they were tortured in secret prisons abroad.

U.S. District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush's decision to allow the case to proceed was a step forward in the campaign to hold individuals accountable for a program that the American Civil Liberties Union said resulted in the torture of at least 119 men from 2002 until it was ended in 2008.
No wonder we are under siege!
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/hearing-set-lawsuit-against-cia-interroga...

[charles royer]

How the state of the economy is literally killing people White people?

Middle-aged people laid off and unable to find work are taking another way out. They’re killing themselves.

Suicide rates are soaring, according to federal data released last week. Especially in economically depressed states and job-starved upstate New York. People in need of work are twice as likely to take their own lives as employed people, and people fired in their 40s and 50s find it hardest to get hired again.

http://nypost.com/2016/04/25/how-the-state-of-the-economy-is-litera...

[kevin kiernan]

The sad truth is, ,people who have always worked and found that taking a hand out is beneath them.,will feel depressed the most. Those who have lived a life of being on the dole do not understand. When a person of pride has their pride stripped away.They start to spiral down hill.Depression is a killer.As a human being one should never make a person feel bad about not being able to support themselves.

[charles royer]

Who really runs FOX news?

Andrea Tantaros taken off the air at Fox News

 In the midst of the Obama Administration's less-than-kosher investigations of certain journalists, Tantaros held little back. As cited by the NewsHounds.us weblog, while on the air, the woman who grew-up working at the family restaurant stated quite plainly, "This is Obama’s America. It’s like the Soviet Union. He said he’d change the country. He said it, he said it, he said it, and a lot of people voted for him. And if you see any of those people today, do me a favor, punch 'em in the face. We’ll be right back."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/andrea_tantaros_taken_o...
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