Voters oust council members one day after they vote to remove veterans memorial

Council members in Knoxville, Iowa learned what happens when they don’t listen to their constituents.

Two council members who voted in favor of removing a veterans memorial at the local Young’s Park on Monday were out of power by Tuesday, the Des Moines Register reports.

Council members Carolyn Formanek and April Verwers voted in favor of moving the memorial – a wooden silhouette of a soldier kneeling by a cross – after Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent the city a letter in August threatening litigation if they city did not take action.  Read more

ATHEIST COMPLAINT CAUSES IOWA CITY POLITICIANS TO EXILE MILITARY MEMORIAL FROM PUBLIC PROPERTY  Related Article

CHRISTIAN DAYCARE WORKERS FIRED FOR REFUSING TO CALL A LITTLE GIRL A BOY

HOUSTON, Texas — Two daycare workers have been fired for refusing to go along with the center’s transgender agenda.Madeline Kirksey, one of the workers who is an author of a Christian book, says her religious liberty rights have been violated. The two were fired after refusing to call a little girl a boy.  Read more

Religious Objections on Obamacare Get U.S. Supreme Court Review

The U.S. Supreme Court scheduled a new showdown over Obamacare and religious rights, agreeing to hear contentions by faith-based groups that they shouldn’t have to facilitate what they consider to be immoral insurance coverage for contraceptives.  Read more

Jim Paulsen: Chances of 'Unexpected Recession' Rising

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, is warning clients that the chances of an economic shock are growing, CNBC reports.

“Policy officials, economists and investors have become conditioned by the post-war experience that recessions simply don't happen until economic policies turn restrictive. Not before interest rates rise, the yield curve inverts and not until the Federal Reserve drains the punch bowl and the money supply slows,” CNBC quoted Paulsen.  Read more

Russian Plane Terrorism Is Bullish for Oil as Drumbeat of War Grows Louder

Planes don’t normally break up in flight. When they do, it’s most likely either a catastrophic maintenance failure or an explosion caused by an “external factor.” As we have learned in the past few years, an external factor is either an antiaircraft missile or a bomb smuggled on board the aircraft.
Read more

Nouriel Roubini: 7 Ways Global Economy Is Going to Change

Aging population and the end of the ‘golden era’ of growth
The aging populations in both in Europe and Asia are changing the consumption model on an individual level, and people are saving more, too. Although corporations have enough cash, most of them are not inclined to invest money into new projects the way they have done before, as the level of political, economic, and geopolitical uncertainty has dramatically risen.  Read more

The Oil Industry Has Been Put on Notice

There were two huge developments today, both for the oil industry and the earth's climate. New York’s top lawyer issued a subpoena to Exxon, seeking information on whether the world’s biggest oil explorer deceived the public for almost 40 years about climate change. Hours later, President Obama announced that the U.S. would reject the Keystone pipeline.  Read more

Puerto Rico Debt Tragedy's Second Act Is Close. Here Is the Cast

The second act of Puerto Rico’s long-building debt drama is about to begin, and waiting in the wings is a veteran cast. It includes an embattled politician, his foe, the former executive of a failed bank, and those with roles in the Wall Street bailout, Argentina’s default and America’s biggest municipal bankruptcies.  Read more

Blade of jihad: Extremists embrace the knife as tool of terror

The knife has replaced suicide bombings, car attacks and random shootings as the new tool of choice for waging jihad on Israel, with leaders blatantly calling for Palestinians young and old to take up the kitchen implement and kill.  Read more

These 5 charts say the Nasdaq’s surge is different this time

The Nasdaq-100 surged to an all-time high this week, sending a chill throughinvestors with vivid memories of the dot-com bust 15 years ago that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth.Read more

October 2015 Jobs Report (BLS)

Employment Situation Summary

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 271,000 in October, and the 
unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau 
of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and 
business services, health care, retail trade, food services and drinking 
places, and construction.
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- OCTOBER 2015

Read full report

The real impact of a decade of low interest rates

Looking back, everything seems clearer and sharply focused. Looking forward, it seldom has the same clarity. With central-bank policies for a about half a decade, it was pretty clear — just keep shoveling more money out there and drive debt prices to extreme levels.

The consequences were clear in some places and murkier in others. Debt pushers would see their currencies devalue and a general rise in most financial assets — at least for a while — until the next country came along and did the same. Corporations, even countries, moved their risk curve out farther and farther as the debt-laden policies forced decisions that otherwise would have never occurred. Heck, "if the money is free, then why not use it" was the attitude.  Read more

Kraft Heinz to Close 7 Factories in US, Canada in Downsizing

Kraft Heinz will close seven plants in the U.S. and Canada over the next two years as part of a downsizing that will eliminate 2,600 jobs, or roughly 14 percent of its North American factory workforce, the newly-merged food company announced Wednesday.  Read more

TEXAS GOVERNOR STRIPS STATE GRANT FUNDING FROM SANCTUARY CITY SHERIFFS

Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a new plan to strip state grant funding from county sheriff’s with a Sanctuary City policy of not honoring ICE detainers. The move follows Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez’s order that criminal illegal aliens in her jail will be evaluated on a case by case basis to determine if ICE detainers will be enforced.  Read more

Revealed: Iranian-Supplied, Armor-Piercing IEDs Killed At Least 196 US Troops in Iraq

Almost 200 American troops were killed by Iranian-supplied armor-penetrating weapons during the Iraq war, according to declassified Pentagon data made public for the first time on Wednesday.  Read more

Big Pharma price monopoly to go global as Obama forfeits America's economic future to globalist corporations

The race to "globalize" — that is, offshore American economic power and assets — quickened recently with the finalization of a new trade deal that once again puts U.S. workers behind the eight ball.

As reported by The Washington Post, the Obama administration, after five years of negotiations, has come to an agreement with 11 other mostly Asian nations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal that is anything but the epitome of free-market capitalism — the economic model adopted by our founders and which has served to catapult the United States to become the world's No. 1 economy.  Read more

NEW YORK STUDENTS BAFFLED BY ‘AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT’ SEX REGULATIONS

The upshot of the breathless crusade against the alleged epidemic of campus sexual assaults has been the imposition of “affirmative consent” or “yes means yes” laws in New York and California.

Those of us old enough to remember how the uptight Bible-thumping patriarchal conservatives were supposed to play the role of buzz-killing Puritans who wanted to “bring government into the bedroom” now can only marvel at the legalistic Star Chambers that young people must face.  Read more

Target to close 13 stores

Target is planning to close 13 stores across the nation by the end of January of 2016, according to CNN Money.

A Target spokeswoman cited the profitability of the stores as a factor in the decision to close the sites, the report said. 

Target operates 1,799 stores in America. Target has closed all of its stores in Canada, shuttering the last one in April after just more than two years in the market.  

China’s Red Tide Of Malinvestment Crushes The Light Metal——US Aluminum Smelter Industry Heading For Extinction

Alcoa Inc.’s latest aluminum-making cutback is signaling the end of the iconic American industry.

For 127 years, the New York-based company has been churning out the lightweight metal used in everything from beverage cans to airplanes, once making it a symbol of U.S. industrial might. Now, with prices languishing near six-year lows, it’s wiping out almost a third of domestic operating capacity, Harbor Intelligence estimates. If prices don’t recover, the researcher predicts almost all U.S. smelting plants will close by next year.  Read more

There Are Now 293 Ounces of PAPER GOLD For Every ONE OUNCE OF PHYSICAL As Comex Registered Gold Hits New Low

As of today, the gold “coverage” ratio, or the amount of paper claims for every ounce of physical,has just hit a new all time high of 293 ounces of paper per ounce of registered physical.

Unlike Bitcoin, which has doubled in the past few weeks (as the predicted Chinese buying onslaught indeedmaterialized), it hasn’t been a good week for spot gold prices which have tumbled from $1,180 to just over $1,100.  Read more

Asia Will Build 500 Coal-Fired Power Plants This Year No Matter What the U.S. Does

Two stories about coal use in Asia highlight the futility of EPA’s efforts to reduce global carbon emissions by straightjacketing the U.S. economy with draconian carbon regulations.  Read more

Unit Labor Costs Miss For 3rd Quarter In A Row (For The First Time In 12 Years)

Read more

Initial Jobless Claims Jump Most In 8 Months As Energy Sector Layoffs Spike Back To 6-Month Highs

Read more

There’s No Such Thing as Excessive Profits

Problems with a “Fair Rate of Return”

If you want to do business in Venezuela, you will have to let the government do your bookkeeping to make sure you aren’t making too much. Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s decree, called the “Organic Law of Fair Prices,” sets a maximum “fair” profit at 30 percent of costs.  Read more

Bernanke’s Defense of Fed Monetary Policy Is Utter Nonsense

Mainstream economists continue to defend and even praise Ben Bernanke’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. But as it becomes moreand more obvious that the United States economy never fundamentally recovered from the Great Recession, savvier analysts are speaking up. On Bloomberg TV, David Stockman lambasted Bernanke for flooding the markets with zero-cost money, arguing that the former Fed Chairman’s book would be better titled The Courage to Print, rather than The Courage to Act. Stockman ended with a dire warning for investors:  Read more