NC Renegades

by Robert Gore

If two-thirds of a group of conspirators avoid prosecution, trial, and imprisonment, but the other third does not, has justice been served? That’s a question raised by the movie The Big Short’s treatment of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The movie is a dramatization of Michael Lewis’s non-fiction book,The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

This is not a review of The Big Short, which was entertaining and amusing, with clever writing and strong performances by Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carell. The movie did not, however, feature a viable explanation of the causes of the financial crisis. Yes, bankers offered mortgages to people who could not afford them, bundled them into junky mortgage-backed securities and more complicated debt instruments, and with the help of asleep-at-the-switch ratings agencies, regulators, and government-blessed mortgage finance agencies, sold them to speculators and investors whose due diligence extended no further than the triple-A rating.

So The Big Short justifiably prosecutes and would like to put in jail the bankers and ratings agencies, but aside from light slaps on the wrists (a heavily leveraged, pole-dancing real estate speculator and a regulator-regulated revolving door vignette), the two other major conspirators—feckless, often dishonest mortgagees and the government—get off scot-free. However, even if the movie had figuratively hauled them off to the hoosegow, it missed entirely the real cause of the financial crisis: financial and political gravity. Gravity doesn’t make for very good cinema, but it’s an appropriate subject for an SLL piece. (SLL doesn’t have a $100 million production and advertising budget to cover, will never be in contention for an Academy Award, and only needs to appeal to an audience that’s maybe one-day’s tally of Big Short viewers at a typical Megaplex.)

More…

A .50-caliber rifle recovered from the hideout of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is reportedly one of the firearms lost by the U.S. government’s gun-smuggling operation Fast and Furious.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) checked serial numbers of weapons recovered after the raid earlier this month on the Los Mochis house where Guzman was staying. They traced one of two rifles back to the ATF program, according to Fox News.

Federal officials are investigating how many weapons seized from the house originated in the U.S., sources told Fox News. The report noted that ATF agents lost track of 1,400 of the roughly 2,000 weapons it allowed suspects to buy in Arizona with the intent of tracking them.

Thirty-four of the weapons sold through Fast and Furious were .50-caliber rifles, sources told the news outlet, which reported that Guzman placed guards on hilltops to shoot down helicopters.

More…

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

As I compiled the thoughts from geniuses last week, one group of thoughts that I left out – simply because there were so many of them – were the thoughts of geniuses on the subject of regimented education. Thus, today’s list.

Again in this area, the brightest men and women reach a surprisingly consistent set of conclusions. And again, we’ll begin with Einstein:

Albert Einstein

• It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

• School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like sergeants. I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam… I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement.
• I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy.

• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Baruch Spinoza

• Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them.

Marshall McLuhan

• Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.

Ivan Illich

• School is the advertising agency which makes you believe you need the society as it is.

Bertrand Russell Continue reading →

by Brandon Smith

While the economic implosion progresses this year, there will be considerable misdirection and disinformation as to the true nature of what is taking place. As I have outlined in the past, the masses were so ill informed by the mainstream media during the Great Depression that most people had no idea they were actually in the midst of an “official” depression until years after it began. The chorus of economic journalists of the day made sure to argue consistently that recovery was “right around the corner.” Our current depression has been no different, but something is about to change.

Unlike the Great Depression, social crisis will eventually eclipse economic crisis in the U.S. That is to say, our society today is so unequipped to deal with a financial collapse that the event will inevitably trigger cultural upheaval and violent internal conflict. In the 1930s, nearly 50% of the American population was rural. Farmers made up 21% of the labor force. Today, only 20% of the population is rural. Less than 2% work in farming and agriculture. That’s a rather dramatic shift from a more independent and knowledgeable land-utilizing society to a far more helpless and hapless consumer-based system.

What’s the bottom line? About 80% of the current population in the U.S. is more than likely inexperienced in any meaningful form of food production and self-reliance.

More…

• Some 90 young men — “mostly Afghan refugee kids,” according to police — were apprehended in connection with the mass sexual assaults at the concert.
• A recurring theme in recent articles by prominent feminists is the assertion that ethnic Swedish men act exactly the same as migrant gang-rapists.
• One can draw only one conclusion: Feminists would rather protect Muslim men from criticism than protect Swedish women from sexual assaults.
• None of the women’s shelters would admit that the mass sexual abuse of Swedish women might have anything to do with the perpetrators’ ethnicity or religion. They did not wish to “generalize,” they said — then hung up.
• What Swedish politicians intend to do about the “Rapefugees” that are now in the country is anyone’s guess

More…

Has Ammon Bundy ever referred to himself as being part of the “evil” militia?

David DeGerolamo

A loud explosion took place outside the Russian embassy in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul this morning according to local media. Details are lacking but it appears as if a suicide car bomber was responsible. Police sources confirm at least 12 injured already, but, preliminary reports say 7 dead and 10 injured, but this has yet to be confirmed. This is the 8th suicide attack in Afghanistance since January 1st.

Emergenza24

ADESSO [20.01-14:00] #Kabul #Afghanistan #ESPLOSIONE poco fa via muslimshirzad … pic.twitter.com/nDTRrDgy2x

— Più Digitale (@piudigitale) January 20, 2016

More…

Leftists are reeling in the aftermath of the Oscar nominations which tragically, and for the second year in a row, have failed to nominate anyone the color of Ben Carson for a top acting or directing award.

Spike Lee, who we believe is famous for having recorded a comic version of “Cocktails for Two” in the 1940’s to entertain the troops, is calling for black people nationwide to boycott the Oscar telecast in order to punish the evil white Hollywood plantation owners. And truly, what else otherthan racism can explain the Academy’s abysmal failure to give a “Best Picture” nod to the epic film “Straight Out of Compton” which told the Horatio Alger-like tale of the rap group “N****rs With Attitude” and their many hit songs like “F**k the Police.”

Alleged filmmaker Michael Moore is also joining the boycott which, incidentally, frees up an entire row of seats at the Oscar ceremony in case anyone still wants tickets to the country’s biggest and most glamorous piece of televised potential terrorist-bait.

More…

Annette Schavan says: “There are warmongers who embrace religion. But that does not mean that religion promotes war. Religion has the great power to bring peace.” It doesn’t seem to occur to her that there is not a single unified entity called “religion,” or that different religions actually teach different values. She assumes that whatever is labeled “religion” teaches peace, and that anyone who commits violence in the name of “religion” must be importing his violent impulses from elsewhere, not deriving them from the teachings of “religion.”

She also says: “People are upset by the numerous attacks and wonder, ‘Should we equate these images of violence with Islam?’ One gets the impression that Islam is part of the problem. But that’s not true. It must become clear that it is part of the solution.” That is a fine assertion, but that’s all it is. Where have we ever actually seen Islam be part of the solution? Our expectations have become so low; if Islam were really a Religion of Peace that had been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists, we could realistically expect to see a genuine mass Muslim movement against jihad terror comprising a significant segment of the Muslim population worldwide, dedicated to an honest reinterpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah so as to mitigate their capacity to incite violence. Instead, there is an avalanche of pro-forma Muslim condemnations of terror by groups such as CAIR, which has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, plus just a handful of Muslim individuals and groups who actually take a stand against jihad activity in all its forms, but have no significant following among Muslims. Many of the latter group, moreover, also deny that there is anything in the Islamic texts that needs reforming.

More…

For now, this is where the “running” has taken global assets as of moments ago:

• S&P 500 futures down 1.8% to 1840
• Stoxx 600 down 3% to 323
• FTSE 100 down 2.9% to 5706
• DAX down 3.1% to 9361
• German 10Yr yield down 6bps to 0.49%
• Italian 10Yr yield up 2bps to 1.57%
• Spanish 10Yr yield down 2bps to 1.69%
• MSCI Asia Pacific down 2.8% to 117
• Nikkei 225 down 3.7% to 16416
• Hang Seng down 3.8% to 18886
• Shanghai Composite down 1% to 2977
• US 10-yr yield down 9bps to 1.97%
• Dollar Index down 0.12% to 98.87
• WTI Crude futures down 2.8% to $27.65
• Brent Futures down 2.2% to $28.12
• Gold spot up 0.7% to $1,094
• Silver spot up 0.5% to $14.10

A quick jog through the markets:

More…

Update:

It appears that YouTube removed the video.

She’s not much of a talker – But she’s a good listener.
A Muslim was caught on video molesting a blonde mannequin in Britain.

Source

h/t Matt Bracken