The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : First They Came For the iPhones...

First They Came For the iPhones...



The FBI tells us that its demand for a back door into the iPhone is all about fighting terrorism, and that it is essential to break in just this one time to find out more about the San Bernardino attack last December. But the truth is they had long sought a way to break Apple’s iPhone encryption and, like 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, a mass murder provided just the pretext needed. After all, they say, if we are going to be protected from terrorism we have to give up a little of our privacy and liberty. Never mind that government spying on us has not prevented one terrorist attack.

Apple has so far stood up to a federal government's demand that it force its employees to write a computer program to break into its own product. No doubt Apple CEO Tim Cook understands the damage it would do to his company for the world to know that the US government has a key to supposedly secure iPhones. But the principles at stake are even higher. We have a fundamental right to privacy. We have a fundamental right to go about our daily life without the threat of government surveillance of our activities. We are not East Germany.

Let’s not forget that this new, more secure iPhone was developed partly in response to Ed Snowden’s revelations that the federal government was illegally spying on us. The federal government was caught breaking the law but instead of ending its illegal spying is demanding that private companies make it easier for it to continue.


Cont.... 

Syrian Peace Plan: US Seethes at Its Humiliation by Russia

Syrian Peace Plan: US Seethes at Its Humiliation by Russia

A very well sourced article, which has recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal (attached below), shows the extent of the policy disarray in Washington following the US-Russian “cessation of hostilities” agreement.

It seems there has been a massive row.  

The heads of the US military and the CIA are clearly furious at the way in which they feel the US has been humiliated, and in a series of angry meetings in the White House they have made their feelings known.

Though they rationalise their anger with talk about how Russia cannot be trusted, and how US allies in the regions like the Turks and the Saudis feel betrayed, that is what it amounts to.

Cont..... 

Was Middle-Class Retirement Just A Credit Bubble Fantasy? | Zero Hedge

Was Middle-Class Retirement Just A Credit Bubble Fantasy?

Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

One of the jarring — and until recently underreported — aspects of those seemingly-positive recent US jobs reports is the increasing skew towards older workers. Most new jobs have gone to people who in better times would be leaving to live off their savings. Now they’re coming back, frequently taking jobs they wouldn’t consider if money wasn’t so tight.

And it’s apparently a lot worse for older women:

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Going Full Whig | KUNSTLER

Going Full Whig

Hillary’s dumb riposte to Trump’s dumb slogan — make America great again! — was “…America never stopped being great.” I guess she’s been traveling around the strip-mall wastelands of Carolina failing to notice the carnage that lays upon this land like a mortal scrofula. America has been committing suicide by bad choices for decades.

We took the collateral winnings of World War II and poured it into a suburban sprawl alt-universe so depressing that our citizens are the most over-medicated people in the world. That alone might help to explain how Hillary and Trump lumber inevitably toward their respective nominations. The cheering “folks” marshaled out in the Piggly Wiggly parking lots are so buzzed on Klonopin and Zoloft that they can’t tell how these two odious celebrities epitomize the very forces behind their pharmaceutically-masked despair.

A nation sunk in such falsity is sure to suffer life-threatening blowback and it looks like the first thing to go will be the life of the political parties. Both Democrats and Republicans have gone full Whig, riding into the 2016 election on the garbage barge of history. Hillary went on hyper-gloat after last week’s South Carolina primary, where she stuffed her pander-bag with black votes reaped on empty promises to re-boot the Civil Rights era. It was painful to watch that get-me-outa-here smile stretched across her face as she hugged the last selfie-snapper and slouched toward the ordeal of Super-Tuesday.

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THE SIMPSONS NAILED IT 15 YEARS AGO « The Burning Platform

THE SIMPSONS NAILED IT 15 YEARS AGO

LWT: The Donald « The Burning Platform

LWT: The Donald

 

Oil Production Vital Statistics February 2016 | Energy Matters

Oil Production Vital Statistics February 2016

High Oil Price Volatility signals that the market has not yet decided the future direction of the oil price. Global production was marginally lower in January, but outside of the USA, oil production remains robust with rises registered in most producing areas. Production in Iran has begun to rise with 80,000 bpd added in January. US and global rig counts are in steep decline while drilling in the Middle East remains close to all time highs.

The following totals compare Jan 2016 with December 2015:

• World Total Liquids down 230,000 bpd
• USA down 170,000 bpd
• North America down 180,000 bpd (includes USA)
• OPEC up 270,000 bpd
• Saudi Arabia up 70,000 bpd
• Iran up 80,000 bpd
• Russia + FSU up 10,000 bpd
• Europe up 30,000 bpd (YOY)
• Asia down 30,000 bpd

Cont...... 

What If There Are No More Googles, Facebooks, Or AirBnBs? | Zero Hedge

What If There Are No More Googles, Facebooks, Or AirBnBs?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The current batch of tech companies claim to be disruptive, but they're all derivatives of the rare unicorns that scaled globally right out of the gate and now dominate their space--and whatever new spaces attract their fancy.

It's an article of quasi-religious faith in tech circles that a few of the hundreds of start-ups touting their "disruptive" potential will blossom into super-profitable giants like Google and Facebook, or fast-growing companies like AirBnB that may not yet have profits but which have scaled fast enough to dominate their space--and richly reward early investors.

Two recent Guardian (U.K.) stories on the Digital Gold Rush frenzy in San Francisco and Silicon Valley cite this faith in the inevitability of "the next big (and hugely profitable) thing" as the basic justification for investors and venture capitalists to spread billions of dollars over hundreds of new start-ups--many which started somewhere else in the world but which migrated to the Bay Area to tap the seemingly inexhaustible venture-capital vein of cash.

Silicon Valley braces itself for a fall: 'There'll be a lot of blood' Wannabe entrepreneurs are still piling in to San Francisco, but there’s a sense that time is running out on the exuberant startup world

Is the dotcom bubble about to burst (again)? In Silicon Valley, millions of dollars change hands every day as investors hunt the next big thing – the ‘unicorn’, or billion-dollar tech firm. There are now almost 150, but can they all succeed?

The possibility that none of the current batch of start-ups will scale up and reward early investors with 100-fold returns is the darkest sacrilege in the Tech Faith.

The idea that tech has exhausted ideas that can create tens of billions of value almost overnight is so counter to accepted beliefs that it is akin to declaring the Earth is flat.

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Military Would Revolt Against Trump, Former CIA Director Says | Zero Hedge

Military Would Revolt Against Trump, Former CIA Director Says

Earlier today, we noted that America’s presumed candidate for the GOP nomination is busy retweeting Mussolini quotes.

That’s not necessarily a reflection of an explicit desire to move America towards fascism.

It’s not entirely clear that Donald Trump understands the movement he’s started. But America's entrenched political establishment is now scrambling to understand how to deal with the Trump juggernaut and it's not just politicians who are concerned. 

Indeed, former intelligence officials now say the brazen billionaire could face a veritable security rebellion if he's elected. 

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Former CIA director Michael Hayden said, in an interview with Bill Maher. Hayden also says that the armed forces would simply refuse to follow Trump's orders were he to be elected and follow through on his campaign promises.  

Here's what Hayden had to say about Trump's promise to kill family members of ISIS: "God, no! Let me give you a punchline: If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act. You cannot—you are not committed, you are not required, in fact you’re required to not follow an unlawful order. That would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict. There would be a coup in this country."

Would Trump face a military coup or would Trump simply commandeer the military? You decide. Here's the clip: 

Austria and Nine Balkan Countries Effectively Tell Merkel Go to Hell | MishTalk

Austria and Nine Balkan Countries Effectively Tell Merkel Go to Hell

Austria and nine Balkan countries have had enough of Angela Merkel’s idiotic refugee plans. The defiant group of ten took matters into their own hands late last week. The countries held a refugee conference and did not invite the chancellor. The countries all restrict the number of refugees they will take. Merkel is furious but there is not a damn thing she can do about it. Curiously, Merkel Faces a Dilemma because Germany is already the beneficiary the Austria’s actions.

The decision by Austria and nine Balkan states to unilaterally choke off the flow of migrants across their borders has prompted fury in Berlin, which fears it could torpedo Chancellor Merkel’s drive for an EU-wide solution to the refugee crisis.

But the new border controls have ironically had one positive effect for Ms Merkel: the number of asylum-seekers crossing the border into Germany has plunged. On Wednesday there were only 140, compared with more than 2,000 a day at the start of last week. German TV showed empty reception centres in the Bavarian town of Passau, near the Austrian border, which has been a key entry point for the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals to Germany.

“Merkel faces a paradox,” the influential journalist Alan Posener wrote in Die Welt. “It’s possible that the naysayers will restrict the influx of refugees to such an extent that the chancellor’s future in Germany will be saved.”

It is not just the substance of Austria’s policy shift that has angered Berlin but the manner in which it is being carried out. The new border clampdown was agreed at a meeting in Vienna of countries along the so-called “West Balkan route” to which Germany was not even invited.

Germany had opposed Vienna’s move last week to enforce a daily cap on the number of refugees it will allow into the country. Berlin believes the decision — to accept only 80 asylum applications a day — is a direct violation of principles agreed by Austria’s chancellor, Werner Faymann, at recent EU summits.

But Vienna went further on Wednesday by agreeing policies with nine Balkan states to restrict the numbers crossing their borders. One key point was a commitment to accept only those migrants deemed to be in need of protection.

Berlin is worried that Austria’s unilateral moves are killing the chances of a European solution Ms Merkel has been painstakingly piecing together in recent months.

Merkel’s Hopeless Plan

Is Merkel really that naive to believe everyone will go along with her “painstakingly pieced together plan”? For starters, numerous nations won’t adopt her share the refugee relocation program. Next, bribing Turkey is downright foolish.

I applaud the action by Austria and the group of ten. The idea to only take refugees in need of protection is exactly what the policy should have been all along.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock

Clash Of The Gods: It's Odin Versus Allah In Norway Where Social Upheaval Looms Large | Zero Hedge

Clash Of The Gods: It's Odin Versus Allah In Norway Where Social Upheaval Looms Large

Last month, we introduced you to “The Soldiers of Odin.”

The “soldiers” are Nordic patriots dedicated to keeping the streets of Finland, Sweden, and Norway safe from the threat posed by marauding gangs of Mid-East migrants hell bent on accosting women.

Well that, or they’re the Nordic equivalent of a biker gang set to capitalize on a groundswell of nationalistic fervor drummed up by the far-right in the wake of Europe’s worsening migrant crisis.

Obviously, the truth is somewhere in-between, but there’s significant comedic value in presenting the extremes.

In any event, the Finnish chapter of the “soldiers” says the group merely seeks to serve as a “preventive soothe” (to quote a Google translation of a statement from National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen) against the growing threat posed by refugees.

But not everyone sees it that way. "The leaders of the 'Soldiers of Odin' are proven to have criminal backgrounds, in cases of racist violence and other violent or drug offenses," Dan Koivulaakso, local politician and expert on rights movements in Finland says. The movement has spread to Norway, as is evident from the following visual: 

“Progress of course doesn’t give unlimited support to the Soldiers of Odin. But the situation is that we have for a long time had a situation in our streets that nobody wants, where crimes are committed and other actions we don’t want occur and the Norwegian police don’t have the resources to do the job. Thus we think that any citizen who wants to contribute to reducing insecurity and reducing crime should be praised for it,” the Progress Party’s Jan Arlid Ellingsen said earlier this week.

Norwegian PM Erna Solberg (who recently said she was willing to effectively contravene the Geneva Convention to keep Norway's border safe in the event Sweden "collapses") went out of her way to distance herself from the group. “The Soldiers of Odin have no place in keeping the streets safe. Dangerous values. Ellingsen’s remarks do not represent the government,” a Twitter post reads. 

Cont..... 

The Empire Will Strike Back, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

The Empire Will Strike Back, by Robert Gore


The populist revolt fueling non-mainstream political movements in both Europe and the US flows from a single source: you can not fool all the people all the time. The central lie of our time is that governments can and should forcibly assume control of individuals’ lives, in the name of vague and always shifting greater goods. The Command and Control Futility Principle holds that governments and central banks can control one, but not all variables in a multi-variable system. The number of variables global governments and central banks have arrogated to their purported control has grown beyond measure. Breakdowns are visible everywhere, and as those failures exact their ever-increasing toll on the masses, the masses are pushing back.


The last financial crisis was a watershed. Capitalism’s rough justice was obviously, and gallingly, not allowed to play out. Favored financial institutions didn’t face the consequences—insolvency and bankruptcy—of their promotion of various bubbles and their leveraged business models. They were bailed out with taxpayer funds. Especially galling was that they knew they were going to be bailed out. More salt on the wound: improvident homeowners and housing speculators who took on too much mortgage debt were, other than a few spotty government programs, not bailed out or even offered appreciable relief. Since the crisis passed, banks have operated on the assumption they will be bailed out again during the next crisis. Despite all the hype about improved capital ratios and cleaned up loan books, fractional reserve banking is still fractional reserve banking; a leveraged business model that is wiped out if enough loans and speculations go bad.


Still more salt: despite unprecedented government debt and spending, new programs, particularly Obamacare, central bank debt monetization, and ultra-low interest rates, the purported recovery is the weakest on record, with the labor force participation rate at a multi-decade low, the number of people on food stamps recently reaching a record high, and real incomes back where they were in the 1970s. Those ultra-low interest rates have destroyed the incentive to save and forced retirees back into the workforce (the one group whose labor force participation rate has increased), but provided cheap funding to the carry-trade set, stock options-laden corporate executives, and Silicon Valley moguls. Their trophy art, cars, mansions, and spouses grace the media. That’s beyond salt, it’s rubbing people’s noses in it.


Cont...... 

Prepare for Clinton Coronation: Alleged “Dead Heat” Dies Sudden Death | MishTalk

Prepare for Clinton Coronation: Alleged “Dead Heat” Dies Sudden Death

Bernie sanders got clobbered in South Carolina in Saturday’s primary. It’s now do or die for Sanders and die it will be.

Those clinging to “national” numbers got a huge wake-up call this evening. National popularity figures don’t matter if a candidate gets blown out of the water on “Super Tuesday” as will likely happen judging from the results in South Carolina.

Bernie Sanders got scorched in a 74%-26% rout as Bernie Sanders flops with black voters.

Reality Sets In

Three days ago I said Reality Sets In: It’s Trump vs. Clinton.

As frequently with my political posts, someone gets upset and threatens to stop reading me.

For example, reader Gordon commented “Trump vs Clinton is the reality? This is precisely why i am disliking your blog more and more. You show an ever increasing bias for your own ideas in stark contrast to facts: Sanders is in a dead heat with Clinton and has the momentum. I know you hate everything Sanders represents but that is no excuse for you being blinded by your own self applied labels to issues like these. I no longer trust your opinion.”

I replied … “If you think Sanders has a chance you are in Fantasyland. But quite frankly, I hope I am wrong.”

Why would I hope I am wrong?

Hillary Clinton is the war candidate. The likelihood of a major war breaking out under Clinton are at least as good as a war breaking out with Ted Cruz.

Sanders has little chance of getting his socialist policies passed. Except for waging war, the president does not do much without support of Congress.

The biggest negative for Sanders pertains to Supreme Court nominees, not his idiotic economic policy proposals.

In direct contrast to what reader Gordon wrote, I would actually welcome a Trump-Sanders campaign. Yes, that’s a very sorry choice, but at this point it’s the best we can do.

While other bloggers refuse to comment on such matters, I speak my mind even though it may cost readership.

So be it.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock

Cassandra's Legacy: The "Limits to Growth" was right: Italy's populati...

Cassandra's Legacy: The "Limits to Growth" was right: Italy's populati...: The "base case" scenario described in the 2004 edition of "The Limits to Growth", an update of the original study...

Germany Admits They Have Lost Track of 130,000 Refugees | The Daily Sheeple

Germany Admits They Have Lost Track of 130,000 Refugees

Most governments pride themselves on their ability to keep track of their citizens. They want to know where you live and where you work, they litter the streets with surveillance cameras, and they want us all to carry IDs at all times. So what does it say when a country like Germany loses track of thousands of people? Since governments are normally really good at controlling and surveilling their populations, it means that they’re quickly losing control of their country.

The German government recently admitted that they don’t know the whereabouts of over 130,000 refugees. That is 13% of 1.1 million recent arrivals to Germany. When they first arrived, they simply didn’t go to the reception centers that they had been directed to. The government knows when and where they first arrived, but these people never registered for asylum.

And that’s just what the German government will admit to. The number could be as high as 600,000, most of whom have likely moved on to other EU nations. And this situation is only going to get worse from here. The refugees are pouring into Europe at twice the rate they were last year, and 2015 saw twice as many asylum applications as the year before that. If Europe doesn’t shutter its borders completely, then they won’t be very European for much longer.

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

David Stockman: The Good, Bad & Ugly Of Donald Trump | Zero Hedge

David Stockman: The Good, Bad & Ugly Of Donald Trump

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

America will need the Almighty’s unstinting favor if Donald Trump becomes our 45th President. Still, blessed be The Donald for running a demolition derby in the Republican primaries.

There is no hope for the future of capitalist prosperity and a free society at home and world peace abroad unless the Republican Party is destroyed. And, by golly, Trump may well accomplish the deed.

We need to be clear. There is no longer a Republican Party rooted in the main street highways and byways of America. What’s left of it is not really even the xenophobic, nativist, crypto-racist flotsam and jetsam of the populist right that Trump is successfully calling to political arms.

The fact is, the GOP has mutated into the Warfare State party. Nestled comfortably in the Imperial City, it operates a plethora of special interest rackets which underwrite its incumbents’ bi-annual electoral campaigns out in the provinces.

In the interim, GOP politicians idle their time in the capital and on foreign junkets conjuring and embellishing scary stories about terrorist threats and hostile regimes. So doing, they perceive enemies of the American Imperium to be stalking the planet everywhere and even creeping onto these exceptional shores.

In a word, as the party of the Warfare State, the GOP’s main business has become promoting the agenda, campaigns, machinations and glory of the Imperial City. Whenever its pro forma rhetoric about small government and fiscal prudence becomes inconvenient to the needs of the military/industrial/surveillance complex or the fund-raising requirements of its special interest rackets, the GOP’s putative conservative economics platform quickly becomes “inoperative” in the Nixonian vernacular.

Cont.... 

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM « The Burning Platform

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM

Via Investors.com

How The Seeds Of Revolution Take Root | Zero Hedge

How The Seeds Of Revolution Take Root

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via PeakProsperity.com,

That the dramatic upheavals of war, pestilence and environmental collapse can trigger social disorder and revolution is well-established. Indeed, this dynamic can be viewed as the standard model of social disorder/revolution: a large-scale crisis—often a bolt-from-the-blue externality—upends the status quo.

Another model identifies warring elites and imperial meddling as a source of revolution: a new elite forcibly replaces the current elite (known colloquially as meet the new boss, same as the old boss) or a dominant nation-state/empire arranges a political coup to replace the current leadership with a more compliant elite.

A third model was described by David Hackett Fischer in The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. By assembling price and wage data stretching back hundreds of years, Fischer found that cycles of economic growth spawn population growth, resulting in more workers entering the market economy. Their earnings trigger a demand-driven expansion of essential commodities such as grain and energy (wood, coal, oil, etc.).

In the initial phase, wages rise and commodity prices remain stable as supplies of essential goods expand and the demand for labor pushes up wages.

But this virtuous cycle reverses when the supply of essentials no longer keeps pace with rising population and demand: the price of essentials begin an inexorable rise even as an oversupply of labor drives down wages.

Cont..... 

"Democracy Is Overrated" Doug Casey's Top 5 Reasons Not To Vote | Zero Hedge

"Democracy Is Overrated" Doug Casey's Top 5 Reasons Not To Vote

Submitted by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

Democracy is vastly overrated.

It's not like the consensus of a bunch of friends agreeing to see the same movie. Most often, it boils down to a kinder and gentler variety of mob rule, dressed in a coat and tie. The essence of positive values like personal liberty, wealth, opportunity, fraternity, and equality lies not in democracy, but in free minds and free markets where government becomes trivial. Democracy focuses people's thoughts on politics, not production; on the collective, not on their own lives.

Although democracy is just one way to structure a state, the concept has reached cult status; unassailable as political dogma. It is, as economist Joseph Schumpeter observed, "a surrogate faith for intellectuals deprived of religion." Most of the founders of America were more concerned with liberty than democracy. Tocqueville saw democracy and liberty as almost polar opposites.

Democracy can work when everyone concerned knows one another, shares the same values and goals, and abhors any form of coercion. It is the natural way of accomplishing things among small groups.

But once belief in democracy becomes a political ideology, it's necessarily transformed into majority rule. And, at that point, the majority (or even a plurality, a minority, or an individual) can enforce their will on everyone else by claiming to represent the will of the people.

The only form of democracy that suits a free society is economic democracy in the laissez-faire form, where each person votes with his money for what he wants in the marketplace. Only then can every individual obtain what he wants without compromising the interests of any other person. That's the polar opposite of the "economic democracy" of socialist pundits who have twisted the term to mean the political allocation of wealth.

But many terms in politics wind up with inverted meanings. "Liberal" is certainly one of them.

Cont..... 

How The Seeds Of Revolution Take Root | Zero Hedge

How The Seeds Of Revolution Take Root

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via PeakProsperity.com,

That the dramatic upheavals of war, pestilence and environmental collapse can trigger social disorder and revolution is well-established. Indeed, this dynamic can be viewed as the standard model of social disorder/revolution: a large-scale crisis—often a bolt-from-the-blue externality—upends the status quo.

Another model identifies warring elites and imperial meddling as a source of revolution: a new elite forcibly replaces the current elite (known colloquially as meet the new boss, same as the old boss) or a dominant nation-state/empire arranges a political coup to replace the current leadership with a more compliant elite.

A third model was described by David Hackett Fischer in The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. By assembling price and wage data stretching back hundreds of years, Fischer found that cycles of economic growth spawn population growth, resulting in more workers entering the market economy. Their earnings trigger a demand-driven expansion of essential commodities such as grain and energy (wood, coal, oil, etc.).

In the initial phase, wages rise and commodity prices remain stable as supplies of essential goods expand and the demand for labor pushes up wages.

But this virtuous cycle reverses when the supply of essentials no longer keeps pace with rising population and demand: the price of essentials begin an inexorable rise even as an oversupply of labor drives down wages.

Cont...... 

Doug Casey: Why the Euro Is a Doomed Currency | Casey Research

Why the Euro Is a Doomed Currency

For a long time, I’ve advocated that the world’s governments should default on their debt. I recognize that this is an outrageous-sounding proposal.

However, the debts accumulated by the governments of the U.S., Japan, Europe and dozens of other countries constitute a gigantic mortgage on the next two or three generations, as yet unborn. Savings are proof that a person, or a country, has been living below their means. Debt, on the other hand, is evidence that the world has been living above its means. And the amount of government debt and liabilities in the world is in the hundreds of trillions and growing rapidly, even with essentially zero percent interest rates. This brings up several questions: Will future generations be able to repay it? Will they be willing to? And, if so, should they? My answers are: No, no and no.

The “should they” is one moral question that should be confronted. But I’ll go further. There’s another reason government debt should be defaulted on: to punish the people stupid enough, or unethical enough, to lend governments the money they’ve used to do all the destructive things they do.

Cont..... 

FOURTH AMENDMENT « The Burning Platform

FOURTH AMENDMENT

Via Investors.com

Black Economic Lives Don’t Matter – Examining the African American Plight Under Obama’s Fake Oligarch Recovery | Liberty Blitzkrieg

Black Economic Lives Don’t Matter – Examining the African American Plight Under Obama’s Fake Oligarch Recovery

Turns out electing the first black President hasn’t helped the black community all that much.

Wall Street says thanks for the bailout.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The lowest state jobless rate for black workers in the country matches the highest rate for white workers in a new analysis.

At 6.7%, Virginia’s black unemployment rate was the lowest in the nation in the fourth quarter. That rate happens to be the same as the jobless rate for white workers in West Virginia, the worst in the country, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

The report, released this month, found that while unemployment rates have fallen across much of the country and the national unemployment rate is now half of its recession-era peak, only a handful of states have seen meaningful improvement in the labor market for African-American and Latino workers. And conditions vary greatly from state to state.

The worst state for black Americans looking for work? That was Illinois, where the jobless rate was 13.1% in the fourth quarter.

Obama’s home state. You can’t make this up.

Even in Virginia, the unemployment rate for black workers was twice as high as it was for white workers. The largest gaps in black and white unemployment were in the District of Columbia, where the black unemployment rate was 5.4 times that of white workers, and in Michigan, where the rate was 3.4 times higher, the report found. The smallest gap was in New Jersey, where the rate was 1.5 times higher.

“Here we are almost seven years into a recovery, that’s troubling that in a number of these states, states that have a significant African-American population, they still have really high unemployment rates,” Ms. Wilson said.

Well yeah, Obama works for the bankers.

“For black Americans, we’re still in the midst of a very serious depression or recession,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) told Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen when she testified before Congress Feb. 10.

Black workers in Alabama may have taken the hardest hit in this recovery. The unemployment rate for African-Americans there is almost twice as high—a full 5.1 percentage points higher—as it was before the recession, the most elevated in the country.

If you like what Obama’s done for black people, I’m sure you’ll just love what Hillary will do for women.

For more on the oligarch recovery, see:

The Oligarch Recovery – U.S. Military Veterans are Selling Their Pensions in Order to Pay the Bills

The Oligarch Recovery – 30 Million Americans Have Tapped Retirement Savings Early in Last 12 Months

The Oligarch Recovery – Study Shows Real Wages Have Plunged for Low Income Workers During the “Recovery”

The Oligarch Recovery – Low Income Americans Can’t Afford to Live in Any Metro Area

Another Tale from the Oligarch Recovery – How a $1,500 Sofa Costs $4,150 When You’re Poor