1. The United States Federal Government “War on Drugs” which has militarized our domestic law enforcement agencies, imprisoned millions of individuals for the faux “crime” of simply hurting themselves, created terror-filled inner city war zones, enriched thugs and brutes both at home and domestically, and helped fund numerous organizations with purely evil intent, is an experiment in social engineering that needs to be ended now before it does more damage to the fabric of our society. Keith Preston presents some eye-opening facts as to the extreme damage the ill-advised civil war on drugs has had on the American people. If there was ever a policy that utterly failed to make any sense whatsoever when presented with sober facts, the foolish war on drugs is one of them.

2. Yesterday the U.S. equity markets surged as sentiment bounced off relatively extreme lows. One of the pieces of news that commentators attributed the large rally to was the action of Wall St. broker Lehman Brothers securing a few billion in preferred stock financing. This capital infusion was played up, and received, as a vote of confidence in the beleaguered broker/dealer sector. Mish analyzes the facts behind the hype and concludes that reality does not live up to the exuberant package. Like I have said before, over the next few months be wary of the “pump and dump”. Do not get caught in the bear trap where insiders will likely be dumping shares onto the market before the next tank.

3. Two major potential outcomes exist in the markets currently. It would behoove any and everybody to stay aware of the possibilities. This article highlights the big time battle amongst the bears between a credit deflation and solidifying dollar versus the destruction-of-the-dollar scenario. Check it out and prepare for both if possible.

4. In a case of the “duhs”, Ben Bernanke admits the U.S. economy has a good chance of being in a recession. Given the deflation of the massive credit bubble spurred on by Easy Al Greenspan, it would stand to reason that the economy will continue to struggle.

5. Just in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Chinese equity bubble is bursting. (BTW, it was really interesting, I did a search through some Chinese search engines and there was absolutely no trace of this site. I guess it’s kind of cool that I am censored from China. Totalitarians rarely like reality.)

6. Laws that try to set prices or interest rates at a random “just” price outside of free forces are bad for everyone and are in fact acts of injustice.

Filed under: Politics, Social Mood, Economics, Six Packs