Monthly Archives: November 2015

Forcing Green Politics on Pension Funds

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“The beauty of the stock market is that no one can tell you where to put your money—until now. Last month the Obama administration’s Labor Department issued Interpretive Bulletin 2015-01, which tells pension funds what factors to use when choosing investments, including climate change. Only a few tax lawyers noticed, but with U.S. pensions at $9 trillion, this is a gross power grab that will hurt the retirees it claims to protect.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/forcing-green-politics-on-pension-funds-1447891401

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DOL Opens the Door for State-Run Retirement Initiatives; CA, IL, OR First

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“States seeking to require employers to establish ‘automatic IRAs’ and ERISA-compliant 401(k) programs received a green light from the Obama administration with the release of rules designed to relieve concerns that state-directed retirement programs would be preempted by the federal government.  The interpretive rule specifies that the state, and not the employer, would function as fiduciary in such retirement saving programs.  Speaking to reporters in Chicago, Perez called states ‘great laboratories of public policy innovation.’ He said that more than two dozen states are currently considering legislation permitting them to establish savings programs.”

http://www.bna.com/dol-opens-door-n57982063631/

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DOL Fiduciary Rule Is ‘Biggest Change’ To Investment Advice Industry

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“The final version of the Department of Labor’s rule to amend the definition of fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act is expected sometime next year.  Under ERISA, advisors would be prohibited from engaging in transactions that entail conflicts of interest for the client unless there is an exemption. Advisors and clients would be required to sign best interest contract exemption contracts, in which broker-dealers and advisors acknowledge the new fiduciary standards and their impartial conduct codes. The DOL’s fiduciary rule also requires information on exactly what and who gets paid via product sales to be published in detail on publicly available websites.”

http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2015/11/23/dol-fiduciary-rule-is-biggest-change-that-well-go?page_all=1

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Martin Armstrong: Kiss Your Pension Fund Goodbye

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“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week in the unanimous 8-page decision, Tibble v Edison, stating that employers have a duty to protect workers in their 401(k) plans from mutual funds that perform poorly or are too expensive.  Monday’s unanimous ruling sends a warning to employers that they now must improve their plans, as it is now an obligation to project employees. This comes just in time for the next step: government to seize private funds and prosecute employers who poorly chose a fund manager.  This ruling will have a dramatic impact upon investment management.  It sets the stage to justify government seizure of private pension funds to protect pensioners.”

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30875

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The fee to get rid of US citizenship just went up (again)

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“For those who didn’t wish to renounce their citizenship, there was a second option: relinquishment. Tina Turner did this but taking Swiss citizenship – something that took her well over a decade to get – with the intention of giving up her American passport.  It’s a bit of a semantics game, but it has worked for some folks. However, the US – with all of its nearly $20 trillion in debt – has caught on to yet another loophole by the ‘evil rich’, and has recently increased the fee for processing a citizenship relinquishment from $0 to the same $2,350 that renunciation costs.”

http://nomadcapitalist.com/2015/11/16/renounce-fee-relinquish-us-citizenship/

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The Feds Won’t Stop Terrorism This Way

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“While the current rationale for encryption back doors is to fight terrorism, they wouldn’t be used just for that purpose. For proof, just look at the history of the PATRIOT Act. This law gives the US government unprecedented civil forfeiture authority over the US ‘correspondent accounts’ of any bank in the world. If an alleged terrorist or other criminal deposits money at the bank overseas, the PATRIOT Act allows the government to seize an equivalent sum of money in the correspondent account in the US.  Proponents justified the law as a necessary escalation in the ‘War on Terror.’ But the very first time the government used its new civil forfeiture authority, it had nothing to do with terrorism.”

http://www.nestmann.com/the-feds-wont-stop-terrorism-this-way

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Glenn Greenwald: Why the CIA is smearing Edward Snowden after Paris

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“There still is no evidence that the perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone used encryption technology.  CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central premise of the CIA’s campaign — encryption enabled the attackers to evade our detection — is baseless.  Even if they had used encryption, what would that prove? Are we ready to endorse the precept that no human communication can ever take place without the U.S. government being able to monitor it? The claim that the Paris attackers learned to use encryption from Snowden is even more misleading.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1126-greenwald-snowden-paris-encryption-20151126-story.html

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I, Thanksgiving Dinner

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“Millions upon millions of people work together — often unwittingly — to bring Thanksgiving dinner to the table. It’s a vast web of interrelated choices and actions. In the end, no single person knows — or could know — how to make dinner.  Thankfully, that lack of knowledge stops no one. They act without the foggiest of idea of the final destination or the ultimate purpose of the fruits of their labor. More importantly, each member of the chain is necessary; not a single step could be dispensed with, or else Thanksgiving dinner would never exist. While no one knows how to make it, every contributor adds an essential, specialized piece.”

http://fee.org/freeman/i-thanksgiving-dinner/

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Jeffrey Tucker: Let’s Talk About…The Plague

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“The situation in the developed world is incredible: poverty and hunger at historic lows, mostly nonexistent in most people’s life experience. Even a full Thanksgiving dinner only costs about 2 hours and 22 minutes of work. Indeed, the ‘problem’ is the opposite. An estimated 45 million people are trying hard to eat less and spend $33 billion annually on products to help them do so.  To fully appreciate the material blessing of the holidays — access to food and good health care and the absence of widespread material privation and death — you have to throw yourself back in time.”

https://tucker.liberty.me/lets-talk-about-the-plague/

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The War On Terror Has Cost Taxpayers $1.7 Trillion

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“According to data compiled by the Mercatus Center citing the Congressional Research Service, the cost of global ‘War on Terror’ operations (including both Afghanistan and Iraq) since 2001 had reached about $1.6 trillion by FY2014. When war funding approved by Congress for FY2015 is taken into account, the total reaches $1.7 trillion. The majority of that funding, some $1.562 trillion, has been allocated to the Department of Defense. The ‘War on Terror’ is proving extremely expensive compared to past military campaigns. Putting the cost into context, the bill for the Vietnam War comes to about $686 billion when adjusted for inflation.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/03/the-war-on-terror-has-cost-taxpayers-1-7-trillion-infographic/

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