Reality Bytes

mAlice grows when Banks don't fund the economy but become the economy.

European astronauts could hitch a ride into orbit aboard Chinese spacecraft before the end of the decade, a senior official at the European Space Agency said Tuesday at the agency's Paris headquarters. In 2003, China became only the third nation to launch a human into orbit after Russia and the United States.

Note that only countries with large centralized governments have the wherewithal to enable space enterprise. Neither Russia nor China are considered developed economies, as they are not included in the OECD. So the number two economy in the world (China) is considered a developing economy, although it is far ahead of most of the so-called "developed" economies.
  
Bloomberg:  Fed Seen Starting QE3 While Extending Rate Pledge to 2015.

Washington Post Census: Middle class shrinks to an all-time low.

Bloomberg: Oil Trades Near Three-Week High on Mideast Protests, Fed Meeting.

These threee items are considered unrelated. But high oil prices, low interest rates on savings and the Fed artificially bolstering asset prices to maintain the stock market at an unsustainable level that in no way corresponds with the income-generating potential of its listed companies, while the middle class gets inexorably smaller, are all very much related.

Bloomberg: Shadow Bankers Vanishing Leave China Victims Seeing Scams.

Something called shadow banking, notoriously responsible for the free-for-all conditions that precipitated a global financial catastrophe, might involve scamming innocent citizens to skim their savings into the coffers of bureaubrats and tycoons? Who could'a seen that?

WSJ: IMF Official: Greece Will Need Third Bailout.

 Greece? or Europe?  
  
Uzbekistan is warning Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that their plans to build dams on rivers upstream of Uzbekistan could lead to war.

zerohedge: we are amused by the media's narrative that an entire continent can suddenly come to arms against Pax Americana over a YouTube clip, we are confident that what some hate-mongering preacher has to say about Mohammed is about as relevant to what is happening in the Middle East today, as how the global economy performs impacts the S&P.


Pax? Shouldn't it be Bellus Americanus?


 Weary of Crisis, but Wary of Change
By JAMES KANTER and STEPHEN CASTLE:

A proposal to give the European Union more control over banking has stirred up dissent from countries that have doubts about the plan's practicality.


Wouldn't that be all of them?

Deputy Director of the Gulf Restoration Network, Aaron Viles, offered a pointed critique. “Isaac’s aftermath shows that BP’s oil is still in the Gulf, and that the Coast Guard should never have allowed BP to stand-down cleanup efforts along Louisiana’s hard-hit coast.”

Dean Baker, Research: “The excessive salaries of top corporate executives are not a just a problem because they pull money away from the corporations they run. They also set a pattern of compensation across the economy. It is now common for heads of universities and even charities (not to mention high-placed government officials, specifically lifetime generals who've never seen a battlefield) to get million dollar compensation packages, pointing out that they would receive much more if they ran a comparably sized company.”

May 25, 2012 – Robert Lowrey is a Reporter and Anchor for KQ2 News and joined the team in September 2011. Robert joins us from Cincinnati, OH  ... I wish they'd told me.

National Defense Authorization Act authorizes military detention for people deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces." 

Does that include the US intelligence agencies that founded al Qaeda and supported them with arms, or the Bush Administration which, not 6 months prior to 9/11, entertained Taliban officials in the White House and gave $45 million to the Taliban?

*FED TO BUY $40B MBS MONTHLY, CONTINUE `OPERATION TWIST'

*FED TO BUY MBS, EXTENDS ZERO-RATE POLICY INTO 2015

 All to assure that the middle class continues to shrink, to keep the price of oil from getting too high while simultaneously maintaining the fiction of its abundance. No peak oil production here, folks. Just because every single one of the conditions predicted by those who warned of its ramifications is evident today. The only thing that obviated an actual shortage was a global economic depression and the resultant collapse in demand it precipitated.

WSJ: Footnote to Financial Crisis: More People Shun the Bank 

This will only get worse. They shun Ameritrade, and E*Trade as well, since, as MFGlobal proved: once in their hands, it's not your money, its theirs. And if not for the drug trade, and the fortunes they rake in doing Drug Tsars' laundry, banks would be in much worse financial trouble than they are.