On July 1, interest rates will double for millions of students -- from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent -- unless Congress acts; and the legislative fixes on the table are largely just compromises. Only one proposal promises real relief -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren's "Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act." This...

"[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors' accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed."

--Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, "Caveat Depositor"

The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not...

Cyprus-style confiscation of depositor funds has been called the "new normal."  Bail-in policies are appearing in multiple countries directing failing TBTF banks to convert the funds of "unsecured creditors" into capital; and those creditors, it turns out, include ordinary depositors. Even "secured" creditors, including state and local governments, may be...

Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone troika officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these...

"If these worries become really serious... [s]mall savers will take their money out of banks and resort to household safes and a shotgun." -- Martin Hutchinson on the attempted EU raid on deposits in Cyprus banks

The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making.  U.S. depositors could...

Comedian Beppe Grillo was surprised himself when his Five Star Movement got 8.7 million votes in the Italian general election of Feb. 24-25. His movement is now the biggest single party in the chamber of deputies, says The Guardian, which makes him "a kingmaker in a hung parliament."

Grillo's...

Quantitative easing (QE) is supposed to stimulate the economy by adding money to the money supply, increasing demand. But so far, it hasn't been working. Why not? Because as practiced for the last two decades, QE does not actually increase the circulating money supply. It merely cleans up the toxic...

As Congress struggles through one budget crisis after another, it is becoming increasingly evident that austerity doesn't work. We cannot possibly pay off a $16 trillion debt by tightening our belts, slashing public services, and raising taxes. Historically, when the deficit has been reduced, the money supply has been...

The trillion-dollar coin actually represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity ever conceived: the creation of money by sovereign governments, debt-free. 

Last week on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart characterized the proposal that the White House circumvent the debt ceiling by minting a trillion-dollar coin...

In a shameless display of putting politics before human needs, Congress began 2013 still scrapping over a $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill fully nine weeks after the disaster hit. And if the Katrina experience is any indication, the bill may not bring adequate relief to struggling and displaced homeowners...

The "fiscal cliff" has all the earmarks of a false flag operation, full of sound and fury, intended to extort concessions from opponents.  Neil Irwin of The Washington Post calls it "a self-induced austerity crisis." David Weidner in The Wall Street Journal calls it simply theater, designed to...

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the Bank of Scotland have been pillars of Scotland's economy and culture for over three centuries. So when the RBS was nationalized by the London-based UK government following the 2008 banking crisis, and the Bank of Scotland was acquired by the London-based Lloyds Bank,...

In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth...

QE3, the Federal Reserve's third round of quantitative easing, is so open-ended that it is being called QE Infinity. Doubts about its effectiveness are surfacing even on Wall Street, as the Financial Times reports:

Among the trading rooms and floors of Connecticut and Mayfair [in London], supposedly sophisticated money...

The economy could use a good dose of "aggregate demand" -- new spending money in the pockets of consumers -- but QE3 won't do it.  Neither will it trigger the dreaded hyperinflation.  In fact, it won't do much at all.  There are better alternatives.

The Fed's announcement on...

Japan's massive government debt conceals massive benefits for the Japanese people, with lessons for the U.S. debt "crisis."

In an April 2012 article in Forbes titled "If Japan Is Broke, How Is It Bailing Out Europe?", Eamonn Fingleton pointed out the Japanese government was by far the largest...

Two landmark developments on Aug. 16 give momentum to the growing interest of cities and counties in addressing the mortgage crisis using eminent domain:

1. The Washington State Supreme Court held in Bain v. MERS, et al., that an electronic database called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) is...

On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at its National Convention in Minneapolis to investigate establishing a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important to the effort to save the public Post Office...

On Friday, June 29, German Chancellor Angela Merkel acquiesced to changes to a permanent Eurozone bailout fund -- "before the ink was dry," as critics complained. Besides easing the conditions under which bailouts would be given, the concessions included an agreement that funds intended for indebted governments could be

The problem is all inside your head she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

-- Lyrics by Paul Simon

The...