Post your comments and questions for July, 2016.

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71 Comments

  1. Catherine,

    How do I see your full comments on each news article on the blog. I see the links to the articles and a few words or comments but not your full comment

    1. Brian:

      I don’t comment on the Top Picks website. The few notes you see are posted there as an identifier. I comment on the most important in Money & Markets which publishes late on Thursday evenings every week but the last week of the month. We post the notes to Money & Markets, so you can skim them to see what I mentioned or listen to the audio.

      Feel free to post any question on the Top Picks. Brad Eddins is our Top Picks editor. Scanning the news daily is a critical part of understanding the deeper trends that rolls up into the quarterly and annual wrap ups.

      Catherine

    1. Note all of these events follow immediately after the Turkish deal with Israel announced in Rome.

  3. FYI, Catherine. So many people could have access to homemade pain killers (i.e. legal marijuana) if states granted legal access to plants that people could grow at home…..and they wouldn’t be subjecting themselves to highly addictive and dangerous opioids. Of course, this market would have to be highly regulated to minimize abuse, IMO.

    Chad

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/one-striking-chart-shows-why-pharma-companies-are-fighting-legal-marijuana/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_2_na

    1. How do you prevent the regulators from becoming more dangerous that the drugs?

      1. In some ways, I want this comment area to be like ZeroHedge where I can push the either like or dislike button. LOL! When you consider the pharmaceutical company insistence on addiction to THEIR drugs, I have always felt that there might be a year or so of ridiculous over-intake of marijuana, but after that silly period, the waistoids (who were already in that class) would remain there and others would shake themselves out of the “we haven’t done anything for months” situation. Much like becoming a widow and dealing with grief… at some point, and I have a lot of experience in this, you kick yourself and start doing something useful to society (let alone to yourself). Simply taking the huge profit out of the drugs and putting them in a taxable (TRANSPARENT) situation will benefit all. You won’t be smoking dope in the confines of your home with only your dealer knowing about it, everyone will. Digest that.

        BTW, here is another Netflix documentary to show what is happening in Colorado, especially as it relates to THC regulations… “High Profits”. Check it out.

        Jane

  4. Catherine,
    I’m a little confused by your question. Dangerous to whom? Dangerous to an individual, the agency, and/or the country? Dangerous in what way? Also, to me, there is a distinction between a regulator and a law enforcement officer. The regulator is a civilian within a regulatory agency and the officer is in the enforcement section of the agency.

    I guess the short answer would be to follow good government guidelines like transparency, good hiring practices, strong ethics guidelines, enforcement of the law, legitimate accounting, etc. For instance, I am surprised at the number of agencies who have weak background investigations of their prospective employees. Many investigations are farmed out to contractors. How good are they? Do we want private entities with intimate knowledge of government employees? I don’t see that working out that well.

    We would also have to remove private money from our elections, except for a relatively small amount per person. If donating entity is not an actual living person, then there can not be a donation.

    Generally speaking, regulators, which includes the attorneys and technical personnel, should be paid well with good benefits, not be able to use the revolving door, and be punished severely, if they abuse their office. This especially goes for high level bureaucrats in agencies and judges.

    I don’t know all the answers and I’m not under an illusion that we can have a corruption free government agency, but we can certainly model the systems that appear to work. I haven’t done so, but perhaps looking at Portugal would be a good start or perhaps the states that have already legalized marijuana.

    Chad

    P.S. I think Martin Armstrong’s idea creating a Roman Tribune like position that would be empowered to investigate any higher level government official would be good for our government, in general. IGs within agencies should be given stronger powers. We should also have term limits and one and done restrictions on political positions.

  5. Catherine,
    One of THE things that would stop so many bad things would be for all of us to understand psychopathy, figure out a way to stop it, and rehabilitate their enablers and victims. It sounds like you have already had encounters with a psychopath or two. Have you studied the subject much?

    Chad

  6. Your recommendation looks very interesting; I will check it out.

    I’m interested in all aspects of the subject. Certainly, understanding it and its relationship with political power is very important, but I also like to look at it from other points of view. If the guardians (i.e. police) had a full understanding of the subject, we probably would have less psychopaths who get hired as officers, less officers would be killed, operations and investigations would be more successful, and relations between police and society would be better.

    Dr. Robert Hare’s, “Without Conscience, the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us”, is a good one.

    Stefan Verstappen has some interesting interviews on the subject on youtube from a layman’s perspective.

  7. Your USA Watchdog interview was very good — it was clear, succinct, transparent and gave quick short answers to some of the questions that the candidates and electorate should be considering. Have you considered publishing it in a small booklet that people could give to their friends, etc, as questions for voters to consider? The time is right, and there are not many short documents that provide a lot of short insightful answers to questions many people have not thought to ask.

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