[CAF Note: Last week Jin Zengmin was the Solari Hero, for challenging a local politician to swim in the polluted rivers in China. This week another activist, Chen Yugian, spoke out online against t…

By Skylar Bergl

Venture capital was a who-you-know business, until AngelList made a mass introduction. Like online dating, its transparent network connects startups with accredited investors, and n…

By John Hooper

By any standards, and whatever happens, Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement (M5S) have emerged from Italy’s general election as big winners.

Because of the way the electoral sys…

By William Selway & Michael C. Bender

Federal budget cuts will probably push the U.S. back into recession by damaging states’ economies recovering from the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Dep…

[CAF Note: This article persuaded me to significantly increase my Vitamin D intake starting over the holidays. The results have been both positive and dramatic. Hmmm…..]

By Jeff Bowles

I have neve…

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Solari Quote Du Jour

By Jack Healy

After enduring last summer’s destructive drought, farmers, ranchers and officials across the parched Western states had hoped that plentiful winter snows would replenish the ground …

By Dave Smith

Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner have teamed up to create the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, which now offers the most lucrative annual prize in the history…

Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the highest documented incar…

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Sting on Wikipedia

Official Website

Introduction from Catherine Austin Fitts:

I wanted our readers to have this case study that embodies a robust selection of the criminal and civil violations visited upon homebuyers and homeowners in…

By Cha Cha

As a high school or college graduate, you’re really excited to leave your parents behind and move out into your own place. You find a decent apartment at a reasonable price, and you prep…

By Catherine O’Driscoll

A team at Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine conducted several studies 1,2 to determine if vaccines can cause changes in the immune system of dogs that might le…

By Age of Autism

Three controversial television films suppressed as part of the continued persecution of Andrew Wakefield are now available to watch on YouTube. The drama ‘Hear the Silence’ sta…

Fiscal Cliff Video
MP4

This Solari Story, “The Fiscal Cliff and Gun Control”, is the first of many brief and insightful videos that Catherine will be releasing throughout the year. Che…

By Bernie Becker

The House Ways and Means Committee formally announced 11 separate working groups they hope will push the ball forward on tax reform.

The working groups will not be charged with craf…

By The Economist

WHEN THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT, a sister organisation of this newspaper, published the first bound edition of “Tax Havens and Their Uses” in 1975, a queue several blocks …

By English.News.cn

China will proactively introduce a set of new taxation policies designed to preserve the environment, including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, according to a senior official wi…

By Julia Werdigier

Novartis, one of Switzerland’s biggest drug makers, said Tuesday it scrapped a planned $78 million payment to its departing chairman because of pressure from shareholders and l…

By Sam Byford

3D printers are getting smaller and cheaper all the time, but they’re still not exactly mainstream. The 3Doodler is an attempt to change that — it’s a small pen-style device that it…

By Rebecca Christie & Ben Moshinsky

The European Union failed to seal a deal on Basel bank rules after disagreeing on bonuses, capital requirements for big lenders and disclosure of profit and tax …

A provider of “realistic” shooting targets to the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies has created a line of “non-traditional threat” targets that include pregnant wome…

“One person can make a difference and every person should try.” ~ John F. Kennedy

About Presidents’ Day

[Note from CAF: This is both a phenomenon and verb that is very useful to have available on the tip of your tongue these days!]

From Wikipedia

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which…

By Suzan Mazur

“We know the abiotic world is very good at making amino acids. Abiotically produced amino acids are literally raining down on our heads, in meteors. It is difficult to imagine a pr…

[click on the image for a larger version]

By Halia Pavliva

The Moscow Exchange’s $498 million debut on Russian markets will probably fail in enticing companies to list exclusively on the bourse, …

The Inventioneers are a group of young entrepreneurs inventing tomorrow’s solutions today! Their “why not’ philosophy has led to four provisional patents and one utility patent (pending). Thei…

[click on the image for a larger version]

By By Sara Gates

While China’s air pollution has reached hazardous levels in some major cities, chemical pollutants in the air are hardly the only proble…

By Gretchen Morgenson

MANY people became rightfully upset about bailouts given to big banks during the mortgage crisis. But it turns out that they are still going on, if more quietly, through the bac…

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Ben Carson on Wikipedia

By Philip Pullella

Pope Benedict’s decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him…

By Jan Strupczewski and Lesley Wroughton

G20 officials will disregard key parts of a currency statement issued this week by the Group of Seven powers, according to a communiqué drafted for financ…

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” ~ C.S. Lewis

By Kristen Linton

Valentin…

By Seed Daily

Two of the most widely used nanoparticles (NPs) accumulate in soybeans – second only to corn as a key food crop in the United States – in ways previously shown to have the potential t…

By Pat Garofalo

Last year, economist Emmanuel Saez estimated that the richest 1 percent of the U.S. captured a whopping 93 percent of the income gains in 2010, as the U.S. was emerging from the Gre…

By BBC News

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso made the announcement following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

A deal would bring down trading barriers between …

We would like to wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year, as we welcome in the Year of the Snake!

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Chinese New Year on Wikipedia

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address to the nation tonight. What’s he going to say? You’ll have to tune in to WhiteHouse.gov to watch the enhanced livestream at 9 p.m. EST and find …

Check out Bloomberg’s finance website dedicated to new energy sources and sustainable solutions!

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

The debate, between both the main participants and many of those who have left comments, is running on two tracks. One argument has developed about the nitty-gritty of shale-gas extraction. What the i…

By The Economist

SMALLISH countries are often in the vanguard when it comes to reforming government. In the 1980s Britain was out in the lead, thanks to Thatcherism and privatisation. Tiny Singapor…

By David Chance and Jack Kim

The reclusive North said the test was an act of self-defense against “U.S. hostility” and threatened further, stronger steps if necessary.

It said the test had “greate…

We had a great discussion at the Money, Magic, & Consciousness panel moderated by Kimberly Carter Gamble at the Consciousness Life Expo this morning in Los Angeles.

There were many participants i…

By Chiara Vasarri & Flavia Krause-Jackson

Pope Benedict XVI, saying he no longer has the strength to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, will resign from the papacy at the end of the month, t…

By John R. Emshwiller

The Department of Energy is proposing to allow the sale of tons of scrap metal from government nuclear sites—an attempt to reduce waste that critics say could lead to radiatio…

By Jonathan Benson

A new vaccine for influenza has hit the market, and it is the first ever to contain genetically-modified (GM) proteins derived from insect cells. According to reports, the U.S. F…

By Catherine Austin Fitts

In 1987, I rented a magical apartment in a brownstone on Manhattan’s West Side next to Central Park. Full of fireplaces, wood paneling and tall ceilings, my picture window…

By Sarah Mervosh

Thousands are expected to attend next week’s memorial service for Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, who died Saturday when a veteran he was trying to help allegedly turned a gun on hi…

By Barbara Pruitt

The newest installment of the Kauffman Sketchbook video series tells the great American success story of an immigrant entrepreneur who starts with very little yet achieves great t…

By Max Raskin & Jasmine Zhao

The number of foreigners who have purchased green cards by investing in the U.S. has exploded in the last decade.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows approved applications for …

By Charles Mead and Matt Robinson

Fifteen months after Harold “Terry” McGraw III sparked a $4.6 billion stock gain at McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP) with a plan to focus the business on its Standard & …

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Article on Wikipedia

By Vincent Ryan

Like the entrepreneurs on Kickstarter trying to raise money to sell hot-chocolate cubes, cut an album, or manufacture a wireless dive-log device for scuba divers, later-stage private …

By Damien Gayle

UK spy agencies want to install ‘black box’ surveillance devices across the country’s communications networks to monitor internet use, it emerged today.

A report by an influential …

By Eric Engleman

International proposals to control the Internet will continue after a United Nations conference in Dubai and the U.S. should be ready to fight such efforts, lawmakers and a regulator…

[CAF Note: Bill Cosby used to have a comedy routine about medics. Referring to a military landing, he quipped that their life expectancy from the time they hit the water to the time they almost got t…

By Margaret Collins

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) is giving its wealthiest clients the chance to invest in the single-family rental market after other investments linked to the U.S. housing recovery j…

By David E Sanger

A secret legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United …

On Wikipedia

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a proposed law in the United States which would allow for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. govern…

By Jeff Eisenhauer

Harbin is one of the most genuinely unique places in China. Though it’s known for its annual ice festival, the city has many other marvels like a huge tiger park and a train that…

By Ovetta Wiggins

A proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesso…

By CBS News

The U.S. government is expected to file civil charges against Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, alleging that it fraudulently gave high ratings to mortgage debt that later plunged in va…

by Jon Rappoport

By liberals, I simply mean those people who accept big government as a given, regardless of their political affiliation.

And yes, at certain key levels, they are a club. They come f…