Sober Realist

What Stories Aren't Being Told?

AND THE #1 STORY IS:
We are on board a freight train to civilization's collapse due to entrapment in a consumption-based economic model based on unsustainable perpetual growth.

Lots of other stories, but they pale in comparison or are somehow related to the one I just mentioned. You mentioned one factor of the freight train story:
"Water shortages in China and India."

Here are the other major monsters bearing down on us:

-the 6th mass extinction ocurring right now:
www.austinchronicle.co...

-peak oil:
www.propertyinvesting....

-climate change
www.youtube.com/watch?...

-overpopulation:
globalextinction.org/E...

What Stories Aren't Being Told?

"MSM works on advertising revenue. MSM media copies formats which attract the most viewers. most viewers do not want real news. this is why we watch CNBC over Bloomberg, Fox over CNN, BBC over Al Jazeera."
...and all of them over Democracy Now/Link TV. I've found it to be a window into unvarnished truth.

Ritholtz, Ratigan Take on the 'Giant Vampire Squid'

Or we could start referring to our government as a "GSOE" - Goldman Sachs Owned Enterprise.

Ritholtz, Ratigan Take on the 'Giant Vampire Squid'

We'll be rehashing this same sh*t next year. Why don't we just rename out country GS of A.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"Foreclosures reach new high.
"Despite everybody's best efforts to date we're not really making any headway against the problem," said Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac."

I'm still sticking to 2015 for a recovery as stated here:
seekingalpha.com/user/...

America: The Land of the Fleece Scam

Here's an interesting article explaining in detail 6 major ways the taxpayer is being taken to the cleaner:

1. By overpaying for its TARP investments, the Treasury Department provided bailout recipients with generous subsidies at the taxpayer's expense.

2. As the government has no real oversight over bailout funds, taxpayers remain in the dark about how their money has been used and if it has made any difference.

3. The bailout's newer programs heavily favor the private sector, giving investors an opportunity to earn lucrative profits and leaving taxpayers with most of the risk.

4. The government has no coherent plan for returning failing financial institutions to profitability and maximizing returns on taxpayers' investments.

5. The bailout's focus on Wall Street mega-banks ignores smaller banks serving millions of American taxpayers that face an equally uncertain future.

6. The bailout encourages the very behaviors that created the economic crisis in the first place instead of overhauling our broken financial system and helping the individuals most affected by the crisis.

www.alternet.org/modul...

USA Today: What Happens When Investment Bankers Run a Country

Ettu,
They won't bring about any change at all. Read the link in the article:
www.buffalobeast.com/1...

USA Today: What Happens When Investment Bankers Run a Country

The IMF says that if you covered up the name of the country in question (USA), then our current situation could be mistaken for one often seen in an emerging market --- private sector oligarchs who get in bed with the political system of the country, overleverage themselves, and bring down the country's economy. In our case, it's the financial oligarchs who have perpetrated a coup on our government.

The Ultimate Risk of Government Influence Over the Private Sector (Part 2)

Good article. You have shown how the system is fundamentally broken. Sadly, the status quo will be upheld at all costs and this dysfunctional system will slumber along to its own demise. When our standard of living has gone completely down the tube, then people will finally wake up to what has happened. As pointed out above, the "slack in the system" is taut right now and will eventually break.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Why does anybody even still say, "when the economy recovers...."? This phrase should no longered be uttered in any sentence in any context. How about, "when the economy stabalizes to its newer, smaller, anorexic state." This would be a more apt statement.