SAR #14230

Bombing people has not been as profitable as we were told it would be. Demetrius

 
Leaderslip: Missouri's Lt Gov. thinks that the situation in Ferguson calls for “Anglo-American justice,” not racial protests, while the state's GOP head thinks having a voter registration drive during the civil unrest is “disgusting”. Others see a similarity between the violence in Ferguson and the resistance to apartheid in South Africa and suggest the state should take some pointers from the way Egypt was able to enforce decorum in Cairo. The real story is not about race, it is about slavery and about inequality. No matter what the underlying dynamics, shoplifting is not supposed to carry the death penalty. 
 
Travel Planning: A volcano growing under an Icelandic glacier should be taken into consideration as you plan your fall shopping trip to the continent. 
 
Headline$: The US stock market rose on the prospect of reason prevailing in the Ukraine and Dollar General gobbling up the competition, while housing prices in London plunged sharply and Barclays predicted a modest 1% gain for the S&P this year. House prices fell throughout China as demand dissolved. 
 
Bonus Points: One of the best things about being white is that your child has a much smaller chance of being killed by a cop. 
 
From The Sideline: Yale's Robert Shiller says that “the United States stock market looks very expensive right now,” and points to his home-made CAPE ratio. During the last century the ratio averaged about 15, and it now stands at 25 – a level that has only been reached three times in the last 130 years: 1929, 1999, and 2007. Which, according to Shiller, makes this “an unusual period.”

Wages of War: War is a huge money loser, at least war between nations. Civil wars in the preindustrial world can be profitable and most often resemble turf wars between competing criminal elements or are simply the byproduct of a couple of international giants competing for local resources, which is much the same thing. One reason the big boys keep playing at war is that the leadership – George in Iraq and Putin in Ukraine – simply can't or won't do the math. But more often wars result from the domestic needs of the politicians. Getting and keeping power trumps international peace.