3 Months Later, Here's What Denver Looks Like Since Legalizing Marijuana

Three months following Colorado's decision to legalize the production, sale, possession and use of recreational marijuana — a vote that Denver city officials including Mayor Michael Hancock, among others, fought kicking and screaming — guess what's happened to Denver crime rates in 2014? According to new data, they've fallen across the board. Property crime is down 14.6% compared to the same period in 2013. Violent crimes are down 2.4%. (Arson is up 109% from the same period, but represents just 23 of 3,757 crimes — so if you want to blame every count on smouldering doobies, whatever.) As the Huffington Post notes, this is a far cry from wild-eyed claims of Amendment 64 opponents that legal weed was the devil's work and Colorado would see a surge in crime and drug use. "Expect more crime, more kids using marijuana and pot for sale everywhere," said Douglas County Sheriff David Weaver in 2012. "I think our entire state will pay the price." Gov. John Hickenlooper said " MORE @ http://www.policymic.com/articles/87383/3-months-later-here-s-what-denver-looks-like-since-legalizing-marijuana

Germany shuts scheme for young unemployed because of overwhelming demand

Germany said on Monday it would no longer accept applications for a programme to attract young Europeans to its job market due to overwhelming demand from crisis-ravaged countries.
The labour ministry said it had been flooded with interest from job-seekers particularly from struggling Spain and Hungary for the scheme offering subsidized job training, apprenticeships and work in fields lacking manpower.
"Currently we cannot meet the demand" for the programme, called "The Job of My Life", a labour ministry spokeswoman told reporters.
Germany, Europe's top economy, faced criticism from its EU partners for an approach to the eurozone debt crisis that placed a strong emphasis on fiscal discipline, which has been blamed for exacerbating the economic impact among ts weakest members.
Source and full story: The Local (Germany), 14 April 2014

CBO Issues Dire Debt Warning of 'Fiscal Crisis'

by Wynton Hall

New figures by the Congressional Budget Office released on Monday reveal that over the next 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will double to 78%.

Over the last four decades America's average debt-to-GDP ratio was 39%. At the end of 2007, federal debt was just 35% of GDP.
The CBO report says gross federal debt will soar from $17.7 trillion to $27 trillion over the next ten years.
CBO warned of the dire consequences the nation's debt will have if gone unchecked.
"Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences," says the report. "Federal spending on interest payments would increase considerably when interest rates rose to more typical levels. Moreover, because federal borrowing would eventually raise the cost of investment by businesses and other entities, the capital stock would be smaller, and productivity and wages lower, than if federal borrowing was more limited."
The report added: "Finally, high debt increases the risk of a fiscal crisis in which investors would lose so much confidence in the government's ability to manage its budge that the government would be unable to borrow at affordable rates."

This Chart Shows Us How Bad The Economy Really Is: “Flashing Red Warning”

Recent weeks have led to a fairly significant drop in stock valuations, with many expert analysts struggling to figure out exactly why it’s happening. You’ll hear them cite the weather, or market overreaction, or any number of reasons for why stocks have seen their share prices reduced and why they’ll be rebounding in the near-term.
What they won’t show you on mainstream financial channels is what’s really happening behind the scenes.
Forget about all the minute-by-minute noise for a moment and take a look at the following chart. It gives a very simple overview of earnings growth trends for stocks listed on the S&P 500 on a quarterly basis.
Last year saw what analysts would call fairly robust growth, and they had no problem citing these numbers for evidence of economic recovery.
We’re curious what they’d call it now, considering this chart shows a massive collapse in earnings per share growth across the board.
Pay close attention to that yellow line, which indicates growth (or lack there of) for the first quarter of 2014. According to Zero Hedge this is a Flashing Red Warning as earnings growth plunges to its lowest levels since 2012:

While the so-called “experts” were adamant in repeating that one must ignore all Q1 economic data (because of harsh weather you know), one thing the same “experts” pounded the table on was the earnings growth in 2014 which confirmed that the Fed was correct in tapering and that the corporate sector was well on its way to achieving “escape velocity” and a stable recovery. And then this happened…

(Chart via @Not_Jim_Cramer)

Most people, when you ask them how the economy is doing, will point to the Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P 500 as evidence of a healthy recovery.
What the majority of those people fail to look at is the underlying valuations for the stocks within those indexes.
If you are an investor and hold stocks, or are thinking about jumping in because this latest “correction” is about to take a turn for the better, we direct your attention to this absolutely critical piece of information regarding price-per-earnings from Karl Denninger of Market Ticker.

A bit of perspective is in order here.  The number of stocks that have been trading on nothing more than QE-addled leverage, with nosebleed territory P/Es including Facebook (96), Amazon (537!), Netflix (180), LinkedIn (762), Salesforce (Negative P/E) and Twitter (ditto; -$3.41 EPS.)
Yeah, but the market is “cheap”, right?  Sure it is with all these big-cap techs trading at prices like this…
…
There is only one reason to buy such a stock — you’re convinced that some other sucker will pay you an even greater multiple to sales (say much less earnings) than you paid.
That the air will eventually come out of such a market is inevitable.

The P/E ratio of a stock is basically the price of the stock compared to the earnings of said share. In the case of Amazon trading at 537 times earnings, this is an INCREDIBLE number considering most conservative financial advisers recommend dividend earning stocks in the 10 – 12 P/E range for investment purposes. In essence, the easiest way to interpret Amazon today is that an investor is willing to pay $537 for $1 in current earnings. So, investors who bought Amazon stock at its current price should see a return on that investment… in about 537 years (give or take)  at current earnings.
Yes, that’s how crazy the stock market is right now, and Amazon is certainly not alone insofar as over-valuation is concerned.
Couple that with the earning growth chart above and you can clearly see that we are in very dangerous territory here.
And this doesn’t even take into account the economic warfare playing out between East and West, where Russia has now announced it will be actively pursuing a strategy to decouple its resource trade from the US dollar, meaning it will now trade in local currencies as opposed to the world’s traditional reserve currency.

As this new form of warfare plays out by the worlds super powers, all monetary systems will be affected. So how is this going to affect you? These effects will cause a continued degradation of the U.S. dollar with the real possibility that China and Russia will stop funding our debt. If and when this happens, the-you-know-what will inevitably hit the fan. 

As Paul Craig Roberts noted recently, there is a reckoning coming and all evidence points to economic failure in 2014.
Or, we can all just go along with the prevailing narrative and pretend like happy days are here again.
The following song was released shortly after the 1929 stock market crash before anyone had realized its implications. It reassured Americans that “Your cares and troubles are gone… there’ll be no more from now on.”
We know how that ended up…

Gasoline Prices Soar!! 4.59 A Gallon and spreading across U.S.

They couldn’t wait…with more unrest ukraine and OTHER EXCUSES…

If California’s economy does begin to suffer from high gasoline prices, several other regions will not be far behind. In New York, Chicago, Miami and other large cities, the average price for a gallon of regular has passed above $3.75 and shows little evidence of moderating. The “California gas problem” has already started to spread aggressively. The price of an average gallon of regular is above $3.60 in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, New York, Illinois and California. Among them, these states have well over a third of the U.S. population

http://www.gasbuddy.com/GB_Map_Gas_Prices.aspx?c=San%20Diego&s=CA

Gonviral

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Americans are losing faith in the political system

 

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By Daniel Lovering
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders warned that a growing number of Americans were losing faith in the political system at a New Hampshire site that often hosts presidential primary debates. But he said he is “many, many months” away from deciding on a White House run.
Liberal independent Sanders, 72, covered a raft of issues in an hour-long speech before taking questions from an audience of about 220 people at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, New Hampshire.


“What exists all over America today is that millions and millions and millions of people – working people, low income people, young people – they look at the political process and they say, ‘Not for me,’” Sanders said in a speech that touched on the widening wealth and income gap in the United States, national security, health care and climate change.
“There are a lot of angry people out there.”
Earlier in the week, Sanders told his hometown Burlington Free Press newspaper that if he were to run for president in 2016, it would be important to perform well in the neighboring New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation nominating primary.
On Saturday he said he still had “plenty of time” to make up his mind on whether to run.
“We’re giving thought about it, but we’ve got many, many months,” he said in an interview.
Sanders would face an uphill battle were he to seek the Democratic nomination or run as an independent. Polls show former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has not yet said whether she will run in 2016, as the undisputed front-runner with about five times the support of Vice President Joe Biden, her closest potential challenger.
High school history teacher Branden Grant, 27, said he drove 100 miles from Pomfret, Connecticut, to hear Sanders speak.
“He’s very authentic and sticks to his word and fights the good fight,” Grant said. “I like what Bernie says.”
But Richard Polonsky, 68, of Bedford, New Hampshire, said he doubted Sanders would have a shot at the White House.
“I would be surprised if he would have a chance of winning, even though I think he should,” Polonsky said. “It’s a tough road at this point.”
Even Sanders had more immediate goals, urging voters to support Democratic candidates in the 2014 Congressional election, to help the party he is most closely allied with hold its 55-43 majority in the upper chamber.
“The first thing we have to do is make sure the Republicans do not gain control over the Senate,” said Sanders, who is not up for re-election this year. “I’ll be working very hard on it.”
(Editing by Scott Malone and Gunna Dickson)

America: Freedom to Fascism - Full.