AMERICA'S PENSION BOMB

Unfortunately, the state of Illinois doesn't have a monopoly on ignorant politicians...they're everywhere.  And, since the end of World War II, those ignorant politicians have been promising American Baby Boomers more and more entitlements while never collecting nearly enough money to cover them all...it's all been a massive state-sponsored scam.
As we've noted frequently before, some of the largest of the many entitlement 'scams' in this country are America's public pension funds.  Up until now, these public pension have been covered by stealing money set aside for future generations to cover current claims...it's a ponzi scheme of epic proportions...$5-$8 trillion to be exact.

FAILURE OF PAN-ARAB NATIONALISM

Arab nation-states are now failing in the Middle East, and though their failure is primarily due to their governments’ inability to create viable political economies, transnational issues—especially the competition between the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam, as well as the struggle within the Sunni Arab realm—are expediting the process.

FROM HORRIFIC TO CATASTROPHIC

Court ruling sends Illinois into the financial abyss.

$217,000,000,000,000 IN DEBT

Global debt levels have surged to a record $217 trillion in the first quarter of the year. This is 327 percent of the world’s annual economic output (GDP), reports the Institute of International Finance (IIF).

 The surging debt was driven by emerging economies, which have increased borrowing by $3 trillion to $56 trillion. This amounts to 218 percent of their combined economic output, five percentage points greater year on year.

INSULTING CANADIANS

NP:  By the same token, aboriginal activists should try to remember that the Canadian public to whom their appeals for reconciliation and justice are ultimately addressed, often in peremptory language, is not a faceless line of Jeffrey Amherst clones and abusive residential school staff. A great many of us, or our ancestors, came here fleeing oppression and sometimes encountered it on arrival too, and have long tales of historical woe of our own about which nothing can ever be done.

CORRUPTION THAT BUILT A COUNTRY

A young Canada was knitted into a nation by an explosion of late-19th century railroad-building. But the part that never makes it into Gordon Lightfoot ballads is just how incredibly sleazy the whole thing was.
“The level of corruption in the Canadian political process of the period, especially under the auspices of John A. Macdonald, is truly astounding even to the cynic,” wrote the historian R.T. Naylor in The History of Canadian Business, 1867-1914.

CANADA'S 150TH

Rex Murphy:  Celebrating Canadian unity keeps us strong.