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Last week, I received news from a contact who is friends with one of the biggest billionaire shipping families in the world. He told me they had no ships at sea right now, because operating them meant running at a loss. This weekend, reports are circulating saying much the same thing: The North Atlantic has little or no cargo ships traveling in its waters. Instead, they are anchored. Unmoving. Empty.

U.S.stocks closed lower in light volume trade Thursday, the last day of 2015, despite some stabilization in oil prices. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrial average both ended lower for the year, their worst since 2008. The Nasdaq composite closed up more than 5.5 percent for the year as biotech stocks and major tech names outperformed. The Russell 2000 and Dow transports also had their worst year since 2008. Selling accelerated into the close, with the Dow closing about 180 points lower. The Nasdaq composite fell more than 1 percent as Apple declined nearly 2 percent. The S&P 500...

Please pray for my brother tonight as he checks himself into the hospital for alcohol abuse. He recently lost his job while at the same time celebrating the birth of his third child. He feels lost and inadequate.

Over the past year we have regularly contended that a far greater threat to the global economy than either corporate earnings, currency devaluations, rate cuts (or hikes), reserve outflow, or even the stock market, is the sudden, global trade crunch which has been deteriorating rapidly since late 2014 and has seen an even more dramatic drop off as 2015 is winding down. Actually, that is incorrect: global trade is merely a manifestation of the true state of the above listed items. ... We have in the past joked that the only thing that could possibly save the world from what...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I mentioned to you last week that I had a story about how what we are living through right now is actually worse than the Great Depression and why nobody knows. I went back to my archives, and I got that story, and I have it here. Open borders, bigger government, free college for everybody. How many people already have free college by virtue of having their student loans forgiven or what have you? Everything these people have tried has not worked, so they want to try even more of it. "Bigger welfare state. Get rid of...

The number of beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has exceeded 45 million for 50 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). In June 2015, the latest month for which data is available, there were 45,510,153 beneficiaries of the food stamp program, an increase of 14,869 between May and June. Beneficiaries of this program now exceed the population of Canada, which totals 34,834,841, according to a widely used source for such figures. The number of food stamp recipients first exceeded 45 million in May 2011. Since then, the...

698K Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job In August: Why This Suddenly Is The Most Important Jobs Chart After the Fed admitted over a year ago that the US unemployment rate (which in 2012 was supposed to be a rate hike "threshold" once it hit 6.5% and is now at 5.1%) has become irrelevant in a country where a record 94 million people have left the labor force, and with the Fed poised to hike rates even though US hourly wages have not only not increased for the past 7 years, but for the vast majority of the labor force continue...

On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 588 points. It was the 8th worst single day stock market crash in U.S. history, and it was the first time that the Dow has ever fallen by more than 500 points on two consecutive days. But the amazing thing is that the Dow actually performed better than almost every other major global stock market on Monday. In the U.S., the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both did worse than the Dow. In Europe, almost every major index performed significantly worse than the Dow. Over in Asia, Japanese stocks were down...

As historians begin to assess Obama’s record as president, there’s at least one legacy he’ll leave that will indeed be historic—but not in the way he would have hoped. Even as Democrats look favorably ahead to the presidential landscape of 2016, the strength in the Electoral College belies huge losses across much of the country. In fact, no president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics. Legacies are often tough to measure. If you want to see just how tricky they can be, consider the campaign to get...

Did you see what just happened? The devaluation of the yuan by China triggered the largest one day drop for that currency in the modern era. This caused other global currencies to crash relative to the U.S. dollar, the price of oil hit a six year low, and stock markets all over the world were rattled. The Dow fell 212 points on Tuesday, and Apple stock plummeted another 5 percent. As we hurtle toward the absolutely critical months of September and October, the unraveling of the global financial system is beginning to accelerate. At this point, it is not...

The amusement is strong from this one.... The economy has made great gains and is approaching an acceptable normal. Policy should shortly acknowledge this reality. The Fed took extraordinary policy measures in response to extraordinary economic conditions. Conditions are no longer extraordinary. Compared to earlier in the year, we know a lot more and can shelve some concerns. We appear to be past the most acute concerns of a spillover from Europe. I have more confidence in the resilience of the economy today compared to even a few months ago. I am much less concerned about a reversal of economic...

It was 88 years ago this month that President Calvin Coolidge handed out strips of paper (that he cut himself) to members of the press during a brief conference with these words: I do not choose to run for President in 1928. This stunning event took place at the Summer White House in the Black Hills of South Dakota on August 2, 1927. The implications of Coolidge not actively seeking the Republican presidential nomination for 1928 reverberate to this day. While the terse phrasing appeared to leave the door open for a draft movement, the result was that Herbert Hoover...

The study by James Gangwisch and colleagues in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Centre (CUMC) looked at the dietary glycemic index, glycemic load, types of carbohydrates consumed, and depression in data from more than 70,000 postmenopausal women who participated in the US National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative Observational Study between 1994 and 1998. Scientists said that while carbohydrates consumption normally increases blood sugar levels, eating highly refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, rice and junk food, triggers a hormonal response that affects the glycemic index. This then exacerbates changes in a woman's mood and triggers...

A new study conducted by researchers from the Oregon Health & Science University and the Veterans Affairs Portland Medical Center suggests that a transcranial magnetic stimulation system typically used for depression treatment could also help alleviate the debilitating effects of a condition known as tinnitus. ===================================================================================================================== Tinnitus is a debilitating condition wherein an individual often hears a ringing or clicking sound even though there are no external sources of the sound present. It currently affects an estimated 45 million people, mostly veteran soldiers, living in the United States, according to the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), and a proven cure for...

July 21 2015 Clark Schultz, SA News Editor The Baltic Dry Index rose 4.3% to 1,113 with gains registering for capesize, panamax, and supramax rates. The BDI has doubled since February when a weak market prompted some companies to scrap ships. Shipping rates are still well-below the level from late 2013 to late 2014.(snip)

'Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," may well be President Reagan's most oft-repeated quote. And the reason it's so frequently quoted is because it's so damn true. And no example fits this quote better than the government actions taken before and during the Great Depression. In 1929, the single largest tax increase on traded products was passed by both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. In May 1930, this so-called Smoot-Hawley tariff was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, which precipitated massive retaliation on U.S. products by foreign governments. From that moment...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) -- The family of the man who killed four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga said in a statement that their son suffered from depression and was not the person they knew. "There are no words to describe our shock, horror, and grief," said the statement, provided Saturday to the Associated Press by a lawyer representing the family of Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. "The person who committed this horrible crime was not the son we knew and loved. For many years, our son suffered from depression. It grieves us beyond belief to know that his pain found its...

The rich array of microbiota in our intestines can tell us more than you might think.Eighteen vials were rocking back and forth on a squeaky mechanical device the shape of a butcher scale, and Mark Lyte was beside himself with excitement. ‘‘We actually got some fresh yesterday — freshly frozen,’’ Lyte said to a lab technician. Each vial contained a tiny nugget of monkey feces that were collected at the Harlow primate lab near Madison, Wis., the day before and shipped to Lyte’s lab on the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in Abilene, Tex. Lyte’s interest was not...

[caption id="attachment_1490" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Image source: Stanford University[/caption] I was recently chided by an editor when he asked me my opinion on one of my stories.  I told him how The Washington Post reported it: “WaPo went with ‘shocking’,” I emailed. My phone immediately rang. “I don’t care what WaPo went with,” he said in an animated voice. “Listen, those people are just the same as you and me. “I’ve been in those newsrooms.  Do you think they’re any better because they work at the New York Times or The Washington Post?” he drilled into me. It was a good...

Anxiety has now surpassed depression as the most common mental-health diagnosis among college students, according to The New York Times. A recent study of more than 100,000 students by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State found that more than half of students seeking help at campus clinics report anxiety as an issue, and nearly one in six college students has been treated for anxiety in the past year, according to the American College Health Association. Mental-health counselors on campus attribute numerous factors to this rise, namely academic pressure from a much earlier age and compulsive social-media interaction....