The underground or "black" economy is rapidly rising, and the fault is mainly due to government policies.

Here is the evidence. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) released a report last week concluding that 7.7 percent of U.S. households, containing at least 17 million adults, are unbanked (i.e., those who do not have bank accounts), and an "estimated 17.9 percent of U.S. households, roughly 21 million, are underbanked" (i.e., those who rely heavily on nonbank institutions, such as check cashing and money transmitting services).

As an economy becomes richer and incomes rise, the normal expectation is that the proportion of the unbanked population falls and does not rise as is now happening in the United States.

Tax revenues are falling far more rapidly at the federal, state and local level than would be expected by the small drop in real gross domestic product (GDP) and changes in tax law that have occurred since the recession began.

A new Middle East is upon us and its primary beneficiary couldn't be happier.

For generations, the stability of global oil supplies has been guaranteed by Saudi Arabia's reserve capacity that could be relied on to make up for any shocks to those supplies due to political unrest or other factors. When Libya's teetering dictator Muammar Ghaddafi decided to shut down Libya's oil exports last month, the oil markets reacted with a sharp increase in prices. The very next day the Saudis announced they would make up the shortfall from Libya's withdrawal from the export market.
 
In the old Middle East, the Saudi statement would never have been questioned. Oil suppliers and purchasers alike accepted the arrangement whereby Saudi Arabian reserves - defended by the US military -- served as the guarantor of the oil economy. But in the New Middle East, Iran feels comfortable questioning the Saudi role.
 
With each passing day, the Iranian regime is actively destabilizing Saudi Arabia's neighbors and increasing its influence over Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority in the kingdom's Eastern Province where most of its oil is located.

The Obama administration has failed completely to understand what is happening.

Good grief, what a weird week.  Which headline is more bizarre - the one in Cincinnati, "Naked Man Arrested With Stolen Cheese At Library," or the one in Portland, "Al Gore Accused Of Being A Crazed Sex Poodle"?

We all know, of course, that Algore's former boss is a serial rapist.  But Mr. Save-The-Planet?  Goodnight, Al, and take your warmism with you.  At least now, folks will think that Global Warmism means Rape-The-Planet with lunatic Marxist Fascism.

***
Meanwhile, Zero's unconstitutional fascism gets more grotesque by the day.  Reports that he intends to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by executive fiat have prompted a number of Senators (all R's) to sign a letter to the president (dated 6/21) requesting he deny the reports.

Like you, I have this little devil who resides on my left shoulder whispering off-the-wall provocations in my ear.  Right now, he's saying he hopes Zero goes through with this.

Today, December 3^rd, the White House is hosting a "Jobs Summit."  What should the attendees be advising the president? Unlike Ronald Reagan, President Obama was schooled in law, not in economics. Thus, he may not understand that there is really no mystery as to why we have our current unemployment, and how we can regain full employment.

It would, of course, have been no mystery to Ronald Reagan, who was fond of saying:  "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."  That is, the recipe for more jobs is simple:  lower taxes, fewer regulations. 

Job creation should be at the top of the administration's domestic priorities, because the inability to find a job causes more misery and hardship to far more Americans (and particularly to those who can least afford it) than the lack of health care for the 10 percent who are uninsured or potential global warming ever will.

If the president really wants to see employers go back to hiring large numbers of people, the administration will do the following:

It was a stunning moment of moral clarity. As the South Vietnamese refugees clambered onto rickety boats in the South China Sea to escape the victorious Communists, the American Left that orchestrated the US defeat through a sustained campaign of propaganda and fake calls for peace stood silent.

As Pol Pot, the "progressive" dictator tortured and murdered a third of his people in Cambodia, the leftists "peace" activists in the US and Europe who never saw a US military operation that was justified, turned a blind eye.

The silence of the likes of Susan Sontag, Jane Fonda, Noam Chomsky and their fellow travelers came to mind last week when the Western media and intellectual elites averted their gaze as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the long exiled spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood spoke before a crowd of millions at Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Do you think people who refuse to (or cannot for whatever reason) purchase health insurance should be subject to a $250,000 fine and/or five years in jail?

Well, a slim majority of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to think such a draconian (and probably unconstitutional) measure is just fine because that is one of the provisions of the health care reform bill they just passed.

A person, or group of people, who are unable to think through the consequences of their actions and often resort to oppression of others are either clueless or despotic.  Thinking and compassionate people, by contrast, understand that there may be many good reasons why people do not buy, or do not wish to buy, health insurance.

The health care bill is Exhibit A to demonstrate that a majority of Congress is now clueless/despotic when it comes to economic sense or understanding about how the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. Then there are Exhibits B, C & D.

To date the most egregious attack on a foreign journalist in Cairo's Tahrir Square took place last Friday, when CBS's senior foreign correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men. Her own network, CBS, took several days to even report the story, and when it did, it left out important information. The fact that Logan was brutalized for 20 to 30 minutes and that her attackers screamed out "Jew, Jew, Jew" as they ravaged her was absent from the CBS report and from most other follow-on reports in the US media.

This week, a group of female US soldiers filed a class action lawsuit against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld. The plaintiffs allege that both men and the US defense establishment are responsible for the sexual assaults they suffered during their military service. They claim that the men who abused them were a product of US military culture.

The US media has provided blanket coverage of the story, which effectively places the entire US military on trial for rape.

What is interesting about the lawsuit story is that it highlights the alleged perpetrator. Coverage of the lawsuit has been heavy on details about the alleged misogyny of US military culture.

In stark contrast, coverage of Logan's sexual assault makes almost no mention of the perpetrators.

Well, hasn't this been a fun week.  An icon of the liberal media - the execrable Helen Thomas - is exposed as a disgusting anti-Semitic racist and her life career ends in ruins.  Zero exposes himself as a no-class punk president who belongs in Junior High School rather than the White House.

His kick-your-ass taunt is that of some 8^th-grade wimp trying to pretend he's tough.  All such a taunt gets is derision and ridicule.  It invites the response for which the Brits are applauding London Mayor Boris Johnson  - "Hey, STFU!" 

On both sides of the Atlantic, this summer's most enjoyable pastime promises to be Dissing Zero.  Kicking things off, America's favorite Congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) views Zero as "infantile," and "the worst president in US history."  That was followed by the leader of that cabal of America-haters, the ACLU, saying "I'm disgusted with this president."

Now for more fun...

It has been well-known for decades that paper currency is a major source of disease transmission. During the life of the average dollar bill, it will be handled by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It is hard to think of any physical object that is handled by more different people than paper currency. Millions become ill every year as a result of handling currency, and a not insignificant percentage of them die.

The good news is that it is no longer necessary to use paper currency in the digital age. Payments of all types can be made by electronic means - with electronic banking; credit, debit and smart cards; and cell phones - all of which help the user avoid physical contact with dirty paper (actually cooton cloth) money.

The bad news is that government policies are slowing down and, in many cases, preventing the movement to the use of digital currencies. The government's war on "money laundering" has resulted not in clean money but requires more people to handle dirty paper money. Goverment currency kills.