Below is an excerpt from a very informative article written by Jeff Nielson on Sprott Money. This is a must read for anyone following my site. Back in 2005-2006, I told friends and family, actually anyone who would listen to me, that housing prices were being artificially inflated and this would end badly. As we all know, the housing market crashed in 2008. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of persons lost their homes through foreclosure. This has been termed as the biggest land grab in history.

In the past couple of years, I have seen the same trend that was happening in 2005-2006. Once again, housing prices are skyrocketing. Because we have not fully recovered globally from the Great Recession, the results this time will be far more catastrophic.

We already saw that having only one buyer in the market meant that real estate prices would go as…

ASTON, Ct. — A Connecticut couple has disappeared days after losing their latest appeal in a multimillion-dollar foreclosure case, a disappearance that a local police chief said appears increasingly suspicious though the pair’s family said it may be unrelated to their financial woes.

Jeffrey and Jeanette Navin of Easton, Connecticut, were last seen on Tuesday, August 4, at the refuse company they own in Westport, according to Easton Police Chief Tim Shaw.

In late July, Jeffrey Navin was denied his latest appeal in an ongoing eight-year battle over a mortgage on the family’s second home in central Connecticut, according to court documents.

Read on.

New evidence from Fukushima shows that as many as 2,000 people have died from necessary evacuations, writes Ian Fairlie, while another 5,000 will die from cancer. Future assessments of fatalities from nuclear disasters must include deaths from displacement-induced ill-heath and suicide in addition to those from direct radiation impacts.

Official data from Fukushima show that nearly 2,000 people died from the effects of evacuations necessary to avoid high radiation exposures from the disaster.

The uprooting to unfamiliar areas, cutting of family ties, loss of social support networks, disruption, exhaustion, poor physical conditions and disorientation can and do result in many people, in particular older people, dying.

Increased suicide has occurred among younger and older people following the Fukushima evacuations, but the trends are unclear.

A Japanese Cabinet Office report stated that, between March 2011 and July 2014, 56 suicides in Fukushima Prefecture were linked to the nuclear accident. This should…

It’s just an observation, but it certainly appears that foreclosure judges have been given orders to squash homeowners like a bug at the lower court level and if they can afford to appeal – maybe, just maybe, they might get some fair and balanced justice. The process so far has been highly unbalanced. Whether foreclosure judges are just not competent enough to understand the securitization, rehypothecation and securities scheme, or whether they’ve been told by higher-ups that if they don’t rule against homeowners all their pensions will be lost or the economy will crash – it’s just a bizarre and pathetic state of mind.

Open Secret: The Global Banking Conspiracy That Swindled Investors Out of Billions

The LIBOR Fixing Scandal Gets A Conviction And A Book via cfaille, AllAboutAlpha.com

This month began rather badly for Tom Hayes. A jury found him guilty of eight counts of conspiracy to defraud in connection with the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate. He was then sentenced to 14 years, half of which will be spent in prison before there is any possibility of release.

Hayes had defended himself by trying to kick responsibility up the ladder. His superiors have thus far managed more successfully to do the same in reverse: they’ve kicked responsibility down the same ladder, blaming everything on rogues.

“Well, that’s why you’re the boss.”

Next month may bring Hayes at least a small sense of vindication to clutch to his heart as he begins serving that term. Portfolio/Penguin is bringing out Open Secret…

I have often noted the existence of a primitive tribal taboo shared by virtually all economists against using the “f” word – “fraud.”  I have found a new example that sums up many of the pathologies of economics and economists.  It is an article entitled “Going for Broke: New Century Financial Corporation, 2004-2006.”  Given that New Century was a classic accounting control fraud, the use of the long-discredited gambling metaphor (our “autopsies” of S&L failures refuted it in 1984) demonstrates the crippling power of the taboo.  The three economists who authored the September 2010 article are Augustin Landier (Toulouse School of Economics) David Sraer (Princeton University) David Thesmar (HEC & CEPR) (collectively, “LST”).

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published a list of the “worst of the worst” – the ten worst lenders in the ten worst markets for nonprime mortgage foreclosures.  The absolute worst…