Aggregated Awareness

From Fox News comes this report on an August 1st eruption of a filament of plasma blasting off the Sun's surface. This plasma mass ejection is apparently heading straight for Earth. It can be seen as the dark mass in the top right of the picture. The bright light is an unrelated solar flare.

From Wired comes this interesting article about the investment arm of the CIA - In-Q-Tel; making an investment into social media monitoring software maker Visible Technologies.

In-Q-Tel spokesperson Donald Tighe says that they have "an interested end customer" in the intelligence community for Visible. One can join the dots in guessing who that 'end customer' will be.

From Christopher Pavese of Broyhill Asset Management via Zerohedge comes this well put together report on the Australian Housing Market, and where it might be heading.

Excerpt: "...The recurring theme in every case is that housing bubbles are almost always justified by “new era” thinking, land shortages, and are considered unique right up until the moment they pop. Most bubbles around the world have at least partially deflated in the wake of the Great Contraction, yet the property market Down Under continues to chug along ignoring the gravitational forces of mean reversion as Aussie consumers continue their American-inspired credit binge.

US housing prices nearly doubled in the decade leading to their ultimate peak as shown in the above chart. Australian real estate kept pace with these gains until US home prices lost nearly a third of their value as US home owners deleveraged their balance sheets. Since then, Australian households have watched their home prices appreciate by at least that much, while they continue to feast at the trough of easy credit..."

From Gonzalo Lira's blog via Zerohedge comes this excellent commentary on why both 'Austerity' & 'Stimulus' economic policy measures, being espoused by advocates of both camps in governments & monetary authorities around the world, are doomed to fail.

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

From Professor Fekete comes another excellent article, the gist of which is that, without a restoration of the "international bill market", then any entertainment of the idea of a 'sound money' system will fail.

From Robert Gottliebsen at the Business Spectator comes this commentary about the sleeper issue at this year's Australian Federal Election: Assistant Treasurer Nick Sherry's plans to decimate the existing Personal Services Income Legislation, which would drastically affect independent contracting in Australia.