VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday condemned the leaking of documents that according to a media report show a power struggle in the Holy See over economic reforms and excessive expenses by the cardinal charged with carrying them out.

L'Espresso magazine said it had seen minutes of meetings and emails showing mostly Italian cardinals felt that Cardinal George Pell had accumulated too much power.

Pell is an outsider brought by the pope to Rome from Australia to oversee the Vatican's often muddled finances after decades of control by Italians.

Pope Francis was given a mandate by the cardinals who elected him in 2013 to clean up after a series of financial scandals, mostly involving the Vatican bank.

Francis set up the Secretariat for the Economy last year and gave Pell, as its head, broad powers to clean up the Vatican's often troubled and murky finances and bring them in line with international standards.

Jeb to Booing CPAC Activists: ‘I’m Marking You Down As Neutral’

CPAC activists booed Jeb Bush when Sean Hannity broached the subject of immigration in a Q&A with the former Florida governor, but Bush stood by his perceived conservative heresies on the issue, winning applause as he argued that Americans shouldn’t feel deprived of jobs by incoming immigrants. “For those who made an ‘oo’ sound — is that what it was? — I’m marking you down as neutral and I want to be your second choice,” Bush said, grinning. Asked if he still supports providing drivers licenses and in-state tuition prices to illegal immigrants, Bush initially demurred. When Hannity circled back to those past stances, he stood by the policies — neither of which passed into law when he was in office — and noted that a conservative state legislature and governor signed an in-state tuition bill into Florida law just this year.

There were still thick crusts of dirty snow piled up on the edges of the pavement outside Krasnopresnenskaya, a Metro station in central Moscow, on Tuesday. Beside this reminder of a long winter stood four young men and women holding bright green balloons. “Spring is coming!” said one of them, while handing out leaflets to passers-by.

The four, along with similar groups of activists elsewhere, are trying to mobilise their compatriots to come out in Moscow, and a handful of other Russian cities, on Sunday to protest against President Vladimir Putin in what they are calling an “anti-crisis march”.

“After years of siphoning off the oil revenues, the current regime has led the country to a standstill and into complete bankruptcy,” the leaflets say. “Putin and his government cannot lift the country out of crisis and must leave.”

A few passersby took the leaflets; most ignored them. Three years after 100,000 took part in opposition rallies across Russia, the movement is splintered: some leaders are jailed, others are in exile while several have switched sides.

Pai and fellow Republican FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who have been consistent critics of the FCC’s new rules, said once they are published people will realise that they will stifle innovation and lead to taxes and increased rates for the public.

“When you see this document, it’s worse than you imagine,” said O’Rielly at a conference in Washington organised by the think tank TechFreedom.

The FCC on Thursday voted through strict new rules to regulate broadband and protect net neutrality – the principle that all information and services should have equal access to the internet.

Why won't they release the rules?!?!

It's been less than 24 hours since the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve strict new regulations on Internet providers, but that's the leading question coming from its critics.

Conservatives are demanding that the FCC release a full copy of the regulations that it's planning to impose on companies such as Comcast and Verizon — and taking the agency's silence as evidence of a cover-up. Readers of an FCC blog post  have suspiciously mused that "these new regulations should have been published by now." It's much the same over on Twitter.

The head of the Moscow police department is on the scene, according to TASS news agency. Moscow police sources say there were witnesses to the shooting who are now being questioned.

"Today at approximately 11:15 PM Nemtsov was walking with a female companion along the Bolshoy Kamenniy bridge.  A car approached, from which several shots were fired.  Four shots hit Nemtsov in the back," Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Elena Alekseeva said.

"The woman who was with him is at this moment being questioned at a Moscow police station."

An investigative committee spokesman says seven shots were fired.

Moscow police are engaged in an active search for the shooter or shooters, who have not been identified.

Everyone most use there brain and don't put yourself in a position for this to happen to them.

Nasty.

Frankenstein for real. No thanks.

LOL! Seriously? These assholes should be thrown into jail for making threats like that, that's blatant extortion, just once I'd like to see these guys told to fuck off.

Janet Yellen and her Fed cronies have been touting the salubrious effect of QE and zero interest rates.
In the "Dark Side of Artificially Low Interest Rates" we noted Fed Chair Ms. Yellen's defense of QE “You know, a lot of people say, this is just helping rich people. But it’s not true. Our policy is aimed at holding down long-term interest rates, which supports the recovery by encouraging spending. And part of it comes through higher house and stock prices, which causes people with homes and stocks to spend more, which causes jobs to be created throughout the economy and income to go up throughout the economy.”
WRONG!
Ms. Yellen, it doesn't work that way. The proof is in the current economic data that shows while home and stock prices are rising, there is no corresponding increase in jobs created or homes sold. The labor participation and home ownership rates have dropped during the five long years of QE. Existing home sales are down year over year and if you are tempted to blame "lack of housing inventory" for the decrease in sales, consider new home sales, that would make up the supposed deficit in housing inventory, are at historic 30-40 year lows.
HP Announces Earnings, Extent of Job Cuts and its Share Buyback Program
As part of their disappointing earnings announcement this week, Hewlett Packard (HP) also announced that it had cut 44,000 jobs since 2012 and that number would increase to 55,000 by the end of this fiscal year.
HP will take a $1.3 billion separation charge in connection with the fired employees.
HP spent $1.6 billion in the first quarter buying back its own shares which was 66% more than they spent on capital expenditures.
Low Interest Rates Encourage Firings
While we were correct in our observation from last year that low interest rates encourage stock buybacks and discourage hiring and capital investment, it now seems that low interest rates actually encourage firings to fund stock buy backs.

Last quarter, in "This Is What Americans Spent The Most Money On In Q4" we showed that according to the first estimate of Q4 GDP data, the American consumer spent a whopping $20.4 billion in nominal dollars on healthcare, which also resulted in the biggest consumption contribution to GDP in years.

Today, following the first revision of consumer spending, we learn that in the fourth quarter Americans spent even more on healthcare, pushing the total up by $1 billion more, to a whopping $21.4 Bn, or 18% of all spending on goods and services in Q4.

This upward revision on healthcare, of which Obamacare was the primary source of mandatory spending, takes places even as the bulk of the key spending line items were revised lower following the revision.

In any event, the math is clear - the next time anyone asks you what Americans spent their so-called "gas savings" on in Q4, and why retail sales in the end of 2014 (and the start of 2015) were so weak, show them this chart.

The blockchain and bitcoin are inseparable. One cannot exist without the other.

Thanks for the plug, Chef!

We have one of the best stories in Bitcoinia. Gavin Andresen was an AMPlifier (club member) of FTL and introduced us to btc in Jan 2011. We talked about it on air that night and that is how Roger Ver heard about it. Gavin called it the most profitable lunch of his life .

If the sadists of ISIS are seeking—with their mass executions, child rapes, immolations, and beheadings of Christians—to stampede us into a new war in the Middle East, they are succeeding.

Repeatedly snapping the blood-red cape of terrorist atrocities in our faces has the Yankee bull snorting, pawing the ground, ready to charge again.

“Nearly three-quarters of Republicans now favor sending ground troops into combat against the Islamic State,” says a CBS News poll. The poll was cited in a New York Times story about how the voice of the hawk is ascendant again in the GOP.
[...]
Listen for long to GOP foreign-policy voices, and you can hear calls for war on ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Houthi rebels, the Assad regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to name but a few.

Are we to fight them all? How many U.S. troops will be needed? How long will all these wars take? What will the Middle East look like after we crush them all? Who will fill the vacuum if we go? Or must we stay forever?

Nor does this exhaust the GOP war menu. Enraged by Vladimir Putin’s defiance, Republicans are calling for U.S. weapons, trainers, even troops, to be sent to Ukraine and Moldova.

Says John Bolton, himself looking at a presidential run, “Most of the Republican candidates or prospective candidates are heading in the right direction; there’s one who’s headed in the wrong direction.”

That would be Rand Paul, who prefers “Arab boots on the ground.”

"I came up a half hour ago to see Rand, and it didn't work, so I thought I'd try again," joked Cato Institute vice president David Boaz. (For the record, he was not wearing one of the T-shirts.)

Paul's delay, which was delayed by 20 minutes away in the Capitol, had aftershocks. When Hannity polled the crowd for their views of the 2016 candidates, Paul got a roar of approval. The names of Jeb Bush and Chris Christie drew loud, lusty boos, duly recorded by hundreds of reporters and tweeters. Trump, never a disciplined speaker, ran into the same bear trap when he suggested "boots on the ground" could defeat ISIS and had his hair (figuratively) blown back by jeers.

...

"We need a foreign policy that encourages stability, not chaos," Paul said. "At home, conservatives understand that the government is the problem, not the solution. As conservatives, we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad." That was not just a whack at the party's hawks. "It is time for Hillary Clinton to permanently retire," said Paul, though that line did not generate as many cheers as the self-criticism of the GOP did.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) got a rock star’s reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday where he preached to his supporters about liberty and defended his positions on foreign policy.

Paul’s young supporters are out in force at the conference, handing out posters and wearing “I Stand With Rand” buttons and t-shirts. The Potomac Ballroom at the Gaylord National Convention Center just across the border from the nation's capital overflowed for his speech, with young attendees packing the middle section like a mosh-pit and others pressed standing against the walls.

“It’s time for a new president,” Paul declared, provoking chants of “President Paul!” from the conference goers.

“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and forgetfulness calls a nation to hesitate, waver and perhaps even to succumb,” he said. "When that time comes, those who love liberty must rise to the occasion. Will you lovers of liberty rise to the occasion?”

It was just one of a handful of lines that sent his supporters into a frenzy.

...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Republican Party may be sizing up a crowded field of presidential contenders, but in the minds of his supporters, one guy is already the man to nominate.

And he has a lot of supporters.

After winning Sean Hannity’s impromptu voice poll of CPAC-goers, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul showed up late to the Conservative Political Action Conference (delayed by a Senate vote) and blew the crowd away with his brand of libertarian conservatism.

“Those who love liberty must rise to the occasion,” Paul told the packed crowd. “Will you lovers of liberty rise to the occasion?”

Young Paul supporters crowded the room, standing numerous times during Paul’s speech to cheer, wave signs and chant, “President Paul! President Paul!”

...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — It’s still Rand Paul’s CPAC.

A day after other Republicans tossed out hawkish lines on foreign policy at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Kentucky senator forcefully asserted his own, more anti-interventionist views to a hall packed with his supporters, once again showing his prowess at this annual gathering.

“At home conservatives understand that government is the problem, not the solution,” the likely presidential contender said Friday. “But as conservatives we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad.”

Paul’s speech, which was punctuated by standing ovations and chants of “President Paul,” led off with condemnations of brutal interrogation methods and government surveillance, two other issues in which he parts ways with many national security hawks in his party.

“You do have a right to privacy,” he said. “Your rights are in your DNA and the government can, quite frankly, get over it.”

...

CPAC activists waited an hour-and-a-half for Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) after congressional votes delayed his speech, and the pent-up energy made for a rowdy welcome. “President Paul! President Paul! President Paul!” the attendees chanted in the middle of Paul’s speech when he said America needs ‘a new president.’ The salutation came after Paul promised to unveil a plan that would balance the budget in five years while passing “the largest tax cut in American history.” “My tax plan will get the IRS out of your life and out of the way of every job creator in America,” he said. Paul turned to economic issues only after citing the Benghazi terrorist attacks as the centerpiece of an indictment of Hillary Clinton and a defense of his own foreign policy. Paul noted that terrorists took over Libya after Clinton backed intervening against the incumbent dictatorship. “As [Hillary Clinton] was declaring victory in Libya, Ambassador Stevens was pleading for more security,” Paul said. “Her dereliction of duty should forever preclude her from higher office . . . It’s time for Hillary Clinton to permanently retire.”   As Paul tied the rise of terrorists in Libya to the U.S. intervention, he also argued that ISIS was empowered by a misguided decision to arm Syrian rebels.   “Without question, we must now defend ourselves and american interests from this barbarous aberration; but it troubles me that we must now fight against our own weapons,” he said. “As conservatives we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad.”