Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
In his new book, Decades of Decadence, Senator Marco Rubio exposes the attacks on four key elements of American strength: good local jobs, stable families, geographical communities, and a sovereign nation that serves as a beacon of freedom and prosperity.
He begins his book by talking about an article published in National Interest when he was getting ready for college. Francis Fukuyama wrote about “The End of History” and predicted a future global order where there were no viable alternatives to democracy. The US defeated fascism during World War II, and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse.
This utopian vision of the future didn’t take place. In my radio interview with Senator Rubio, I mentioned sitting on a panel with Harvard professor Samuel Huntington, who wrote about The Clash of Civilizations. He predicted world history would be marked by conflicts between three principal groups: western universalism, Muslim militancy, and Chinese assertion.
Senator Rubio explained that the assumption was that nation states would be more focused on economic interests and therefore would not go to war with each other. Politicians started making decisions that benefited this system and stopped making decisions about what was good for America. This empowered China, and now we are heavily dependent upon them for all sorts of essential goods.
We assumed that nationhood was over, and people and countries would be doing what was good for the global economy and international order. Senator Rubio explained that “China didn’t get that memo, and Russia didn’t get that memo, and Iran didn’t get that memo, and North Korea didn’t get that memo.” Many countries have been operating in their national interest.
He believes it is not too late to reject those errors and rebuild this nation. His book provides a critique of the past and a roadmap for the future.

Kerby Anderson
Tim Busch begins his commentary with this quote: “We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that.” He then asks, who said this? Not an atheist. Not a defender of the separation of church and state. Not even a member of another religion.
It was spoken by a leader in the Catholic church. No matter what your denominational background (Catholic, Protestant, etc.), you can probably see the issue. We have a loss of courage and conviction. He observes that “many religious believers are losing the courage to defend their beliefs. Yet modern society desperately needs vibrant faith communities that stand strong for timeless principles and deeper truths.”
We are facing threats to the sanctity of human life and threats to the institutions of marriage and family. We are facing threats to our ability to practice our religious beliefs, though we have recently enjoyed many victories for religious liberty in the courts. And he concluded that one of the biggest threats facing modern society is the rise of transgenderism.
His question is appropriate: “Will religious believers take the heat without melting? Many are, but others are not.” He points to religious hospitals facing pressure to accept transgenderism and concludes that we “make clear that changing genders is impossible and wrong.”
His observations and conclusions are what we have been discussing on radio for the last few years. It has become even more important for Christians to develop biblical discernment when so many issues and principles are up for debate. And it is equally important for Christians to develop biblical courage to act on those biblical convictions.
I agree with his assessment that religious believers need to address these social issues that will determine the direction America takes. It is time for Christians to show courage.

Kerby Anderson
You could say that William Shatner is the most famous astronaut in the world. Until recently, he was not a real astronaut. But he is best known for playing Captain Kirk in the Star Trek TV series and movies. Last year he did go into space. And it had such an impact that he started crying and now has written about it in his memoir, Boldly Go.
At age 90, he had a life-changing experience by going into space. He thought it would be a fulfilling experience to see planet Earth from a different vantage point. Others told him they were struck by the “apparent fragility of this suspended blue marble.” He also experienced “the strongest feeling, dominating everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I have ever experienced.”
When he looked away from Earth towards the rest of the universe, he didn’t feel attraction. Instead, he realized that we are “a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death.”
There is a name for that experience. Space Philosopher Frank White called it the “overview effect,” which is the title of his book by the same name. It comes from an emotional shift in a person’s awareness when they see Earth from space. You gain a greater understanding of the preciousness of Earth.
I think we can draw two conclusions. First is environmental stewardship. Shatner’s conclusion was that he wanted to protect Earth for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We need to do all we can to prevent the destruction of this planet.
The second conclusion is intelligent design. Earth is not an insignificant speck in the galaxy. Earth is our home. It was created by God for us, and we can now measure all the fine-tuned parameters that show God’s fingerprints.

Kerby Anderson
The business world is seeing a reverse migration from Zoom to the conference room. Employees may love working from home, but there is growing evidence that productivity drops when people work from their dining table or home office.
We all know the benefits of remote working. You spend less time commuting. You can take a short nap or a mid-morning run. You can fit in several commitments from carpool to doctor’s appointments. During the pandemic and lockdowns, a few surveys found that workers reported higher levels of satisfaction and happiness.
Those may be the positive aspects of working from home, but more and more companies are calling their employees back to the office. Even the notoriously flexible Big Tech companies want employees to show up at least 2-3 days a week.
The reason for the call-back is productivity. A study reported in the Economist illustrates the change in perception. A study done by two Harvard University doctoral students originally found an 8 percent increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer that had shifted from offices to homes. But a revised version of the paper changed that estimate to a 4 percent decline. The researchers had not made a mistake. As they received more precise data, they found that the employees answered fewer calls and put customers on hold for longer.
Another study done by researchers at MIT and UCLA concluded workers at home were 18 percent less productive. And a research study from the University of Essex found a 19 percent drop in productivity.
What is also lost is face-to-face communication, human interaction, and team building. It is easy to see why more and more companies are summoning their workers back to the office.

Kerby Anderson
If you go to the State Department website, you will find the Bureau for Global Engagement Center. The section on “Disarming Disinformation: Our Shared Responsibility” has this quote from President Biden. “There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders – leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation — to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”
In a recent commentary, Thaddeus McCotter observes that “there are times when irony isn’t enough.” We are being lectured by the president and the state department about the danger of lies.  McCotter reminds us of the 51 current and former members of the US intelligence community who claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was likely Russian disinformation. They knew that wasn’t true but spread that disinformation anyway.
Once that letter was made public, it gave the establishment media and Big Tech companies all they needed to censor the reporting by the New York Post and prevent millions of Americans from knowing about the laptop and its contents. Miranda Devine concluded: “The letter was a domestic disinformation operation by the CIA to deceive the American people and help Joe Biden win the 2020 election.”
Years later we now know that those who signed the letter understood it was not Russian disinformation. Instead, we know they were spreading disinformation. Special Counsel John Durham’s report concluded that the FBI probe of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia was “seriously flawed.” FBI officials “discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative.”
It now appears that while federal agencies were warning us of the danger of disinformation, they were often the ones dispensing disinformation.

Kerby Anderson
The last five decades have been marked by judicial overreach. But we are now seeing judicial activism replaced by judicial restraint. Before the Supreme Court adjourned for the summer, it delivered four opinions on religious liberty (Groff v. DeJoy), free speech (303 Creative v. Elenis), racial preferences in college applications (Fair Admissions v. Harvard), and student debt cancellation (Biden v. Nebraska).
You might now ask: what is next? Senator Ted Cruz has been building a coalition of lawmakers urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron doctrine, often called Chevron deference. This is the idea that the court should always give deference to an administrative agency when it interprets an ambiguous statute.
The case involves the New England-based family-owned herring fishing company which is challenging a government rule. It requires every fishing vessel to have a government monitor on board to track compliance with federal regulations and requires that the fishing company pay the monitor’s salary (which amounts to 20 percent of their earnings).
The Chevron doctrine may sound harmless. It isn’t. A case in 1984 involving the Chevron corporation seemed reasonable at the time because conservatives in the Reagan administration wanted relief from rulings by liberal judges on the DC Circuit Court. Now it gives too much control to bureaucrats and the deep state.
Ted Cruz put it this way: “If the voters back home in Texas are ticked off at an idiotic rule that comes from the bowels of the Biden administration, there’s nothing they can do to fire that bureaucrat. And frankly, that bureaucrat does not give a flip what a small-business owner or hard-working family in Texas believes or how they are hurt by the rules they are decreeing from on high.”
I think the Chevron doctrine might be the next big battle before the Supreme Court when it reconvenes this fall.

Kerby Anderson
Pete Hegseth is the co-author with David Goodwin of the book, Battle for the American Mind. A central part of their book is an in-depth discussion and history of progressive education in America.
Pete Hegseth is the co-host of Fox & Friends and is the host of the Fox Nation documentaries. He will be speaking at the Point of View banquet this fall. That is appropriate since this book parallels many of the insights found in the book Public Education Against America written by Marlin Maddoux, founder of the Point of View radio talk show.
The book begins with the title, “The 16,000-Hour War.” After students spend 16,000 hours of K-12 indoctrination, they come out of the government schools hating America. They roll their eyes at religion and have little interest in history. The book documents the elitist roots of progressivism and its deliberate influence in education today. One chapter describes the “straight line from critical theory to antifa.”
As we have documented in previous commentaries, we spend more money on education than most other countries and yet have very little to show for it. Some of our nation’s students can barely read and write. They certainly have few skills in critical thinking. Few can reason with any discernment.
David Goodwin provides one solution: classical Christian education. We need to recover a lost philosophy of education. He explains that reason and virtue are the two towers of freedom. Wonder and beauty help students to learn to love the right things.
The educational establishment today is controlling the “supply lines” of future citizens. If we want to make a difference in this country, we need to understand there is a battle for the American mind.

Kerby Anderson
Christians have always needed to know how to defend the Christian faith ever since Peter admonished us to “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” That is even more true with so many people skeptical about God, Jesus, and the Bible.
Douglas Groothuis and Andrew Shepardson are the co-authors of an introduction into classical apologetics with the title, The Knowledge of God in the World and the Word. The primary focus is to put forth various arguments for the existence of God and then finish with a defense of the Bible and a presentation of the truth about Jesus and His resurrection. Here is a summary of just three of the chapters in their book.
The cosmological argument recognizes the relationship between cause and effect. This then points to a First Cause of the cosmos that is transcendent to the cosmos. This argument is even more powerful now that scientists believe the universe had a beginning.
The moral argument derives from the realization there must be objective morality. If God did not exist, then objective moral values and duties would not exist. But they do exist and point to God’s existence.
The design argument claims that God’s fingerprints can be found all over creation. William Paley proposed this argument, but scientists in the 19th century and early 20th century dismissed it. However, we now see what has been called the “return of the God hypothesis” because of the discovery of the fine-tuning of the universe.
In my interview with the two authors, I mentioned that more and more scientific evidence has accumulated to bolster some of these arguments. No wonder some have described us as living in the golden age of apologetics.

Kerby Anderson
John Whitehead has been warning us about the growing surveillance state in America for decades. The increase in surveillance has taken place under both Republican and Democratic presidents. But he is seeing another element that concerns him even more.
To illustrate it, he reminds us of the Steven Spielberg movie, Minority Report. This dystopian film is set in the future “where police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, [and] precognitive technology.” The goal is to stop a crime before it takes place.
He reports that we have more than 123 real-time crime centers in the country. This is where local police agencies can upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data along with other data and intelligence gathered from state and federal agencies. This comes not only from surveillance cameras but includes facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, and social media monitoring.
The natural reaction from some people is that we shouldn’t be concerned about all this surveillance if we have nothing to hide. In fact, I heard that very comment last week in a meeting I attended.
Yes, you should be concerned because even saying the wrong word or attending the wrong meeting can turn you into a suspect. He mentions a few harmless words that can be trigger words for certain algorithms. Attend a political rally and you might be listed as a potential threat. Leaked materials have shown these centers tracking people at rallies for racial justice, environmental issues, conservative issues, and third-party candidates.
Authors like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Phillip K. Dick warned about a future police state. This election you need to ask candidates what they plan to do about this growing surveillance state in America.

Kerby Anderson
Victor Davis Hanson argues that the “end of affirmative action was inevitable.” He provided ten reasons why it died. Here are five of them.
First, “supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goalposts for the program’s success.” How long was this reverse bias supposed to last? We never heard a clear answer.
Second, “the true barometer of privilege was rendered meaningless.” He talks about “truly privileged” people (like Barack and Michelle Obama) lecturing the country about its unfairness, “as if they had it far rougher than the impoverished deplorable of East Palestine, Ohio.”
Third, affirmative action supporters were never able to explain why the racial sins of prior generations fell on individuals today. And why should “those who had never experienced institutionalized racism, much less Jim Crow,” be collectively compensated today?
He also argues that there was never a “rainbow” coalition of shared non-white victimhood. For example, Asians have been subjected to “coerced internment, immigration restrictions, and zoning exclusions.” Yet they as a racial group do better economically and have longer life expectancies than any other racial group.
Finally, intermarriage and mass migration made it more and more difficult to adjudicate affirmative action standards. Tiger Woods is half Asian-American, a quarter Anglo-American, an eighth African-American and an eighth Native-American. Then you have Senator Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Harvard’s first Native-American law professor.
These are just a few reasons why the end of affirmative action was inevitable. Although the media failed to report it, most Americans agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision and were ready for affirmative action to end.

Kerby Anderson
On Independence Day, Federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a national injunction preventing federal bureaucracies from corresponding with social-media firms. It sent shock waves through the Biden administration and Silicon Valley. James Bovard asked, “When did the Biden administration become infallible with a divine right to nullify the free speech of conservatives?”
The federal judge described the evidence he saw as “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” He argued that the Biden administration pressured social-media companies “to censor misinformation regarding climate change, gender discussions, abortion, and economic policy.”
Censorship began at the very start of the Biden era. Less than two weeks after the inauguration, the White House Digital Director demanded that Twitter “immediately” remove a parody of Biden’s relatives. “Twitter officials suspended the account within 45 minutes but complained they were already bombarded by White House censorship requests at that point.”
A federal agency, tasked with countering foreign influence, was renamed the Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information task force. It led the way in shutting down any discussion about concerns about the 2020 and 2022 elections.
The FBI convinced companies to change their policies and ban posts based on “hacked materials.” Then it became easy to censor any comments about Hunter Biden’s laptop arguing it was hacked material or else Russian disinformation.
The federal judge imposed a sweeping injunction banning federal agencies from contacting social-media companies. Considering all this evidence, it is easy to see why he did this.

Kerby Anderson
A recent op-ed by Allen Mashburn reminds us that, “Societies That Surrender Moral Foundation Historically Self-Destruct.” This is not a new idea. Decades ago, I did a week of radio programs on the “Decline of a Nation.” A decade later, I did another week on “When Nations Die” because of a book that was published with that title. And more recently I even did a week of programs based on a book that compared America to Rome.
The reason for Mashburn’s article was a series events that took place during Pride Month. He “never envisioned a day where transvestites would lecture us on human biology, or sterilizers would pose as health professionals advocating for human rights. It seems that our nation has descended into a state of utter madness, where men can now claim pregnancy and the number of genders rivals the alphabet.”
Those issues are just a few of the many legitimate concerns which point to the well-documented decline and fall of other civilizations. Greece tolerated and even celebrated immoral behavior. And “the decline of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the abandonment of strong familial bonds and moral values in favor of weakness and laxity.” He observes that the similarity between Rome and America is alarming.
Of course, the pattern we recognize in Greece and Rome can be seen in other civilizations in the past. This includes the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and even the nation of Israel. In Isaiah 5 we read that God pronounced judgement on Israel. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
The only way to reverse this downward moral spiral is for a spiritual revival and spiritual repentance to take place in this country.

Kerby Anderson
Ben & Jerry’s creates flavors of ice cream, but they also create controversy. The latest has been their belief that “it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen land and commit to returning it.” Unilever is the company that now owns Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. So far, it has lost $2 billion in market capitalization.
The first step, according to Ben & Jerry’s, would be to return the Black Hills of South Dakota, including Mount Rushmore, to the Lakota. Rich Lowry says that raises another question. “Once this transfer takes place, will the Lakota turn around and give the Black Hills back to the tribes they took them from?”
He warns that it isn’t wise to get your history lessons from people making ice cream. In his op-ed on “The Myth of Native American Innocence,” he reminds us that the history of North America is complex. Yes, the way this country treated several Indian tribes is a sad, dark chapter of American history. But that should be placed alongside the hatred, greed, and violence of the Indian tribes that engaged in intertribal warfare.
My response to so many of the claims by leftists these days is, “You first.” If you are concerned that your white privilege got you into college, then give up your scholarship and your place at the university. If you believe we should give back stolen land: “You first.”
The Ben and Jerry’s facility and corporate office sits on the land once occupied by the Coosuk Abenaki Nation. The chief of one of the tribes that descended from the Abenaki said his tribe is “always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands.”
If it is time to give back stolen land, then my message to Ben & Jerry’s is, “You first.”

Kerby Anderson
In his video, John Stossel asked people on the street, “If you could spend $30 billion trying to solve the world’s problems, how would you spend it?” As you might imagine, the most common answer was to “fight climate change.”
Bjorn Lomborg (Copenhagen Consensus Center) has much better answers. In the past, we have talked about his several books on the environment and climate change. He says he was not surprised at the answers since we live in a rich world. But when he has put together experts from the UN, NGOs, and the university to address the world’s biggest problems, they give very different answers.
In his new book, Best Things First, Lomborg says that spending $35 billion in the poorest part of the earth could save 4.2 million lives every year. That would include screening for tuberculosis and getting medicine to people who need it. Hundreds of thousands die from malaria. Buying bed nets with insecticides that kill mosquitos would also save lives.
In a speech he gave at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar, he showed a graph of deaths from climate. These climate-related deaths (from floods, drought, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures) dropped from 500,000 a year in the 1920s to 11,000 today. A major reason for the decline is the fact that we have become wealthier. We have better technology and better predictive capabilities.
His latest writing and speeches are a reminder that we should be thinking smarter about how to spend our scarce economic resources. Thinking smartly also requires a recognition that the earth is not teetering on the edge of an environmental apocalypse. We need to focus on the best things first to make this planet an even better place to live.

Kerby Anderson
Why do we still have lingering inflation? President Biden took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to explain and defend his economic record. He claimed that “as supply chains continue to unsnarl, company profit margins fall from historically high levels, and rents continue to moderate, inflation should decline further, creating more breathing room for working families.”
The president appears to believe that rising prices create inflation. Instead, the reverse is true. Dollar depreciation is why prices are rising. Alexander William Salter explains that and evaluates the three parts of the president’s explanation.
First, the president argued that supply chains are causing inflation. That might have been partially true during the lockdowns and the supply chain bottlenecks. But what goes up must come down. The COVID-induced bottlenecks have largely passed, but prices are still high.
Next, the president blames corporate profits. That he focuses on what has become known as “greedflation” is not surprising. Blaming the rich and corporations is a frequent mantra for Democrats during an election year. Mr. Salter points to research by economics professor Josh Hendrickson that shows reduced profit margins. That is just the opposite of what the president argues.
What about the president’s comments about rent? Rent is an important part of consumer spending. But from 2020 to 2022, rent rarely rose faster than inflation. You would expect it to be rising faster if it was pulling inflation up.
These three issues are not the major factor for inflation. The increased money supply is the reason. Both the monetary base and the money supply rose dramatically in the last few years. Also, the government ran massive deficits during those years. That’s why we still have inflation today.

Kerby Anderson
The Pottery Barn rule is an expression that was used by Colin Powell when cautioning President Bush about invading Iraq. He said, “You break it, you own it.” Of course, the “you break it, you own it” rule has been used to warn others about a political action they may later come to regret.
Several commentators have proposed a corollary expression: “You chant it, you own it.” Bring a tape recorder to any protest or even to a parade. You will probably hear lots of extreme statements and chants. This has especially been true of the many environmental protests, along with the many race protests after the death of George Floyd.
In the past, we have been told to ignore the shouting and hyperbole. Protestors may call for us to “defund the police,” but they didn’t really mean that governments were supposed to defund the police. Then we saw certain cities and states do just that.
Environmental activists chant: “No more coal, no more oil, keep your carbon in the soil.” But we were told they really didn’t mean we should decarbonize the country. Then we found out they were serious.
Last month was Pride Month. The pride parade marchers in New York City chanted: “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.” News commentators tried to assure us that “it’s all just words” and that such chants have been used for years in pride parades.
 Frankly, that is a very poor excuse. If you want people to take you seriously, then don’t say things you don’t mean. I can’t imagine a news commentator brushing off chants and slogans used at an alt-right event. But we are supposed to ignore all the provocative things said by leftist groups.
I have a better suggestion: “If you chant it, you own it.”

Kerby Anderson
Now that most of the 2022 midterm elections have been certified, it’s worth looking at some important electoral trends. They will give us some idea of what may take place in the 2024 elections. Lest you think this is premature, consider that next month the first presidential debate will take place.
The most surprising trend is the number of close elections. In previous commentaries, I’ve talked about close elections. But the latest results are worth discussing. The bipartisan portal Ballotpedia reports that 103 legislative races around the country were decided by under 100 votes.
This research result underscores the reality of the phrase “every vote counts.” If you don’t think so, just ask the person who lost their race by less than 100 votes. As one commentator put it, these races were decided by the number of people you could find inside a Walmart any weekend.
Rarely is there a close race for governor or congress. But close elections do occur in state legislative races, where 98 seats were decided by such a narrow margin. And that narrow margin also could determine which party has majority control of the legislature. Many of the other close races occurred in rural districts with small populations.
Two implications come from these results from the 2022 midterm elections. First, there is great value in a political party developing sophisticated “get out the vote” strategies. When a tiny minority can determine the outcome of an election, there is great motivation to get people to the polls. Second, it illustrates the importance of you going to vote and bringing like-minded people with you to the polls.
Each election, we remind people that “every vote counts.” This latest research proves that is true.

Kerby Anderson
In previous commentaries, I have talked about the dollar’s loss of value. We often provide a chart that was generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It shows that the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power.
In a recent keynote speech in Prague, Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy) put together a presentation with numerous graphs. They show even more accurately the decline of the dollar as well as the decline of other currencies around the world. His YouTube presentation makes a powerful statement.
For example, he has one slide that shows that the US dollar loses 99 percent of its value when compared to gold (1923-2023). Gold is not scarce. More of it is pulled from the ground each year. He then shows another graph of something even more scarce. The US dollar loses 99.8 percent of its value compared to the 50 most valuable companies in the S&P (1923-2023).
This is worse for other countries because foreign currencies are collapsing against the dollar. The Argentine Peso (ARS) loses 99.9 percent versus the dollar (2001-2023) in the last twenty years. His chart shows that the Turkish Lira loses 95 percent versus the dollar, but its latest loss is probably 97 percent. And the Indian Rupee loses 90 percent versus the dollar since 1980.
This puts our current financial circumstances in some perspective. The dollar is like a melting ice cube. The value is declining every year. But imagine what it is like to live in many of these other countries with even more inflation and currency declining in value.
He concludes by showing a chart of asset performance since August 2020. Those percentages show how to preserve your wealth in a world where currency is declining in value.

Kerby Anderson
When you make an investment, it is important to know if there is any counterparty risk. Any business involves a cooperation of many entities and individuals. How likely is it that one of them may default on their financial obligations?
Here’s a scary question: what if the counterparty is your bank or the government? That may be less likely here in the US, but is becoming a reality ever since the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus created the concept of the bail-in.
A recent article in Fortune describes that as a form of financial relief for banks that are in danger of collapsing or going bankrupt. “The relief comes from canceling some or all of the bank’s debt by reducing the value of bank shares, bonds, and uninsured deposits.” In case you are wondering, this has been made possible in Europe under a new framework and in the US under 2010 the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
But even if the bank isn’t failing, the government still has the power to freeze a bank account or any other financial account. The best example comes from Canada. Last February, the Canadian government began freezing the accounts and canceling credit cards of anyone involved in the trucker protests.
One commentator explained what it takes to freeze an asset. Stocks-press a button. Bonds-press a button. Mutual funds-press a button. Cash in the bank-press a button. Of course, that is just a short list.
Decades ago, someone said that you only think you own your house, until you don’t pay your taxes. We could add that you only think you own your stocks, bonds, or cash until the government says you don’t. Citizens in other countries are learning this. Let’s hope we don’t ever see that here in America.

Kerby Anderson
Americans are starting to realize how much privacy they are losing. It isn’t just the government through surveillance that is invading our privacy. Major corporations are collecting information on us, even when we aren’t sharing it online. Here is a classic example of that.
Twenty years ago, the Target Corporation was able to conclude that a shopper was pregnant and even estimate her due date. The story was written up in the New York Times and has become a classic example of targeted marketing. The article had the arresting title, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.”
A data scientist at Target began to analyze the massive database Target stores were amassing from the purchases of their customers. He began to mine the data and discovered a few interesting things about Target customers.
He discovered, for example, that pregnant women are more likely to buy unscented lotion, and that they start doing this at the beginning of their second trimester. This correlation between pregnancy and changes in shopping behavior was one of about two-dozen data points he and the other analysts were able to identify.
When they combined all these correlations together, they were able to establish a “pregnancy prediction” score. This score told them two things. First, the female consumer was pregnant. Second, it also gave them a good estimate of her due date.
The value to Target was considerable. They were able to send coupons to the woman during different times in her pregnancy so that they would arrive when she was most likely to need them. The timing of the coupons brought more pregnant women into Target stores to use them.
This marketing success story illustrates how big data and sophisticated data analysis can invade your privacy without you providing any information. Whether you click on a link online or buy a product in the store, someone is watching.