VIDEO: Is Apple Really A Slave Driver?

Marketplace China correspondent Rob Schmitz recently looked into the widely-reported "slave labor conditions" at Apple's Foxconn plant (where iPads are assembled). To say the least, Schmitz's findings contrasted greatly with the increasingly-scrutinized SACOM report (.pdf). As Schmitz put it, "hundreds of applicants line-up each morning" in hopes of good pay and favorable working conditions.

Schmitz's account:

Strike Three, Bernanke. You're out!

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was sweating it out against Representative Ron Paul's hardball questions on inflation during the recent meeting of the House Committee on Financial Services. While most of the committee members lobbed softballs at the Fed Charman, Dr. Paul hurled heat from the mound, forcing the characteristically coy Bernanke to display uncharacteristic moments of uneasiness, negative body language, and outright defensiveness.

Bernanke, for his part, should be losing composure in the face of heat from the mound. After all, Bernanke's beleaguered Fed, having accomplished next to nothing in regards to mitigating employment woes, the first of its official Dual Mandates, is on the cusp of failing its second mandate: keeping inflation under wraps.

How much inflation has Bernanke's "Crtl+P' monetary policy been generating? Well, according to the Commodity Price Index (not to be confused with the BLS's bogus Consumer Price Index), commodity prices in virtually every category have been on the path to overheating  since the introduction of QE1, ZIRP, and the Fed's secret $7.7 trillion bank bailout. However, nothing can provide a clearer depiction of Bernanke's legacy of inflation than a graphical comparison of the dwindling purchasing power of the Dollar and the rising price of oil:

Unemployed To Washington: Stop Flood Of Foreign National Hiring

Howard Foster wrote an excellent piece (on the Huffington Post of all sites) outlining the disconnect between our elected officials and the unemployed in regards to immigration policy. In his piece, Mr. Foster correctly made the assertion that the number of issued employment-based visas should be reduced during times of high unemployment, as we've been experiencing over the last four years. Foster only scratched the surface of the injustice of foreign national hiring, however, as he only cited the 65,000 H-1B visas Washington issues each year. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the U.S. actually floods (.pdf) the job market annually with well over a half-million foreign workers, including upwards of 150,000 with J-1 visas and 75,000 with L-1 visas.