Greece

2015 has witnessed several events that had, and will have, negative repercussions on individual freedom. Orwellian totalitarianism is increasingly creeping into our everyday lives. How much more intrusive will the violations of our liberties become and for how long will the establishment get away with this? With regards to the financial system, no real solution was found to issues such as those in the euro zone. Furthermore, the financial system as a whole once again got deeper into debt. For how much longer can central banks and governments continue kicking the can down the road without any real reform?

Speaking to Slovak news agency TASR on December 15h, President Milos Zeman said that he was "extremely disappointed that the summer negotiations between Greece and creditors did not ultimately lead to Greece’s exit from the euro area, although it looked quite possible." Greece had an immediate response: it recalled its ambassador to Prague. 

Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini - who once implored eurocrats to just be "honest" and admit that the Greek bailout "isn't going to work" - blames the euro for his country's economic woes and warns that if Brussels can't devise a viable strategy for controlling the influx of asylum seekers, "nation states will be forced to take matters into theur own hands."

Despite every effort by The Fed to convince the world that everything is awesome, it's not. From China growth risks to concerns about tightening financial conditions, Goldman warns so-called 'grey swan' fears are rising with Brexit, Trumpe elected, widening terrorist threats, and increased protectionism the most impactful.

"There no obvious solution. This is why we think that a second election around March 2016 is as likely as any of the alternatives. [In fact,] an early election in the short or medium term seems the most likely outcome."

Presenting an "exhilarating, disheartening, infuriating, touching and powerful" mini-documentary on last summer's Greek saga.

“Europe didn’t let us fly; Turkey didn’t let us fly, but we showed that even is such conditions we’re capable of coping with the task using airfields on the Russian territory."

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey

"Once again I find myself shaking my head at the wasteful spending in DC and a flawed process that drops thousands of pages of text on us with 48 hours to “read” and understand... The fact that extremist environmental groups are pleased and that Obama hasn't threatened a veto tells you everything you need to know about this fundamentally-flawed bill."

It appears that a main preoccupation of economists – the self declared “behavioral economists” prominent among them – is to show how dumb people are as consumers and in assessing risks. Drawn to logical conclusion, this implies that economists, advising benevolent dictators are the solution. In ancient Greece people flocked to oracles and sought guidance.; today, Councils of Economic Advisers, IMF, OECD, Nobel prizes sustain perceptions that "macro- strology" and much else of what economists do is "science."

China did everything it could to prevent a collapse and it still happened.  How do you think other countries will do?

Most people have no idea what really happens when a currency collapses, let alone how to prepare.

“Strengthening Frontex, creating a kind of border guard would by all means be needed, beneficial,” he said on his way into a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. “But the way the commission proposed it—for it to be a structure independent from nation states—is astounding.” He added: “There’d be an undemocratic structure reporting to no one knows who.”

The Big Banks manipulate credit default swaps to perpetrate economic terrorism against other nations in the world, where they literally destroy the economies of those victim-nations. It used to be a theory, but now the proof is finally emerging. 

"We want to, and we will, noticeably reduce the number of refugees," Angela Merkel said in a keynote speech during the CDU party congress in Karlsruhe, Germany. Although the Iron Chancellor kept an upbeat tone with regard to migrants, it now seems as though even she realizes that the current situation - wherein over a million asylum seekers have inundated the country over the last twelve months alone - simply isn't tenable in the long run.