New York Times

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey has, according to Politico, asked The National Defense University to establish an essay and research competition focused on the Middle East in honor of Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah. How very generous for America's top uniformed military leader to recognize such a leader of another nation... Though no details of the prize are available, we thought we would take a stab (figuratively) at an essay...

The Greek election result was worse than expected - the anti-austerity vote is massive, but it could be an empty gesture as Greece in reality has little choice: Comply with the Troika or leave the EUR. Saxo Bank's Steen Jakobsen doubts the latter will happen with the same vote as the Greeks are tired of austerity but not of being European. However, game theory dictates that some solution will be found which is sub-optimal for all parties, but the risk it will take longer than market have nerves for. There remains a consensus that “things will be ok...” but the early comments indicate the positioning is already starting...

In Related News: Western Politicians and Media Rush To Issue Tributes To King That Led The World In BEHEADINGS, FLOGGED Bloggers For Criticism & BANNED Women From Driving

Billionaire Jeff Greene - who flew his wife, children and two nannies on a private jet plane to Davos for the week - has some words of wisdom for the average American: "America’s lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence. We need to reinvent our whole system of life."

While the lawyer for Michael Brown’s family, said he did not want to comment on the investigation until the Justice Department made an official announcement, The New York Times reports that law enforcement officials have said The Justice Department has begun work on a legal memo recommending no civil rights charges against Darren Wilson, the white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., who killed the unarmed black teenager in August. A broader civil rights investigation into allegations of discriminatory traffic stops and excessive force by the Ferguson Police Department remains open, but Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., has said that he plans to have it done before leaving office, probably in the next month or two.

The timidness with which mainstream media in the U.S. approaches news has been well documented. In fact, the inability of traditional media to do a reasonable job of holding powerful interests accountable has been one of the primary drivers behind the ascendency of alternative news. Despite this reality, one thing we know less about is specifically how the power structure goes about suppressing news it doesn’t want reaching the plebs. Until now...

Having noted that voter angst has been riled, propagandized, and fear-mongered to the point at which the most pressing priority for Congress is to 'fix' terrorism, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that we discover - deep down in the archives - that giving the public someone to 'hate' as opposed to something may have been an entire fiction. As The New York Times exposed in 2007, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, the titular head of the Islamic State, according to Brigadier General Kevin Bergner - the chief American military spokesman at the time - never existed (and was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima). So he was a ghost back then.... is he a ghost again, designed purely to put a face on ISIS and the biggest bogeyman of the current global anti-terrorist mania?

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, Barack Obama is going to promise to make life better for middle class families.  Each January, he gets up there and tells us how the economy is “turning around” and to believe that much brighter days are right around the corner.  And yet things just continue to get even worse for the middle class.  The numbers that you are about to see will not be included in Obama’s State of the Union speech.  They don’t fit the “narrative” that Obama is trying to sell to the American people.  But all of these statistics are accurate.  They paint a picture of a middle class that is dying.

The quaint notion that the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago. Any lingering illusions were surely extinguished last year, when an academic study empirically proved that the USA is nothing more than a corrupt oligarchy...

Governments from Around the World ADMIT They Do It

The entire theory of monetarism is coming undone in spectacular and empirical fashion, which leaves the entire status quo exposed. All that is left in defense is the same old refrain of “it wasn’t big enough.” That’s great for those in the ivory towers blinding themselves to the reality of a lost generation of Italians, Spaniards, French and now even Germans; a listing to which even the FOMC is worried may yet add Americans. Why anyone ever expected a different outcome is due solely to unrepentant ideology, since these central banks are following almost exactly the Japanese “model.”

A day after the funeral of a colleague killed in an ambush last month fueled tensions between the force and the city's mayor and led to another day when thousands of policemen turned their back on New York mayor Bill de Blasio, two NYC policemen were shot and wounded on Monday night, officials said,  According to Reuters, the officers, part of a plainclothes unit, were shot outside a Chinese restaurant in the Bronx district as they tracked two suspects to an armed robbery, New York Police Commissioner William Bratton told a news conference early on Tuesday. The officers were transported to St. Barnabas Hospital and were expected to survive. Both were listed in stable condition: one, aged 30, was shot in the arm and lower back. The second man, aged 38, had chest and arm wounds. A massive manhunt is taking place for the suspects, described as 25- to 30-year-old Hispanic males, who are still at large. The organization COP SHOT (Citizens Outraged at Police Being Shot) is offering a $10,000 cash reward for information leading to their arrest and conviction.

West Uses Anti-Terror Laws to Murder Farmers, Small-Time Drug Dealers and Low-Level Taliban Members

What scares me about the Clash of Civilizations is that the three leaders of the three biggest civilizations – the US (Western), China (Sinic), and Russia (Orthodox) – will misplay their hands and take on another civilization directly or, worse, take on each other, and that will vaporize the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence in a nanosecond. The existential risk here for markets is not that China/Russia/Europe/America might “collapse”, whatever that means. No, the existential risk is that the great civilizations of the world will be “hollowed out” internally, so that the process of managing the ten thousand year old competition between civilizations devolves into an unstable game of pandering to domestic crowds rather than a stable equilibrium of balance of power.

With Greek CDS surging to near post-bailout highs (and short-end bond yields back above 11%), it appears the market is anxious of the endgame as tomorrow's 3rd and final 'snap-election'-saving vote looms. Following Samaras fearmongering yesterday, it appears Germany is starting to fear the worst (and play down its effect), as Merkel's bloc states "the prospect of a Greek sovereign default is no longer a concern for euro member countries and financial markets," adding "hope that Greece’s international partners would pay if the country’s policymakers refuse to carry out necessary reforms is misplaced." However, as Bruno de Landevoisin notes, "what is at stake is none other than the prosperity of the common man pitted against the privilege of concentrated power."