Saudi Arabia

Q. Could oil prices collapse to $20?
A. The short answer is ‘yes.’ We believe that crude oil prices could fall further unless global oil production is reduced.  We believe that the weakness in crude oil prices reflects a combination of fundamental factors and financial flows. Fundamentally there is simply too much oil... the current supply-demand balance is not sustainable; something has to give.

Now that the gold-trading company at the nexus of what may have been the world's biggest gold smuggling ring in history has imploded seemingly overnight, vaporizing countless tons of physical gold and unknown amounts of client cash, even more questions remain.

“For sure it will cause a big delay and it may kill the whole process. Whoever committed this crime is pushing for a military solution, not a political process solution.”

101 years after the Christmas truces along the Western Front there is still no peace on earth. And the long suffering American taxpayers, who foot the massive bills generated by the War Party’s demented and destructive policies, have no clue that Imperial Washington is the principal reason.

"Be confident that God will grant victory to those who worship him, and hear the good news that our state is doing well. The more intense the war against it, the purer it becomes and the tougher it gets."

Following the yellow brick road leads us deep, very deep inside the rabbit hole...

"...the march towards secularism and freedom is not inevitable. In fact, it’s problematic because we have a situation where every year the West becomes more secular, open, tolerant and liberal while many parts of the Muslim world are going the other way. So it would seem that we might be moving towards a head-on collision of some sort... In most Muslim countries the majority of people are tolerant. They want to live in a more inclusive society and have a more liberal religious doctrine. The problem is that Islam seems to have been hijacked by a vocal minority of people who are prepared to use violence to advance their very intolerant and conservative version of Islam."

"Oil and gas sector bankruptcies have reached quarterly levels last seen in the Great Recession. At least nine U.S. oil and gas companies, accounting for more than $2 billion in debt, have filed for bankruptcy so far in the fourth quarter."

In American politics the nation of Russia, especially as personified in its leader Vladimir Putin, becomes all things to all men. To American leftists, Russia is a neo-fascist, violently nationalist country that ruthlessly suppressed minority groups, especially homosexuals. To the American Right, Putin is the second coming of Stalin who is working to subvert good old-fashioned American values around the world.

Rather, economic collapse is the greatest weapon at the disposal of globalists. National panic, riots, looting, starvation, magnified crime: All of these things result in mass die-offs and desperation. Desperation leads to calls for "strong leadership", and strong leadership usually results in totalitarianism. It might seem sensationalist to tie all of these possible outcomes to the Fed rate hike decision, but give it a little time. Those who make accusations of sensationalism and “fear mongering” today will be asserting tomorrow that such developments were “easily predictable.”

For those who have enjoyed our coverage of how Washington and its regional allies supply TOWs to militants battling for control of Syria, we bring you the following clip, which appears to depict Syrian rebels firing a missile at a Hezbollah fighter sitting in a truck. In a remarkable example of remaining cool under fire (literally), the soldier simply pulls forward, dodging death by a few feet at the last second.

"Many Europeans have sold their values ??against petrodollars.You have Wahhabi organizations from Saudi Arabia allowed to bring their dark and extremist ideology to Europe. Therefore from there terrorists now are exported to us. We have no export, all came to Syria and then go back to Europe.The three criminals who are responsible for the attacks in Paris have all lived in Europe and not in Syria."

At the end of the day, the Fed led central bank money printing spree of the past two decades resulted in what is functionally a massive dollar short. Once the Fed stopped expanding its balance sheet when QE officially ended in October 2014, it was only a matter of time before all the “near-dollars” of the world would come under enormous downward pressure in the FX markets. Our Keynesian witch doctors believe that sinking currencies are a wonderful thing, of course. They claim making your country poorer is a good way to stimulate export growth and a virtuous cycle of spending and growth. But there is another thing. It is also a good way to generate capital flight and the ensuing chaos that creates.

In a shocking new report, Seymour Hersh reveals what he says was a covert operation run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who sought to undermine the Obama administration and the CIA's goal of overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria. "If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic."

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?