"The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.  This applies to foreign leaders as well." - Barack Obama, January 17, 2014

For the first time since the August collapse, Offshore Yuan is trading over 1000 pips weaker (relative to the USDollar) than onshore Yuan, signalling outflows are once again escalating. Following the chaos in HIBOR money-markets, Offshore Yuan has crashed to 6.5970 (below August spike lows) to the weakest since Dec 2010. On the heels of this recent divergence between on- and off-shore Yuan, China has suspended some foreign banks from FX trading, we suppose to try and stem the capital outflows.

At this point in time, nuclear war can only be avoided in two ways. One way is for Russia and China to surrender and accept Washington’s hegemony. The other way is for an independent leader in Germany, the UK, or France to rise to office and withdraw from NATO. That would begin a stampede to leave NATO, which is Washington’s prime tool for causing conflict with Russia and, thereby, is the most dangerous force on earth to every European country and to the entire world. If NATO continues to exist, NATO together with the neoconservative ideology of American hegemony will make nuclear war inevitable.

In addition to receiving a salary and a constant stream of weapons courtesy of regional Sunni benefactors, and on top of being allowed to live in a perpetual state of dark, bacchanalian revelry, Islamic State soldiers also recieve 20% of the "loot" in captured territory and belong to a kind of militant Sam's Club which guarantees a 50% discount on a variety of fun items.

"On one occasion, he told shareholders worried about the prospects of a gas well that they needed only to 'Trust Jim Bob'"...

As we recently reported, the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman had made its way through The Mediterranean Sea, launchiung airstrikes on Syria and Iraq on its way. While the proximity of so many vessels, fighter jets, coasts, friends, enemies, and frenemies was always precarious, NBC News reports that the carrier came within 1500 yards of an Iranian rocket fired in a live-fire exercise in the Straits of Hormuz last week. US officials said this was "unnecessarily provocative and unsafe" from Obama's nuclear-deal partners.