Obama Administration

• China stocks slump 6 percent on fears of further yuan depreciation (Reuters)
• U.S. Lacks Ammo for Next Economic Crisis (Hilsenrath)
• Emerging Markets Extend Slide as Commodities Fall; Pound Jumps (BBG)
• China yuan to move both ways, more 'adjustments' unlikely: central bank economist (Reuters)
• Playing Chinese markets is as simple as 'follow the leader' (Reuters)
• PBOC Injection Shows China Worries About Outflows (WSJ)
• Russia Fails to Soothe Oil Concerns as Citi Joins Ruble Bears (BBG)

“The Americans allowed ISIS to rise to power because they wanted to get Assad out from Syria. But they didn’t anticipate that the results would be so far beyond their control.” This was not, then, a US intelligence failure as such. Rather, the US failure to to curtail the rise of ISIS and its likely destabilization of both Iraq and Syria, was not due to a lack of accurate intelligence? - ?which was abundant and precise? - ?but due to an ill-conceived political decision to impose ‘regime change’ on Syria at any cost. We can’t come up with any other logical conclusion. Either way, such people have no business running the affairs of these United States, and their actions are merely increasing instability and violence across the planet. The longer they remain in charge with no accountability, the more dangerous this world will become.

"The US is digging itself in deeper and deeper,” warns Doug Casey, adding the telling question: “Then what’s going to happen?” President Obama’s grim warning of “deal or war” seems to provide an answer. Faced with economic implosion on an epic scale, the US may be counting on war as its other option.

Newly disclosed NSA files expose the spy agency's relationship through the years with American telecoms companies. As NYTimes reports, The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward Snowden, described the NSA-AT&T relationship as "highly collaborative," while another lauded the company’s "extreme willingness to help."

"The U.S. is investigating what it believes are 'credible' reports that ISIS fighters used mustard agent in an attack against Kurdish Peshmerga this week," CNN reports. "Did ISIS find some mustard? We think they did. We think they have used it."

In a culture where vigilance is encouraged rather than labeled paranoia, in a culture where productivity is enabled rather than obstructed, in a culture where free thought is treated with interest rather than disdain, government holds no value. The only people who understand the true nature of government and still value the existence of an overreaching state are the people who would like to take advantage of the unchecked power such a state affords. We often call these people “elitists.” They often call themselves elitists. Big government serves only the interests of these elites. Everyone else is either a hapless victim of it, a useful idiot in service of it, or a revolutionary opposed to it.

"...Given that “transparency” has such positive connotations, it is hard to imagine a reversal of these measures. But the public interest would not be served if the internal deliberations of the US Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court were put on CSPAN, as some have demanded."

On Monday, we got some color on Hillary Clinton’s $350 billion plan to make college more affordable. Students and former students across the country owe more than $1.2 trillion in college loans, and as Bill Ackman so eloquently put it earlier this year, "there’s no way they’re going to pay it back." Now, one Boston-based hedge fund is building a short position on what it says is "runaway inflation in post-secondary education."

The presumed Democratic nominee is set to roll out her plan to confront the $1.2 trillion student loan bubble. As Bloomberg reports, the pitch is expected to be one of the "biggest-ticket policy proposals of her presidential campaign," totaling some $350 billion and will include $200 billion for states who will be encouraged to do more to facilitate loan-free college educations and a $150 billion refi effort for the country’s heavily indebted students.

• Grim China data keeps stimulus hopes alive (Reuters)
• Berkshire Hathaway to Buy Precision Castparts for About $37 Billion (BBG)
• Greece, lenders in final push to seal new bailout (Reuters)
• Quantitative Easing With Chinese Characteristics Takes Shape (BBG)
• Greece nears €86bn accord with creditors (FT)
• Oil Futures Signal Weak Prices Could Last Years (WSJ)
• Drop in long-term investment hinders eurozone recovery (FT)
• Two shot in Ferguson amid standoff between police, protesters (Reuters)

There are two ways to win, at any game: One is by improving one’s own performance. The other is by weakening the performances by all of one’s competitors. The United States is now relying almost entirely upon the latter type of strategy.

Did you take out a $245,000 loan to pay for your degree? Good news, the Department of Education wants you to know that "your payment could be as low as $0 a month!"

In case you’ve been living under a geopolitical rock for the last couple of years, you’d know that despite a brief period of time during which Egypt appeared headed toward a democratic form of government, it went from one brutal dictator to another. As was the case during Hosni Mubarak’s decades of rule, this is precisely how the U.S. government likes it. So much so, that U.S. officials are not only selling arms to the latest despot, General Abdelfattah al-Sisi, but they are actively bragging about it on Twitter.

What many have tacitly known for a long time was finally confirmed overnight when an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by Vocativ and The Daily Beast found that of the 60 or so ultra-rich Americans - aka the mega-donors - who have contributed to both Jeb Bush’s and Hillary Clinton’s federal campaigns, seventeen of those contributors have gone one step further and opened their wallets to fund both Bush’s and Clinton’s 2016 ambitions.

Is Barack Obama trying to kill the economy on purpose? He promised to fundamentally transform America, and he is doing it in hundreds of different ways.  These new greenhouse gas regulations are just one example.  Our nation is being gutted like a fish, and most Americans don’t seem to care. What in the world will it take for this country to finally wake up?