SPY

In what may be the biggest story of the year, if confirmed, Greek newspaper To Vima reports that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for 10 billion dollars in order to print drachmas. But the real shocker: on the night of the referendum, word came from Russia that Putin did not want to support Greece’s return to the drachma. After that, Tsipras had no choice left but to “surrender” to German Chancellor.

Here's what the chart looks like, and as you can see, it has thrust down to an interesting point not seen for about a decade:

This contrarian play could be one of the most potent and profitable strategies in years.

• Back Greek talks or face chaos, Merkel tells German lawmakers (Reuters)
• Fear of the Unknown Binds a Greek Deal With Few Believers (WSJ)
• Grexit Still on the Table Even With EU’s Latest Band-Aid (BBG)
• Donald Tusk warns of extremist political contagion (FT)
• Germany, Not Greece, Should Exit the Euro (BBG)
• Sabine Files Bankruptcy in New York as Oil Prices Fall (BBG)
• Markets Bow to Central Bankers as Bonds Rise, Pound Strengthens (BBG)

Despite the best efforts of some to sound the alarm, the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded. All the while, the nation’s citizens seem content to buy into a carefully constructed, benevolent vision of life in America that bears little resemblance to the gritty, pain-etched reality that plagues those unfortunate enough to not belong to the rarefied elite. For those whose minds have been short-circuited into believing the candy-coated propaganda peddled by the politicians, here is an A-to-Z, back-to-the-basics primer of what life in the United States of America is really all about.

Earlier this month, news emerged that the US government had suffered its worst cyberattack ever. There’s a good chance the attack is even worse than what we've read about. So what does the Obama administration want to do to solve the problem? For starters, it’s proposed “economic sanctions” against China, which it holds responsible for the attack. And only a few days after the OPM hack, Senate leaders tacked on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) - which creates a back-door channel for government agencies to retrieve, analyze, and store enormous volumes of personal data - to a defense bill to avoid debate on the measure. It didn’t work – the Senate failed to advance the legislation for now... but it is a good time to begin securing your electronic life. The US government certainly isn’t going to do it for you.

Even if you never intended to offend anyone and you had no idea that your words were insulting, in some countries you can be detained without bail and sentenced to years in prison for such speech. Today, there are highly restrictive hate speech laws in Canada, in Mexico and in virtually every single European nation. The United States is still an exception, but the truth is that our liberties and freedoms are being eroded every single day, and it is only a matter of time until “hate speech laws” are used to take away our freedom of speech too.

"Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online."

Angry and embarrassed, France summoned the U.S. ambassador Wednesday to respond to the revelations by WikiLeaks that the U.S. National Security Agency eavesdropped on three successive French presidents and other top officials. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the U.S. must do everything it can, and quickly, to "repair the damage" to U.S.-French relations from the revelations, which he called "a very serious violation of the spirit of trust" between the allies. "If the fact of the revelations today does not constitute a real surprise for anyone, that in no way lessens the emotion and the anger. They are legitimate. France will not tolerate any action threatening its security and fundamental interests."

- Doubts over City of London’s “fintech” in age of cyber war - Thousands left in “financial limbo” after tech “error” - 600,000 RBS customer payments go "missing" in "system failure”

Wherever government officials sense a credible threat to their power, they invariably take every opportunity to crush it by any means necessary: this is the first principle of how governments function, and every libertarian is all too familiar with it. this latest tragedy, you can be sure, will be used to accomplish the same anti-libertarian ends: the calls to investigate “hate groups,” and even to ban “hate speech,” are already being heard. Of course, who and what constitutes a “hate group,” and who is hating whom are subjective evaluations that no government official is qualified to make...

If the United States and China are supposed to be such “great friends”, why are both sides acting as if war is in our future? There were years of diplomatic troubles before Japan finally made the decision to launch a “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor. Right now, it appears we are moving into a similar period of diplomatic trouble with China.

Amid criticism from Washington, Beijing has embarked on a propaganda campaign to show that despite attempts by the US and its regional allies to cast aspersions, island life in the Spratlys is all about girls, gardening, puppies, and pigs.

The Chinese foreign ministry is out with a statement indicating the country has nearly completed its construction projects in the South China Sea. While this could be viewed as a sign that China has effectively backed down, albeit on its own terms and at its discretion, that will likely come as no consolation to the US and its allies because even as China signaled an end to its dredging activities, it also implicitly admitted that it will continue to build military facilities on the islands.