Testimony

"It's a fraud really, a fake," says James Hansen rubbing his head. The former NASA Scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, exclaimed "It's just bullshit for them to say: 'We'll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.' It's just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned."

The real problem for the Fed will be how foolish it will look if it does raise by 25 basis points and is then forced by a slowing economy to lower rates back to zero soon after liftoff. At that point, the markets should finally understand that the Fed is powerless to get out of the stimulus trap it has created. But it looks like the Fed would rather look foolish later when it's forced to cut rates, than look foolish now by not raising them at all. The Fed’s rocket to nowhere will hover above the launch pad for a considerable period of time before ultimately falling back down to Earth.

According to the latest set of emails released by the State Department, and first reported by the Daily Caller, Hillary intervened in a request forwarded by her son-in-law, Marc Mezvisnky, on behalf of a deep-sea mining firm, Neptune Minerals, to meet with her or other State Department officials.

"People are afraid. They don’t like to see the headlines and that is why they are withdrawing their money. It shows the panic that is going on from the investors’ perspective.”

"Friday’s employment report clears the way for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter-percentage point at its Dec. 15-16 policy meeting, ending seven years of near-zero interest rates."

D'uh!

Puerto Rico faces its moment of truth on Tuesday as the commonwealth must decide whether to default on GO debt and risk triggering a cascade of litigation. Meanwhile, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla is on Capitol Hill hoping to drum up support for a plan that would allow for some of the island's agencies to file for bankruptcy.

Last week's arrest of Latin America's most prominent investment banker sent shares of BTG Pactual plunging as investors pulled a third of their money from the firm's fixed income funds. As shocking as Andre Esteves' detention most assuredly was, analysts say the real risk may stem from the investigation into Rousseff's "guy" in the Senate, Delcidio Amaral, who was also detained last Wednesday. As Bloomberg reports, Amaral's "arrest not only delayed government efforts to resolve this year’s budget dispute, but it also dispelled a long-held belief that sitting lawmakers are all but untouchable because of a quirk in Brazilian law that affords politicians special treatment in criminal investigations." 

Banana Republic 101: when the despotic president of a corrupt regime is faced with facts exposing his lllegal activity, what does he do? He arrests and journalists who discovered said facts, and demands they spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Welcome to Turkey.

While we patiently dig to find who the on and offshore "commodity trading" middleman are, who cart away ISIS oil to European and other international markets in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars, one name keeps popping up as the primary culprit of regional demand for the Islamic State's "terrorist oil" - that of Turkish president Recep Erdogan's son: Bilal Erdogan.

“The liberal media has taken their Clinton sycophancy to a new low. CNN needs to address this bias and lack of journalistic integrity,” Paul’s chief campaign strategist Doug Stafford, said in a statement.

The Thanksgiving we celebrate is for the success of the Pilgrims after establishing property rights and free enterprise as that event laid the foundation for the growth of America. Were our Pilgrim and Jamestown colony forefathers to wake up from the dead and look at the graduated taxation (from each according to his ability) and welfare programs (to each according to his need) we have today they might offer us a lesson in history by simply quoting Goethe, “Those who do not learn from the lessons of history are doomed to relive them.”

Here is a sight that will never be seen in the US: the CEO of the country's largest investment bank arrested and perp walked after accusation we was part of the nation's largest corruption scandal.

"Why are Western leaders expressing their determination to “destroy” ISIS using all means necessary, while avoiding the most significant factor of all: the material infrastructure of ISIS’ emergence in the context of ongoing Gulf and Turkish state support for Islamist militancy in the region."