Submitted by Brian Cloughley via Strategic-Culture.org,

In the military a rearguard action is defined as ‘a defensive action carried out by a retreating army’ and it is an appropriate description of the desperate scrabbling by NATO to convince the rest of the world — and especially Donald Trump — that its existence is justified.

As the public is told day after day by mainstream media, if stock prices are up in America, it is an indication that all is well in the economy... consumers can consume, investors can invest, and producers can produce as confident citizens gorge on ever more credit (because everything is awesome). So we wonder what the 'CNBC' of these two countries would be saying about their stock markets' massive outperformance...

Venezuela's "economy" must be roaring?

Farmers in California have been ordered to stop their cows from farting, or face paying an unspecified fine by State regulators.  In an attempt to reduce methane emissions by 40 per cent in order to tackle global warming, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law regulating the amount of methane ‘allowed’ to be released from cows. According to scientists, gasses produced by cow farts are a major source of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

An alcoholic in the Netherlands has been euthanized by the state because he had “no prospect of improvement” and could not continue living as an alcoholic. Mark Langedijk, who suffered from depression and anxiety, was allowed to choose the day of his death and was cracking jokes, drinking beer and eating ham sandwiches with his family hours before he passed away. He was killed by lethal injection at his parents’ home on 14 July, according to an account of the ordeal written by his brother and published in the magazine Linda.

Total fertility rates, which can be defined as the average number of children born to a woman who survives her reproductive years (aged 15-49), have decreased globally by about half since 1960. This has drastically shaped today’s global economy, but as Visual Capitalist's Caitlin Cheadle explains, a continued decline could have much more severe long-term consequences.

If the world has too many elderly dependents and not enough workers, the burden on economic growth will be difficult to overcome.

Fertility Rates Start to Decline