After more than 5,000 US-led coalition airstrikes against ISIS targets some Iraqis believe that the U.S. is not doing enough to eradicate the terror group. Some Iraqis blame the U.S. for supporting IS and question the effort it has made over the past two years to help Iraqi forces defeat the terror group. The U.S. military has been providing advisers and equipment to Iraqi and Kurdish forces to roll back the Islamic State. 5,000 US-led coalition airstrikes have been carried out against ISIS targets, mostly in Iraq and some in Syria, at a total cost of $7 billion.

Submitted by Richard Sisk via Military.com,

A small team of U.S. troops was on the ground in Yemen and Navy ships with Marines aboard were offshore to support friendly forces against an al-Qaeda offshoot as the U.S. deepened its involvement in yet another Mideast civil war, the Pentagon said Friday.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to say how many U.S. troops were in Yemen near the port city of Mukalla, a former stronghold of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terror group, or whether they were Special Forces.

Massive capital outflows from China in an effort to preserve capital is something that we've covered extensively in the past (here and here for example). Last month, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) came out to do some damage control, and downplayed the extent of the activity. It also hinted that the government would "help" Chinese companies with overseas M&A in the future...

From Xinhua

Ross Douthat lays out what he calls “the conservative case against Trump.” He says that electing Trump would mean the end of Reaganism, but concedes that for some conservatives, that would not be a bug, but a feature.

Here is the heart of the argument:

The dollar's recent rapid slide has been accompanied by a constant backdrop of dovish cooing from the Fed. Until this week, SocGen's Albert Edwards notes that both equity and commodity markets had embraced the weak dollar as the elixir to solve all their ills. That relief, however, has now proved fleeting as fear of weak economic activity has reasserted its influence on investors. The weak dollar, Edwards warns, should be seen as merely a shuffling of deckchairs on the Titanic before the global economy sinks below the icy waves.