Africa

Can Russia Survive Washington’s Attack?

Paul Craig Roberts

For Caterpillar, the great recession was bad, for about 19 months. In May 2010, after declining sharply for just under two years, CAT posted it first positive global retail sales comps and never looked back... until December 2012 when comp sales once again turned negative and have been negative ever since. For the past 41 months!

The breakdown showed that contrary to popular opinion, there has been no pick up in demand for heavy industrial machinery anywhere around the globe.

Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

One recurring theme observed throughout the oil rally since the February 13 year lows, has been increasingly more aggressive hedging action by producers, who are willing to give up upside gains in order to protect from yet another swoon lower in prices. And, as Goldman cautions in its latest note on ongoing imbalances in the oil market, "the rally in long-dated prices has taken prices to levels ($50/bbl in 2017) where hedging activity is ramping up which suggests it will soon stall."

At Aleteia, John Burger wrote a really good piece about the Benedict Option and why it appeals to many Christians these days. He has examples: a Catholic one, an Evangelical one, and an individual one. The piece begins like this:

For the most part, Christians have had a happy — some would even say “privileged” — time of it in America, where Christianity and Christian churches were essentially left alone as they freely exercised their religion within society both privately and, up until recently, in partnership with the government.