America

Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

A week after the New Hampshire Presidential Primaries, what lessons, if any, can we take from the dramatic victories of two outsider candidates? Former New Hampshire resident and occasional Automatic Earth contributor Nelson Lebo weighs in.

• Futures rise as oil gains hold steady (Reuters)
• China promises economic stability as G20, parliament loom (Reuters)
• Obama scolds Senate Republicans for Supreme Court threat (Reuters)
• China Deploys Missiles on Disputed South China Sea Island (WSJ)
• China Ramps Up Rhetoric, Plans New Steps to Juice Up Economy (BBG)
• China Loses Control of the Economic Story Line (WSJ)
• Banks are still the weak links in the economic chain (FT)
• The Great Iron-Ore Flood Claims Anglo as Biggest Victim (BBG)

Submitted by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

• Washington should think more than twice about allowing Turkey and Saudi Arabia, its Sunni allies, militarily to engage their Shiite enemies in Syria. Allowing Sunni supremacists into a deeper sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. And it certainly will not serve America's interests.

Wouldn’t it be a strange world to live in if 50% of military spending was paid for by just 5% of the population? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Every year, the United States government spends the equivalent of $3,300 for each working citizen on its military budget. In aggregate, this grand total of $610 billion in defense spending amounts to about half of the dollars globally spent on the military.