America

Submitted by JC Collins via PhilosophyOfMetrics.com,

For the first time in a long time I feel concerned and worried about the prospect of war.  The reaction of Saudi Arabia to the Russian intervention in Syria has always been the wild card in the shifting geopolitical power base in the Middle East.  Turkey and Israel, along with Saudi Arabia are the three countries with the most to lose because of a strong alliance between Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia.

When Barack Obama swept into the White House in 2008, the American electorate was hoping for “change.”

A “change” in the way Republicans and Democrats interacted with one another, a “change” in how the US is perceived by the rest of the world, and a “change” in Washington’s notoriously poor foreign policy in the Mid-East.

Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.

Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,

Breaking the zero bound has become a rite of passage in the post-2008 world. As Mark Jeftovic noted, "Once a financial market hits the zero bound in interest rates, it's like crossing the event horizon of a black hole - there is no going back." Indeed, the number of government bonds trading at negative yields increases every day.

Contrary to wishful thinking, the results of Iowa and New Hampshire only confirm the same stark reality that has haunted the Republican nomination process from the beginning: Party rules are a tragic accident waiting to happen.