America

Chicago's pension funds, along with several other large public pensions around the country, are in serious trouble (we recently discussed the destruction awaiting our financial markets here: "Are Collapsing Pensions "About To Bring Hell To America"?"). 

The problem is that the pending doom surrounding these massive public pension obligations often get clouded over by complicated actuarial math with a plan's funded status heavily influenced by discount rates applied to future liability streams. 

Authored by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co.,

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to reassure America's nervous European counterparts over Washington's commitment to NATO on Friday but it didn't quite work out as expected when he pressed them again to spend more on defense, triggering a sharp rebuke from Germany.

“As President Trump has made clear, it is no longer sustainable for the U.S. to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO’s defense expenditures,” Tillerson said at a meeting of allied foreign ministers in Brussels.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

In today's press conference at the White House, Sean Spicer shifted the conversation away from the nothing-burger of who told Chairman Nunes about the Trump team being surveilled by the Obama administration to the public comments made by Dr. Farkas -- the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense specializing in Russia, who said "get as much information as you can" to persons inside the intelligence apparatus -- for the purposes of preserving intel on the Trump team in an effort to hide it from the incoming administration.