Business

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

As seen in my previous article, US military power is on the decline, and the effects are palpable. In a world full of conflicts brought on by Washington, the economic and financial shifts that are occurring are for many countries a long-awaited and welcome development.

If we were to identify what uniquely fuels American imperialism and its aspirations for global hegemony, the role of the US dollar would figure prominently.

A new study from Joe Nation of Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research entitled "Pension Math: Public Pension Spending and Service Crowd Out in California, 2003-2030," says that the devastating consequences of the ill-advised, Cadillac pensions doled out to America's public employees over the past several decades are only getting started. 

Three weeks after the US imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to cripple its economy and choke the Maduro regime, which in turn prompted Caracas to announce it would no longer receive or send payments in dollars, and that those who wished to trade Venezuelan crude would have to do so in Chinese Yuan, today during an energy summit held in Moscow, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro proposed to expand his own personal blockade of the US, by proposing that all oil producing countries discuss creating a currency basket for trading crude and refined products.

Authored by Deep Throat at Deep Throat Blog

Today, I'd like to take some time to revisit a couple of related topics that we first started discussing a few years ago. I am, of course, referring to the burgeoning increases in China's Debt levels, Shadow Bank Assets (loans) and M2, along with a high-level analysis of the most recent PBOC Financial Stability Report and FSB Global Shadow Bank Monitoring Report. (No!....please don't click this page closed....I promise this will eventually get interesting...)

In the week that’s passed since the White House unveiled its tax-reform plan, Republicans and Democrats have expressed their reservations about the proposal, particularly after an analysis from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center suggested that taxes would rise over the coming ten years for most members of the middle class if the proposal were passed into law.