presidential election

Back in October, Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., announced the creation of the SoftBank Vision Fund, a UK-based technology fund, with a $45 billion capital commitment form the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  The initial press release for the Vision Fund announced the company expected to invest at least $25 billion over the next 5 years and said that overall funding could reach $100 billion. 

"In 2017 we enter a period of geopolitical recession," warns Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer, adding that international war or "the breakdown of major central government institutions" isn't inevitable, though "such an outcome is now thinkable." In the company's 19th annual outlook, Eurasia fears that U.S. unilateralism under Donald Trump, China’s growing assertiveness and a weakened German Chancellor Angela Merkel will make 2017 the "most volatile" year for political risk since World War II.

Submitted by Shaun Bradley via TheAntiMedia.org,

While we eagerly await the next installment of the McKinsey study on global releveraging, we noticed that in the latest report from the Institute for International Finance released on Wednesday, total debt as of Q3 2016 once again rose sharply, increasing by $11 trillion in the first 9 months of the year, hitting a new all time high of $217 trillion. As a result, late in 2016, global debt levels are now roughly 325% of the world's gross domestic product.

Submitted by Finian Cunningham via Strategic-Culture.org,

The dark, infamous days of American lynch-mob rule and burning witches at stakes are back as never before. But not in backwater enclaves of benighted bigotry. Oh no, the modern lynch mobs are running amok in Washington’s seat of government, across prime TV and on the editorial pages of its supposed finest newspapers.