Russia

Overnight the media propaganda wars escalated after the late Friday release of an article by the Washington Post (which last week admitted to using unverified, or fake, news in an attempt to smear other so-called "fake news" sites) according to which a secret CIA assessment found that Russia sought to tip last month’s U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor, a conclusion presented without any actual evidence, and which drew an extraordinary, and angry rebuke from the president-elect’s camp.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened Canada with “retaliation” over their quietly imposed sanctions imposed against Russian citizens.  New sanctions were passed on Nov. 28th by the Canadian government which will see various Russian nationals living in Canada having their assets frozen and their business dealings stopped. The harsh sanctions comes in response to the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s ongoing support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

On December 7th, was posed the biggest test so far of the mettle of America’s President-Elect, Donald Trump.

Submitted by Alex Gorka via Stratgic-Culture.org,

Matteo Renzi resigned as the Italian Prime Minister after the people of Italy voted «no» in a historic referendum on constitutional reform on December 4. The vote results triggered a shock wave across Europe much like Brexit. It’s up to Italian President Sergio Mattarella now to decide what will happen next – an appointment of new prime minister supported by parliamentary majority or a snap election, paving the way for an anti-euro party, the 5-Star Movement, to come to power.

From "the end of cash" to "Trump muzzling The Fed" to "Russia going on the warpath", Nomura unveils its unlikely-but-impactful grey swan scenarios for 2017...

As Nomura writes, while we would like to be able to predict black swans, by definition they are unpredictable. However, its close cousin, the grey swan, can be envisaged.