South America

Harold Vilches, a 23-year-old Chilean, exported $80 million in contraband gold. As Bloomberg Businessweek details, it all started with a Google search...

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

While the world continues to decipher, or digest, the new Trump presidency, important changes are afoot within the grand strategic triangle that lies between Russia, Iran and China

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

There is an inherent dilemma for most of the people living in cities.

Even those who are aware of the extremely fragile fabric of society are often stuck living urban lives. Perhaps they plan to retire to a country abode, or construct a hideaway to escape to if the need ever arises, but for now, they are stuck in the city making a living.

This is true even for the rich, but now, they have a back-up plan.

Finally, we have a 'snowden' event for the CIA and the inner workings of how the agency operates in the digital 'cyber' sphere.  Wikileaks released "Vault7" - a treasure trove of documents pertaining to their 'cyberwarfare' or in layman's terms, hacking operations.  Since we've released Splitting Pennies, in the hope of explaining how the world 'really' works - we've received mostly positive feedback, but many mainstream readers have accused us of being 'conspiracy theorists' - well now we have the proof.

There is a new powerhouse dominating the U.S. futures market for raw sugar contracts and it's creating a bit of confusion among the the more established trading houses of the world's most volatile commodity markets.  The firm is Wilmar International, a Singapore-based agribusiness whose major shareholders include the family of Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok and Chicago-based Archer Daniels Midland.  Founded 26 years ago, Wilmar is one of the world's largest palm-oil producers but was essentially non-existent in the sugar market until just a couple of years ago.