United States

Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

Several weeks ago we learned that not all is well in the ongoing negotiations to impose Obama's landmark Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement, also known as the TTIP, when unexpectedly Europe threatened to impose visas on Americans and Canadians.

While perhaps not quite as dramatic (or confusing) as last week's announcement by Scottrade that the discount online broker would no longer allow Canadian citizens to hold accounts, in a new surprising development, another online broker, Charles Schwab has started informing some of its clients that "between June and October 2016, Schwab will update the cash feature on your account(s) from the current retail prime or municipal money market fund sweep to the Schwab Government Money Fund" or the SWGXX, which "will invest at least 99.5% of its total assets in cash, U.S.

Submitted by Lorelei McFly via CopBlock.org,

One of the biggest lies our government tells us is that it wages the War on Drugs to keep us safe. More than 40 years after it was started, we know that it has been a colossally-expensive epic failure on its stated goals, was intentionally designed to further disenfranchise marginalized groups, and has become a full-fledged assault on our civil liberties.

One of the biggest ironies in recent months has been the Bank of Japan's recurring insistence that it would promptly intervene in the FX market if the ongoing "disorderly" moves in the Yen do not stop. This was ironic because it was the BOJ's own insistence in characterizing virtually every move as disorderly that ultimately led to the most disordely move of all this week when following the BOJ's "disappointment" in failing to do anything, the Yen soared the most in years, to a level not seen since October of 2014.