United States

The tensions between China and the world continued to escalate this week when China began operation the of a lighthouse on its recently-built island in the South China Sea. The man-made islands have caused tensions between China and the US and her allies to grow increasingly in the past few months. According to Asia Times: China claims most of the energy-rich waters of the South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. But neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

Saudi Arabia used US-made bombs in two recent airstrikes on a busy market in Yemen, which killed scores of civilians according to Human Rights Watch (HRW)  The Saudi led strikes killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, in northwestern Yemen on March 15 The UN has also said that Saudi led airstrikes account for 60% of the civilians killed in the conflict, with strikes hitting markets, clinics and hospitals.

As the growth mirage fades (and short-squeeze ammo runs out), so crude and copper carnage is reappearing. Amid its biggest plunge since early Jan, Copper is now down 10 of the last 12 days and crude is plunging back towards it 50-day moving average. Amid this bloodbathery, precious metals are bid as Saxo Bank sees Gold "heading back to its highs and beyond."

Copper & Crude carnage continues as PMs are bid...

The biggest plunge in copper since September 2015...

The last few days days have been rife with speculation about the motivation, if any, behind the release of the Panama Papers, with the most prominent example coming from Wikileaks two days ago on Twitter which accused the journalist consortium behind the leak, the ICIJ, of being a "Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge which has a WikiLeaks problem" and adding that "PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros."

Andrew Bacevich has written an excellent article on the need to end our ongoing “war for the Greater Middle East.” This part jumped out at me in connection with the debate over the Libyan war:

A particular campaign that goes awry [bold mine-DL] like Somalia or Iraq or Libya may attract passing attention, but never the context in which that campaign was undertaken [bold mine-DL]. We can be certain that the election of 2016 will be no different.