United States

Following yesterday's dollar spike which topped the longest rally in the greenback in one month, the prevailing trade overnight has been more of the same, and in the last session of this holiday shortened week we have seen the USD rise for the fifth consecutive day on concerns the suddenly hawkish Fed (at least as long as the S&P is above 2000) may hike sooner than expected, which in turn has pressured WTI below $39 earlier in the session, and leading to weakness across virtually all global risk assets.

Chang and Eng – The US and Canada

Written and submitted by Jeff Thomas (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

Chang and Eng were the first internationally known “Siamese twins”, as a result of their having been exhibited worldwide. Although each had a complete body, they were joined together at the sternum.

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

A common misconception in America today is that our nation is evenly divided between conservatives and liberals in an absolute sense. This is not necessarily true.

The Pentagon have confirmed that they knew about the Brussels attacks in advance saying that they had foreknowledge that ISIS had planned to launch an attack on the city. Despite the intelligence the U.S. were still unable to prevent Tuesday’s tragedy.  Three officials told Reuters that whilst the United States government knew the attacks were going to take place, they did not know exactly when or where they would occur.

Submitted by Bill Bonner of Bonner & Partners (annotated by Acting-Man.com's Pater Tenebrarum),

Everything Is Nonsense

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?

– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

A public service message from the Mad Hatter – bad news is bad. Ominous, even. Hat help us all!