United States

It’s now been nearly a year since the world woke up to what Beijing was doing in the South China Sea.

Early in 2015, satellite images seemed to show that China had embarked on a rather ambitious land reclamation effort in the Spratlys a disputed island chain claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan.

As the months wore on it became readily apparent that this was no small project. Ultimately, China would build 3,000 acres of new sovereign territory atop reefs in the area much to the chagrin of Washington’s regional allies.

While federal, state and local programs aimed at securing permanent housing for certain groups, such as veterans and the chronically homeless, have helped bring down the number of homeless people nationally, but amid Federal-Reserve-"wealth"-fueled gentrification, WSJ reports many cities are seeing the number of homeless soar.

Ron Paul has warned Americans that Congress’ authorisation for a “war against ISIS” is going to lead to perpetual US wars around the globe, and lead to martial law being declared in the United States against its own citizens.  Ron Paul says that Senator Mitch McConnell’s authorization for war allows the President to put troops anywhere in the world where the Pentagon believe ISIS to operate, which means a potential scenario involving military troops on U.S. streets. Townhall.com reports: The President does not have to deploy the U.S.

Two months ago, when we calculated that the US would need a new "debt ceiling" of $19.6 trillion to last until after Obama's tenure, we may have been too optimistic: since the increase in the hard debt limit of $18.15 trillion which was raised at the end of October, the US appears to be growing its debt at a far faster pace than we had originally expected, and according to the latest public debt data, as of the last day of January, total US debt just hit 19,012,827,698,417.93.

Financial stocks account for 16 per cent of the S&P 500 in the US, and their 9 per cent slide last month is the biggest single reason the benchmark index is now 5 per cent lower than at the start of the year.

But, as The FT reports, the options market is currently suggesting a worst-case scenario of a 28% decline in financial stocks over the next three months, according to none other than Myron Scholes who currently works at Janus Capital.