Beforer we discuss The Empire of Chaos ongoing attacks on "The Assassin Putin" and The Master of the Universe attempts to topple any challenge to Washington's global hegemony, we thought the following chart may give some much needed context for where the pain really is - the drop in the oil price in local currency terms has been the least of all major nations... for Russia
China have accused the United States of violating international law as a US destroyer was spotted sailing within 12 nautical miles of the disputed islands in the South China Sea on Saturday. The U.S. military have admitted sailing past the disputed island, saying it was asserting its freedom of navigation. “We conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea earlier tonight,” Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said in a statement.
Over the past year, we have frequently warned that the biggest financial risk (if not social, which in the form of soaring worker unrest is a far greater threat to Chinese civilization) threatening China, is its runaway non-performing loans, which at anywhere between 10 and 20% of total bank assets, mean that China is one chaotic default away from collapsing into the post "Minsky Moment" singlarity where it can no longer rollover its bad debt, leading to a debt supernova and full financial collapse.
On Friday, we brought you the 4 “D’s” of deflationary doom from BofA’s Michael Hartnett.
For those who missed it, Hartnett says the reason “an almost manic monetary policy been so ineffective at generating a broad, sustained economic recovery,” is that the following four secular deflationary factors are conspiring to impede a robust recovery:
While Caracas - the capital of socialist utopia Venezuela where gun control is extreme - remains the number one most violent city in the world, there are two new entrants from the USA into the World's Top 20 least desirable places to walk the streets - St. Louis (15th most violent city in the world) and Baltimore (19th). America, land of the free to indiscrimanently kill other people?
As Statista's Nial McCarthy details, out of the world's 50 most violent cities, 41 are in Latin America including 21 in Brazil.