The last trading week of 2015 begins on a historic precipice for stocks: as reported over the weekend, the U.S. stock market has not been lower for any year ending in a “5? since 1875.
Paris -- Here's another great post from my friend and co-author Fred Feldkamp that talks about why credit spreads are crucial to understanding our economic prospects. His comment also illustrates how the SEC handed the large banks a monopoly on short-term finance in 1998 by amending Rule 2a-7 and made the 2008 financial crisis inevitable. Few significant players in "corporate finance land" are willing to take on the bank monopoly/monopsony over short-term funding for fear of being cut off.
The Kremlin have announced the possibility of using Special Forces against the U.S. and Turkey after proof emerged that both of these nations support ISIS, and that ISIS are planning to attack Russian soil. Russia have accused Turkey of training terrorist armed fighters “Majlis of Crimean Tatars” who are preparing to launch guerrilla warfare inside the Crimea Oblast. They also say that the U.S.
One of the most amusing things about Russia’s headlong plunge into Syria’s five-year conflict is the extent to which it effectively represented Moscow calling time on Washington’s strategy of seeking to bring about regime change in the Mid-East by intentionally destabilizing otherwise strong (if not always benign) governments.
Submitted by Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org,