United States

Submitted by Ryan Opsal via OilPrice.com,

The South China Sea is continually paraded as a region rich in oil and gas deposits; however, no one really knows what’s there with any degree of accuracy. Furthermore, these possible deposits are shrouded in conflict that will not abate anytime soon, and will most likely worsen with an intensification of the security competition between China and the United States along with its regional allies, which is tightly related to these disputes.

Each year for the past three decades Blackstone's Vice Chairman of Multi-Asset Investing Byron R. Wien presents his top 10 "surprises" for the upcoming 12 months.

What constitutes a "surprise", you ask? A surprise is "an event that the average investor would only assign a one out of three chance of taking place but which Byron believes is 'probable,' having a better than 50% likelihood of happening." Last year's list included a few predictions that didn't exactly pan out including:

Just before the aborted Santa Rally took off in earnest, on December 23 the famous US economic growth prognosticators at the Atlanta Fed (famous because unlike Wall Street they actually are right) slashed its Q4 GDP forecast from 1.9% to 1.3% citing weakness in real consumer spending and poor existing-home sales.

Despite a bloodbath in US equities, gun stocks are soaring this morning (Smith & Wesson up 7% and Sturm, Ruger up 3%) as ABC News reports, as we detailed yesterday:

• *OBAMA MAY TAKE GUN CONTROL EXECUTIVE ACTION TOMORROW

With the Oregon standoff continuing, it appears "the world's greatest gun sales-man" has done it again.

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

A lot of people were expecting some really big things to happen in 2015, and most of them did not happen.  But what did happen?