United States

Last year, we noted with some incredulity that when it comes to US foreign policy in the Mid-East, someone inside the Beltway actually "gets it".

That someone is Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard who knows something about the region thanks to the fact that she served in the Middle East - twice. Now, she’s sponsoring a bipartisan bill to stop what she calls an “illegal” war against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHkher6ceaA

It’s not necessarily that Gabbard is a fan of Assad.

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

U.S. stocks logged the worst week ever to kick off a new year; is this historically low reading on the “January Barometer” a bad omen going forward?

As reported last night, now that the PBOC has devalued the Yuan to a level China's central bank is comfortable with, if only for the time being,and having done so by unleashing a "murderous" short squeeze "to deter bearish bets and helping to stabilize equity markets", manifesting itself in the offshore Yuan 1 week deposit rate exploding to a record 82%...

The decision to put U.S. military forces on “high alert” in South Korea shows that they are gearing up towards war with Russia and China, according to political activist Mike Billington.  Billington says that the world is on the brink of an economic crisis that only China can survive. A fact deemed intolerable by the United States.

While Chinese residents were lining up in front of banks and currency exchange kiosks, desperate to convert as many of their Yuan into dollars as the government will permit, Americans were likewise busy exchanging their own paper currency, so greatly in demand in China, into gold and silver.