United States

Fourteen years after 9/11, the United States is still marching, undeterred by the millions killed and trillions of dollars wasted, towards something beyond grim, according to Riley Waggaman of Russia Insider who writes: “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” So begins Thoreau’s greatest treatise against trains and fools with too much money, Life Without Principle. (And not to spoil the gripping plot, but Thoreau argues that we do not spend our lives particularly well.

Jackson Country, Oregon, have joined an ever-increasing number of “GE-free” areas in the U.S., where farmers do not cultivate GMO crops.  It’s the eight county in the country to ban the practise of GE farming, as farmers across the land drop producing GMO crops en masse. Washingtonpost.com reports: The Jackson County designation was made final on Dec. 22, when a federal judge approved a consent decree protecting the zone.

Even as increasingly more parts of the economy, especially those with exposure to manufacturing and industrial production, sink into the recessionary quicksand, one sector that was seen as immune from the malaise gripping US manufacturing and was outperforming the overall growth rate of the US economy, was housing, and specifically spending on private and public construction: a direct input into the GDP model.

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: