United States

It has come down to this: a year in which the US stock market (led by a handful of shares even as the vast majority of stocks has dropped) has gone nowhere, but took the longest and most volatile path to get there, is about to close either red or green for 2015 based on what happens in today's low-volume session following yesterday's unexpected last half hour of trading "air pocket" which brought the S&P back to unchanged for the year.

Something Broke In The U.S. Silver Market

Posted with permission and written by Steve St. Angelo, SRSrocco Report (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

One hundred years ago European civilization, as it had been known, was ending its life in the Great War, later renamed World War I. Millions of soldiers ordered by mindless generals into the hostile arms of barbed wire and machine gun fire had left the armies stalemated in trenches. A reasonable peace could have been reached, but US President Woodrow Wilson kept the carnage going by sending fresh American soldiers to try to turn the tide against Germany in favor of the English and French.

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

In this day and age it seems like almost everything is disposable, and many employers have found that they can make a lot more money if they have a workforce that can be turned on and off like a faucet. In America today, there are more than 17 million “independent workers”, and they represent a bigger share of the workforce than ever before.

Two weeks ago, we noted - with some amusement - that Ukraine has defaulted to Russia on a $3 billion obligation. To be sure, the move wasn’t unexpected. 

“I have a feeling that they will not pay us back because they are crooks,” Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev said previously. 

Here, in a nutshell, is what happened.