United States

Authored by Peter Koenig via The Saker blog,

Via Moon Of Alabama blog,

The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Governments regularly claim that they favour tax reform. When this claim has been repeated so many times that virtually no one believes them anymore, they announce a tax reform, to show that they really mean it. They then reshuffle the existing taxes to give the appearance that taxation will actually be lowered.

According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo, U.S. recon satellites have photographed around 30 illegal transactions involving Chinese vessels selling oil to North Korea on the West Sea in October. The images allegedly showed large Chinese and North Korean ships transacting in oil in a part of the West Sea closer to China than South Korea. The satellite pictures even showed the names of the ships.

Despite the GOP's tax reform victory, over the past few weeks, Congress once again punted on a formal decision how to keep government funded and what to do with America's debt ceiling and as a result US legislators simply kicked the can on the agreement of raising the nation’s borrowing limit for another few months. However, with the Treasury expected to breach the ceiling as soon as late March, today's $45 billion 3-Month Bill auction was closely watched as it serves as a fresh gauge of investor anxiety about the ongoing impasse.