United States

Nary a day goes by that President Trump and/or the talking heads on CNBC fail to mention the following unemployment chart as evidence that "everything is awesome" with the U.S. economy...

...which might be true unless you're among the 95 million-ish Americans who have been looking for a job for so long that you no longer even count as a human being to the Bureau of Labor Statistics...

...or if you're a millennial.

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

As Doug Casey has correctly noted, the prime directive of any organism - whether it’s an amoeba or a person or a corporation or a government - is to survive.

That’s why the US government protects the petrodollar so zealously. It needs the system to survive.

Why Everyone Uses the US Dollar… for Now

Negative Population Growth, Inc., has issued a November report warning that America is no longer making enough babies to keep pace with deaths. The report blames, the ‘baby bust’ phase on the millennial generation (1980-2000), who are having children at record low rates.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

On October 3, 1913, US President Woodrow Wilson signed the Underwood-Simmons Act into law, creating what would become the first modern US income tax.

The legislation (at least, the income tax portion) was only 16 pages and imposed a base tax rate of just 1%.

The highest tax rate was set at 7%– and it only applied to individuals earning more than $500,000 per year, which is about $12.6 million today according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Warner Bros Pictures might want to rethink the shooting of San Andreas II – the sequel to the 2015 blockbuster about a massive earthquake striking the San Francisco Bay Area that starred the Rock, Paul Giamatti and a host of other A-list actors.