United States

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

One of the many quiet escalations in countries where US military operations on the ground hadn’t really been well publicized in the first place, officials say that the US has more than doubled the number of ground troops in Somalia this year, and now have over 500 troops there.

This is the most troops the US have had in the country since 1993, when the Black Hawk Down incident killed 18 US soldiers and led to a quick withdrawal from the nation.

The national opioid epidemic is even larger drain on the US economy than previously believed, according to a new analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The cost of opioid-related deaths in 2015 was $504 billion, according to the CEA – a figure equivalent to 2.8% of that year’s gross domestic product.

Shortly after Wired first profiled the NSA's new super spycenter in Bluffdale, Utah (one year before Snowden confirmed that much of the agency's activity involved spying on US citizens and soon to be presidents), speculation emerged as to how much data storage capacity this brand new US spy hub would have.

When many American traders went to bed last night, China was tumbling, the euro was in trouble, and US equity futures were notching lower. Then, as former fund manager Richard Breslow scoffs, it appears the world "reconsidered" and everything rallied to erase any sign of discontent or uncertainty by the time everyone woke up...

Via Bloomberg,

Apparently, the word of the day is “reconsider.”

The $2.4 Trillion Hidden “Fed Tax”

Written by Peter Diekmeyer, Sprott Money News

Jerome Powell’s support for the Federal Reserve’s low interest rate regime has long benefited investors, who reacted favorably to news that he would be Donald Trump’s nominee as its new chair.