United States

Something appears to be off. After two consecutive admissions by Janet Yellen that the Fed has lost its grasp on the "mystery" of inflation, the market no longer appears eager to chase the direction of every Fed proclamation, especially the recent, hawkish ones. And, as Bloomberg's Mark Cudmore writes this morning, "whether it’s because the Fed has lost credibility or just because Yellen is viewed as a lame duck approaching the end of her term, it doesn’t matter - U.S. rates and the dollar show investors aren’t buying what she’s selling."

Authored by Nomi Prins via TomDispatch.com,

During the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly emphasized that our country was run terribly and needed a businessman at its helm. Upon winning the White House, he insisted that the problem had been solved, adding, “In theory, I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There's never been a case like this.”

Authord by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Robert Parry of Consortium News just published an extremely important article picking apart The Washington Post’s latest attempt to convince readers that Russia influenced the 2016 U.S. election. In this case, by purchasing a measly $100,000 of Facebook ads.

California, the state which single-handedly turned Elon Musk into the billionaire that he is today by forcing taxpayers to subsidize his unprofitable electric vehicle scam via "Zero Emission Vehicle" credits, is now considering a full ban of combustion-engine cars by as early as 2030. The potential ban was discussed by Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board, the same folks who decided to regulate cow farts last year, who told Bloomberg that Governor Jerry Brown has expressed interest in a ban.

On Tuesday, as President Trump imposed another round of meaningless new sanctions on North Korea's banks, Trump said that while he encouraged the world to work together to end the country’s nuclear program, the U.S. is “totally prepared” for a military option, which he said would be “totally devastating” for North Korea. Which at least provides some additional detail to what H.R. McMaster meant, when he said overnight that the U.S. has prepared "four or five different scenarios" for how the crisis with North Korea will be resolved, adding ominously that “some are uglier than others."