United States

There may have been much more to the termination of US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, than meets the casual glance.

Harold Vilches, a 23-year-old Chilean, exported $80 million in contraband gold. As Bloomberg Businessweek details, it all started with a Google search...

In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria broadcast on Sunday, Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed growing frustration with the inconclusive first two months of relations between Moscow and the Trump administration, which started off with hope for reconciliation and have instead devolved into a perpetuation of the Obama (and Hillary Clinton) imposed status quo. The election of President Trump, who had spoken approvingly of Putin and called for improved US-Russia relations, had raised hopes in the Kremlin.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

While the overall economy appears to be humming along, at least according to the Fed which on Wednesday is expected (with 100% certainty according to the market) to hike rates by 25bps for the second time in three months on concerns it has fallen behind the inflationary curve, with last week's payrolls report providing some validation despite prevailing weakness within "hard data" in recent months offset by soaring "soft" sentiment reports, one area of material concern has emerged: a sudden collapse in loan growth in general, and the all important Commercial and Industrial Loan segment in p