United States

Via Kevin Muir of The Macro Tourist blog,

Although the market is convinced the Federal Reserve will get aggressive with their rate hikes, I am not sure market participants have thought this through. Let’s not forget the Federal Reserve is sitting on the largest balance sheet in history.

This portfolio is the result of years of Quantitative Easing. It was made riskier with the Fed’s “Operation Twist” that extended the duration of their balance sheet by buying long dated securities while selling shorter ones.

Legendary NSA whistleblower William Binney (and creator of NSA's global surveillance system) confirmed to Fox News, that President Trump is "absolutely right" to claim he was wiretapped and monitored... he was.

The U.S. military are preparing for a full military strike against North Korea in a move designed to wipe out Kim Jong-un’s full nuclear arsenal.  The announcement comes after North Korea threatened to strike US bases in Japan, firing three of its four missiles dangerously close to the U.S. ally. President Trump has warned that Pyongyang will suffer “very dire consequences” for its actions as a result, according to a White House statement.

US President Donald Trump has  asked Congress to establish whether the Obama administration abused investigative powers in 2016 The White House has requested that the US Congress investigate alleged abuse of executive power by the Obama administration as part of the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the presidential election.

While it has been superficially covered by much of the press - and one can make the argument that what Julian Assange has revealed is more relevant to the US population, than constant and so far unconfirmed speculation that Trump is a puppet of Putin - the fallout from the Wikileaks' "Vault 7" release this morning of thousands of documents demonstrating the extent to which the CIA uses backdoors to hack smartphones, computer operating systems, messenger applications and internet-connected televisions, will be profound.