In Steven Mnuchin's nearly 6 hour confirmation hearing on Thursday, there was just one critical exchange lasting all of 90 or so seconds. It was Mnuchin's response to a question from Senator Pat Toomey how he feels about a strong dollar. The question was predicated by Trump's recent interview with the WSJ in which he voiced concern about the dollar’s recent appreciation, saying the currency was “too strong."
Three weeks after John Kerry's State Department was humiliated one last time when Russia, Turkey and Syria sat down alone, demonstratively without inviting the US, to discuss the terms of a proposed Syrian ceasefire, Russia has already offered a diplomatic fig leaf to the incoming Trump administration when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the press Russia has invited the United States to take part in the upcoming talks on Syria,
"As I said yesterday, we have already invited the US," Lavrov told journalists in Moscow on Thursday.
Submitted by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,
A group of intelligence, military, and diplomatic veterans known as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS, have signed a letter calling on President Barack Obama to release evidence regarding alleged Russian interference in the election. Otherwise, the letter asserts, the outgoing president must admit proof is lacking.
Ever since 2012 we have warned that one of the biggest threats arising from the US student loan bubble - which is no longer disputed by anyone except perhaps members of the outgoing administration - is not that it is soaring at an unprecedented pace, that's obvious for anyone with the latest loan total number over $1.4 trillion, rising at a pace of nearly $100 billion per year, but that the government - either on purpose or due to honest miscalculation - was not correctly accounting for the true extent of delinquencies and defaults.
With just 24 hours left in Obama's tenure, the U.S. president launched his final airstrike on ISIS after two B-2 bombers carried out airstrikes on two ISIS camps in Libya overnight, defense officials said Thursday, part of an operation targeting militants driven out last year from their coastal stronghold. The stealth bombers struck jihadis 45 kilometers southwest of Sirte, located halfway between Tripoli and Benghazi.
A map showing location of Sirte, Libya.