United States

European, Asian stocks fall and U.S. equity-index futures traded mixed on Monday with fresh memories of the Dow Jones rising to under 1 point of 20,000 on Friday. The dollar has rebounded on fresh geopolitical concerns, while the pound extends its decline from Friday and has slide to 10 week lows on a Sunday interview from Theresa May which suggested a "Hard Brexit" may be in the cards. Oil dropped below $54 a barrel on Iran supply concerns, while gold rose 0.6% to $1,180. 

The Turkish government has accused the US of orchestrating the recent Istanbul nightclub terrorist attack which left 39 people dead.  President Erdogan has warned that his administration may revise their decision to allow a US air base in Incirlik as a result of nefarious US activities against the Turkish regime. Pravdareport.com reports: In an interview with Sputnik, authoritative security expert Jevad Galiyashevich noted that the US administration of Barack Obama was violating the laws of its own country, while President Obama was arming terrorists instead of fighting with them.

Turkey has accused the US government of hacking the Turkish electrical grid, causing frequent blackouts across the country. Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak confirmed that his ministry had experienced a cyber attack originating from American IP addresses that caused blackouts across Istanbul and other nearby cities. Farsnews.com reports: Albayrak, which is the son-in-law of President Erdogan, has tweeted last week on his official account on “Twitter”, that has made serious warnings about the status quo, but his tweets faced ridicule by users.

In December 2014, as gas prices had plunged over 20% YoY, Janet Yellen proclaimed "from the standpoint of the U.S... the decline we've seen in oil prices is likely to be, on net, a positive," and that narrative of slumping gas prices being "unequivocally good" for Americans was spewed everywhere across linear-thinking mainstream media. So we wonder, with gas prices up 22% year-over, the fastest spike since 2011, is that "unequivocally bad" for America?

While Russia continues to mostly mock and ridicule, and generally take in good humor, the constant allegations by the Obama administration that it "hacked the election", without actually hacking the election - as in actually rigging or changing the votes - but merely exposing the corruption of the DNC and the cronyism of the Clinton Family Foundation, even if so far the highly confident US "intelligence agencies" have yet to demonstrate a shred of proof substantiating such allegations, China's reaction to a similar accusation has demonstrated far less sense of humor.