United States

In one of the most euphoric praises for Donald Trump and the president-elect's fledgling administration to date, overnight Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio said economic changes under the Trump administration may be more dramatic than shifts from “the socialists to the capitalists” in the U.K., U.S. and Germany from 1979 to 1982, and predicted that "we are about to experience a profound, president-led ideological shift that will have a big impact on both the US and the world."

China has blinked.

On Tuesday, Beijing has returned a U.S. underwater drone taken by one of its naval vessels in the disputed South China Sea last week after what it said were friendly talks with the United States, which reiterated its criticism of the "unlawful" seizure. The move could diffuse tensions after protests from the White House and critical tweets from President-elect Donald Trump.

Authored by Scott Kristoff via Avondale Asset Management,

We started this year with the economy deteriorating and finished it with the second interest rate increase in ten years.  There were a lot of ups and downs along the way, but ultimately 2016 was defined by three key story-lines:  1) Brexit 2) The Presidential Election 3) Fed Policy.

A CIA agent who captured and questioned Saddam Hussein ten years ago has revealed that everything the US told the public about the former Iraqi leader was a lie. CIA analyst John Nixon was tasked with questioning Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003. In his first public statement about the ordeal, Nixon says that Saddam ended up turning all of his assumptions “upside down.” Simplecapacity.com reports: I had been up for 27 hours and was flat-out exhausted, but the news sent jolts of adrenaline through me like I’d never experienced before.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The CIA has long engineered coups in other countries. Now we are approaching at breakneck speed a CIA coup in the USA.

When the presstitute media first published unverifired, unsourced leaks attributed to unnamed CIA officials, both the FBI and the Director of Homeland Security said that they did not embrace the accusation that Trump’s election was a result of Russian interference in the US presidential election.