United States

Authored by Pepe Escobar, Op-Ed via RT.com,

So foreign ministers from the 28 NATO member-nations met in Brussels for a two-day summit, while mighty military power Montenegro was inducted as a new member.

Global Robocop NATO predictably discussed Afghanistan (a war NATO ignominiously lost); Iraq (a war the Pentagon ignominiously lost); Libya (a nation NATO turned into a failed state devastated by militia hell); Syria (a nation NATO, via Turkey, would love to invade, and is already a militia hell).

While the corrupt and criminal US regulators are unable to do anything to stifle the market domination of algos which have totally destroyed the US equity market, and sucked up enough liquidity where neither buy nor sellsiders can generate a profit, India is already well on its way to crushing the parasitic - and perfectly legal - frontrunners of virtually ever trade.

Submitted by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,

Over the past few years, we have written many strange stories about China's often-ridiculous, perpetually-bubbly, always on the precipice financial system. The story about China's literal "cash cows", however, is by far the strangest.

As everyone knows by now, the primary reason the global equity market, taking its cues from the US, is where it is now is due to a relentless stream of debt-funded stock buybacks. Earlier this year Bloomberg stumbled on the same thing we have written since 2013, namely that "there is only one buyer keeping the bull market alive."

Submitted by Kurt Cobb via OilPrice.com,

The world's largest exporter of crude oil, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, recently announced a plan for its post-oil future. If a country almost synonymous with the oil economy can see the need for such a plan, how can the rest of the world, particularly the United States, the world's largest consumer of petroleum, not see the necessity of such foresight?