War

As we detailed recently, in addition to its sub-prime debt crisis, China is dealing with an issue that is just as troubling, if not more so: Porkflation. Due to a drop in global production of pig meat, pork prices in China have been skyrocketing at both the wholesale and retail levels.

Retail prices

And wholesale prices

As we also noted previously, Pork's role in CPI is also being felt (factors heavily into the CPI basket), as China's broad-based CPI is creeping up.

The Turkish Prime Minister said that Ankara was in a position to send ground troops to Syria if necessary. Ahmet Davutoglu seems to believe that it would be alright to invade Syria as NATO’s consistent violation of international law had made it ‘legal’ to do so. Sputnik news reports: He pointed out that such a move by Turkey would be legal as the UN had made a number of decisions on the fight against ISIS in terms of self-defense and countering terrorism. “If necessary, we will send troops to Syria.

Russia is to deploy three new military divisions, two in the west and one in the south to counterbalance NATO’s increased military presence near its borders. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced on Wednesday: “The Defense Ministry is taking a number of measures to respond to the NATO military buildup at the Russian border” adding that two new divisions would be formed in the Western Military District and one in the Southern Military District before the end of the year.

For the first time since the weeks and months following the September 11 attacks, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has become a candidate for prime scrutiny on Capitol Hill.