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Earlier today, the leader of Britain’s UKIP, eloquent wordsmith and member of the EU Parliament, Nigel Farage, unleashed one of his most memorable and finest diatribes in recent years. "We ourselves in the European Union provoked the conflict through our territorial expansionism in the Ukraine. We poked the Russian bear with a stick, and unsurprisingly, Putin reacted. But this now is to be used as an opportunity to build a European army... And Mr. Juncker said, we must convey to Russia that we are serious. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Juncker?" Farage at his best...

Back in 2009, just months after his swearing in, president Barack Obama was crowned with an unexpected glory: he won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 due to "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Back then there was little indication that just a few years after his crowning achievement of "ending the war" in and returning US troops from Iraq, he would send US troops right back in Iraq for the 3rd US invasion of the country in three decades, but also send out US troops across the globe, and launch the second cold war,...

I was shocked today by the absolute gaul of the Fed releasing a statement about Net Worth in America reaching record levels. Now I get that they are under extreme pressure to sell the story that everything is rainbows and butterflies. But surely they understand that working class Americans are going along with the story because they really don’t have any say in our nation’s policies anymore. That doesn’t mean they want it thrown in their faces that the Fed has spent 6 years now inflating the wealth of the top 10% so much that it actually lifts the total...

Tyler Durden 03/13/2015Authored by NASA Senior Water Scientist Jay Famiglietti, originally posted Op-Ed at The LA Times. Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California's winter was as well. As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California,...

Tyler Durden 01/21/2015 While Crude Oil and Dr. Copper are often cited as economic indicators, as @Not_Jim_Cramer notes, in fact Lumber prices are the most correlated with ISM and GDP of all industrial commodities. That is a problem. Lumber prices are tumbling and are breaking the 6-year up-trend that has 'proved' the recovery. With no CCFD manipulation and less financialization than crude, perhaps Lumber is the real canary in the economic collapse coalmine... Lumber is the most correlated to ISM and GDP of all the industrial commodities... and that is not good for the US economy...

One of the biggest question marks surrounding the Greek negotiation and ultimately, bailout extension, was just how panicked was the Greek population and domestic corporations. Recall that as explained previously, the tension boiled down to this: the Troika did everything in its power to accelerate the bank run in order to crush any negotiating leverage Varoufakis may have; Greece on the other hand was desperate to make its cash drain appear far better than rumored. Moments ago the Bank of Greece presented its latest, January, deposit data. And it's a doozy: following a record €12.2 billion monthly outflow, greater...

The first anti-government rally in Athens turned ugly as anti-authoritarian protesters started to smash the windows of a pastry shop and two jewelry shops and put two vehicles and several garbage bins on fire.

The reason Assad has been vilified is because Qatar wants a natural gas pipeline to run through the Arabian peninsula, through Jordan, through SYRIA, to Turkey. From Turkey, it can connect with existing pipelines to Europe, in order to supply Europe with natural gas. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-16/mystery-sponsor-weapons-and-money-syrian-rebels-revealed This proposed pipeline would threaten Russia economically, as Russia currently supplies Europe with natural gas. Syria and Russia are allies. Thus, Assad said "No" to the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline that would run through Syria. Next thing you know, there's an "uprising" in Syria, and Assad is public enemy number one. And when it became clear...

Below, we demonstrate that the U.S. keeps “losing” war after war. There are 3 potential reasons this might be happening: •Is this chaos an intentional way to implement regime change and grab resources? •Or is this a sign of the decline of the American empire … and we just can’t win a war anymore? •Or do those in charge just not really give a damn about winning … and are they just focusing on one short-term goal after another?

While Obama desperately tries to stick to his now crushed "Nobel peace prize winner" image, by not succumbing to an all-out land war in the one nation where his progressive "pacifism" brought him fame (and according to some, the presidency), namely Iraq, the rest of militant, "interventionist" US foreign policy is rapidly starting to resemble that waged by the most brutally rabid, neo-con Republican leader. Case in point an absolute stunner reported minutes ago by the WSJ, according to which the White House has decided to provide pickup trucks equipped with mounted machine guns and radios for calling in U.S....

A week ago we explained that yet another conspiracy theory, one involving virtually every geopolitical hotzone, from Saudi Arabia, to Russia, the United States, Qatar, Syria, ISIS, and Ukraine, has become fact when our speculation from last September, namely that the plunge in oil was an choreographed move between the US and the Saudis (even if Kerry realized - we hope - that it meant a recession for the US energy producing states and a collapse in the only vibrant US industry of the past decade: shale), one seeking to dislodge Russian control over the Syrian government and to facilitate...

Following yesterday's summary of the utter farce that the Minsk Summit/Ukraine "peace" deal talks have become, the various parties involved appear to be fracturing even faster today. The headlines are coming thick and fast but most prescient appears to be: Despite John Kerry's denial of any split between Germany and US over arms deliveries to Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier slammed Washington's strategy for being "not just risky but counterproductive." But perhaps most significantly is France's continued apparent pivot towards Russia. Following Francois Hollande's call for greater autonomy for Eastern Ukraine, former French Pres Nicolas Sarkozy has come out in...

Just what the market had hoped would not happen... *ECB SAYS IT LIFTS WAIVER ON GREEK GOVERNMENT DEBT AS COLLATERAL *ECB SAYS IT CAN'T ASSUME SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF GREECE REVIEW What this means simply is that since Greek banks are now unable to pledge Greek bonds as collateral and fund themselves, and liquidity is about to evaporate, the ECB has just given a green light for Greek bank runs... and all the worst parts of the bible (or merely a negotiating move to let Greece see just what kind of chaos this will create). And now finally, after many years...

While the markets are still debating whether the price of oil is more impacted by the excess pumping of crude here, or the lack of demand there, or if it is all just a mechanical squeeze by momentum-chasing HFT algos who also know to buy in the milliseconds before 2:30pm, we bring readers' attention back to what several months ago was debunked as a deep conspiracy theory. Back then we wrote about a certain visit by John Kerry to Saudi Arabia, on September 11 of all days, to negotiate a secret deal with the now late King Abdullah so as...

Despite all the fear-mongering by Nea Demokratia (ND), Syriza's victory over the incumbent is dramatically larger than expected (exit polls indicate a potential 12 point margin vs 7 point spreads in the run-up). However, as JPMorgan details, the fear-mongery was very evident in bank deposit runs as proxied outflows surge EUR8 billion last week - more than all of December and the rest of January combined...Via JPMorgan Flows & LiquidityGreek deposit outflows rise sharply this week The monthly Bank of Greece balance sheet data for the month of December revealed a significant increase in Greek bank ECB borrowing which...

Amid the devastation of yesterday's Mariupol artillery strikes which killed or wounded dozens, which was promptly blamed by both sides on the "adversary" - and has been proclaimed by both 'sides' (more on that later) as more violent than before the truce - an 'odd' clip has emerged that appears to provide all the 'proof' a US intelligence officer would need to surmise that US military boots are on the ground in Ukraine. As the following clip shows, a Ukrainian journalist approaches what she thinks is a Ukrainian soldier (since he is wearing a Ukrainian military uniform and is carrying...

Tyler Durden 01/23/2015 Submitted by John Rubino via Dollar Collapse blog Yesterday the European Central Bank acknowledged that the currency it manages is being sucked into a deflationary vortex. It responded in the usual way with, in effect, a massive devaluation. Eurozone citizens have also responded predictably, by converting their unbacked, make-believe, soon-to-be-worth-a-lot-less paper money into something tangible. They’re bidding gold up dramatically.(snip)

If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties in America today are under siege. It didn’t happen overnight. It took many years of neglect for our liberties to be given away so casually for a promise of security from the politicians. The tragic part is that the more security was promised — physical and economic — the less liberty was protected. With cradle-to-grave welfare protecting...

Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their "petrodollars" out of world markets in 2015. This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling....

It was less than 48 hours ago when TurkeyÂ’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, joined millions marching in Paris to pay tribute to the 17 people killed by ISIS-supporting extremists. Then, almost the moment he got back, things changed, and as the FT politely paraphrases what transpired, the "countryÂ’s president struck a much more confrontational tone." That's one way of putting it. Another is that the former PM and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of NATO-member Turkey did the unthinkable: accused the west, and French citizens in particular, of staging the Charlie Hebdo murder in order to blame Muslims, even...