Trends This Week – The Presidential Reality Show and the markets – 09.28.16

Global forecaster Gerald Celente discounts and explains why the notion that markets rise on the anticipation that a given presidential candidate can influence and even fix the economy. The campaigns, and especially the debates, are rich with attack lines and sound bites, but entirely void of solutions, ideas and the moral grounding necessary to reverse the downward spiral of the country.

Chris Hedges – Police Killings Won’t Stop

The corporate state, no matter how many protests take place in American cities over the murder of unarmed citizens, will put no restraints on the police or the organs of security and surveillance. It will not protect the victims of state violence. It will continue to grant broader powers and greater resources to militarized police departments and internal security forces such …

China Challenges US Dollar Hegemony, Seeks New Global Financial Order

During the first Annual Summit organized by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing, China has shown her intention to take over the global leadership in infrastructure investment. By the end of this year, AIIB would have more than 100 members, making it the first lending institution in multilateral loans in history, under the control of the most important …

Pepe Escobar – Made in China: G20 and its geoeconomic significance

What has just taken place in Hangzhou, China, is of immense geoeconomic importance. Beijing from the start treated the G20 very seriously; this was designed as China’s party, not the declining West’s. And much less Washington’s. Outlining the agenda for the discussions, President Xi Jinping went straight to the point also geopolitically, as he set the tone: “The outdated Cold War …

Andrew Korybko – Lithium, a Strategic Resource: Here’s Why The US Wants To Break Bolivia To Bits With Hybrid War

So I was scanning Telesur’s website the other day and a pretty interesting story caught my eye. It said that Bolivia had begun exporting 10 tons of lithium to China as the start of what the country hopes will flourish into a multimillion-dollar partnership in the near future. The reason why this is such a big deal and I’m talking about it …

As World Burns, Richest Nations Can’t Decide When to End Fossil Fuel Handouts

Despite ambitious pledges, global energy ministers could not agree on a target date to phase out billions in subsidies to dirty energy The world’s richest nations have failed to agree on a deadline to phase out fossil fuels subsidies—a commitment energy ministers made in 2009—stirring new fears over the impact of the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that go …

Nick Beams – Economic conflicts threaten global trade war

The ongoing stagnation in the global economy, marked by falling investment and the emergence of overproduction in key basic industries, is fuelling the rise of trade war protectionist measures by the major powers, above all the United States. Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launched an investigation into Chinese steel mills which have been accused by the United …

John Hogan – Dear “Skeptics,” Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More

Yesterday I spoke at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, NECSS, a “celebration of science and critical thinking” held May 12-15 in New York City. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, whom I met recently, got me invited, and he might regret that, because I decided to treat the skeptics skeptically. I originally titled my talk “Skepticism: Hard Versus Soft Targets.” The references …