Will the U.S. fall for Saudi Arabia's deliberate provocation in killing of Shi'ite cleric?… Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent political leader of the monarchy's Shiite minority has worsened Mideast tensions and is forcing the Obama administration to decide if there are any limits to the outrages that the longtime U.S. "ally" may commit, as Trita Parsi explains...Read More

The Most Important Person in 2016 … Forget the presidential candidates – Fed Chair Janet Yellen is who you need to watch … – US NewsDominant Social Theme: The most important person in the world …Free-Market Analysis: The great debate has started and will continue to keep us focused on the Fed until the next move. We will be reminded over and over again of the phony im...Read More

The Teddy Awards 2015 … The arena was noisy in 2015, scarily so. … Political courage, which these annual Teddy Awards celebrate, seems a particularly necessary commodity in the face of such noise, the courage to stand against a tide of barbarity and incivility. – TIMEDominant Social Theme: The world belongs to the moderates.Free-Market Analysis: TIME magazine informs us that a ce...Read More

Why the bull market in stocks isn't dead yet … Don't write off the bull market in stocks … Market professionals surveyed by CNNMoney believe that the U.S. stock market will claw its way past these obstacles and reach new heights next year. – CNN MoneyDominant Social Theme: Things will go on. They always do.Free-Market Analysis: In this analysis we'll cover a predictab...Read More

Pakistan-Afghanistan hotline set up to reduce tension … Pakistan and Afghanistan have established a hotline between their respective military commanders to reduce frequent cross-border tensions … Security co-operation between the two countries is seen as crucial in countering the growing Taliban threat. – BBCDominant Social Theme: Everything is going to plan. Step by step we crea...Read More

A heartless Conservative Government was elected, Labour was defeated in Scotland and the rise of ISIS has been remorseless … Yet there are still some hopeful signs for the year ahead. Axeman George Osborne has been forced to drop some of the harshest measures he wanted to introduce, including slashing benefits for the low-paid and poor, and decimating the police, while a global deal has been...Read More

Obama's 'Boots on the Ground': U.S. Special Forces Are Sent to Tackle Global Threats … They are taking on a larger combat role in Afghanistan, where the war was supposed to be over. They are headed to Syria to help fight the Islamic State in its stronghold. And President Obama recently ordered nearly 300 of them to Cameroon to assist African troops in their battle against a milit...Read More

The Misinformation Mess … As Americans approach Election Year 2016, the crisis of misinformation is growing more and more dangerous. On issues from foreign policy to the economy, almost none of the candidates in the race appears to be addressing the real world, writes Robert Parry. – ConsortiumNewsDominant Social Theme: False flags? Nothing to see here. Let's move along.Free-Market...Read More

Anonymous war on Isis: Online activists claim to have foiled terror attack on Italy as part of 'Operation Isis' … Supporters of Anonymous have been working to shut down Twitter accounts and websites, but claims to have now disrupted attacks in the real world too. – UK IndependentDominant Social Theme: Anonymous is full of modern day heroes.Free-Market Analysis: Do we believe it...Read More

What if saving the economy was the easy part? … If the past seven years have proven anything, it's that the biggest danger is often the one that no one sees coming. "You have to worry, otherwise you can't be a central banker," Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said in a speech this month. "What worries me most is that things happen: You've got a nice framework. It&...Read More

The truth is rushing out there: why conspiracy theories spread faster than ever … From 9/11 to the Paris attacks, from Ebola to Isis, every major global event attracts a corresponding counter-narrative from the 'truthers', some so all-encompassing that they take over people's lives. Are our brains wired to believe, as a new book argues? And could such thinking actually be benefic...Read More

In Sweden, a Cash-Free Future Nears … Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote "Money, Money, Money," considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins. Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden,...Read More

Katie Couric reveals what it's like to work with Marissa Mayer at Yahoo … Yahoo global news anchor Katie Couric tells INSIDER exclusively: "Marissa is in the spotlight … When you're a high-profile woman, I think that it can sometimes be uber-challenging, and I think she's putting her head down and trying to do the work, and I know it must be challenging at times for he...Read More

Confident and clear, Yellen says rate path will be well signaled … The unanimous backing Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen got for the Fed's first rate hike since the financial crisis let her deliver a clear message: Don't expect further rate hikes for a while, and when we are ready, we'll tell you. Yellen's confident and measured performance – she even managed a joke...Read More

US general rebrands Isis 'Daesh' after requests from regional partners … Leader of operations against group uses alternative name – a pejorative in Arabic that rejects fighters' claims on Islam … A top Pentagon general has informally rebranded the jihadists of Isis with the name "Daesh" after allies in the middle east asked he not use the group's other m...Read More

Martin Shkreli, "America's Most Hated "… The "most hated man in America" just got arrested for securities fraud. Shkreli, the baby faced, former Jim Cramer protege and serial biotech mogul who famously raised the price of a toxoplasmosis drug by 5000% in September, igniting a media and political firestorm in the process, is accused of using Retrophin (a company he fou...Read More

Why the Fed's historic rate hike is good news and bad news for the economy. Yellen says rate hike shows Fed's confidence the U.S. economy is strengthening … — LA TimesDominant Social Theme: The Fed takes care of the economy, and this is the way it must be.Free-Market Analysis: The good news is that the economy is recovering, according to this article. The bad news is that the F...Read More

Why Hillary Clinton's 'Likeability' May Not Matter to Voters in 2016 … Hillary Clinton's candidacy will test an important proposition in presidential politics: Do voters cast ballots for candidates they don't necessarily like? Mrs. Clinton isn't hanging her candidacy on the idea that she's especially personable. The thrust of her campaign is that in precarious tim...Read More

Fed raises rates for first time in 9 years … The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade on Wednesday, signaling faith that the U.S. economy had largely overcome the wounds of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The U.S. central bank's policy-setting committee raised the range of its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to between 0.25...Read More

Obama Tells New American Citizens Why Immigration Is 'Part of What Makes Us Exceptional' … On Tuesday morning, 31 people from 25 countries became American citizens while standing in the same room as the original Bill of Rights, which celebrated its 224th birthday today. They were very excited. Muhanned Ibrahim Al Naib, a refugee from Iraq and former translator, told the Guardian, &qu...Read More