The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Iran says it sealed Boeing plane deal at half price
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran said on Sunday it had negotiated to pay only about half the announced price for 80 new Boeing airliners in an order that the American planemaker had said was worth $16.6 billion.
Continue reading “Iran Pays Half Price to Boeing and Airbus”
Federal Reserve is now initiating the economic end game
We have heard endless lies and rationalizations…
As I have been arguing for most of the past year, the election of Donald Trump was inevitable and would precede the triggering of the final stage of our ongoing economic crisis. I came to realize that the Fed’s timing of their latest rate hike is highly strategic. Not only does it set the stage for a series of hikes that will crush U.S. stock markets this coming year and finally shock the public out of their fiscal stupor, but it also maneuvers the crisis right into the lap of Donald Trump and the conservative movements that support him.
…the truth is, vigilance is needed now more than ever. I said it before the election and I’ll say it today — do not get comfortable; the times are about to get even more interesting.
Nearly half of all federal research and development dollars go to the Department of Defense, a new report from the Congressional Research Service observes. The Pentagon research budget is more than twice that of the next largest recipient, the Department of Health and Human Services.
The structure of the DoD research budget, which has “its own unique taxonomy,” is described in the new CRS report. See Department of Defense Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E): Appropriations Structure, December 13, 2016:
OBOR on the Ground: Evaluating China’s “One Belt, One Road” Initiative at the Project Level
A massive infrastructure push is underway across Asia. The region’s infrastructure market could grow by 8 percent annually over the next decade, rising to nearly 60 percent of the global total. All told, the region’s infrastructure needs are estimated to exceed $1 trillion annually. China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative is at the center of this push. Estimates vary, but all point toward an ambitious endeavor. Geographically, OBOR could span 65 countries responsible for roughly 70 percent of the world’s population. Economically, it could include Chinese investments approaching $4 trillion.
The government mistakenly disbursed more than $137 billion in Fiscal Year 2015, the highest annual level of wrongful spending ever reported, the Congressional Research Service noted last week. Over $1 trillion in improper payments have been made by government agencies since 2004. Improper payments “are payments made in an incorrect amount, payments that should not have been made at all, or payments made to an ineligible recipient or for an ineligible purpose,” CRS said. Congress has enacted legislation to improve reporting and recovery of improper payments, but implementation “has been uneven across the government.”
Improper Payments Legislation: Key Provisions, Implementation, and Selected Proposals in the 114th Congress, December 7, 2016:
A three step manifesto for a smarter, fairer economy
(Or, why technology created the economy that helped Donald Trump and Brexit to win, and why we have to fix it.)
The Russian Arctic meets the Chinese New Silk Road
In this article on the development of the energy, business and military nexus of the Arctic by Russia, the Red (Team) Analysis Society studies how the Russian Arctic is becoming a new crucial business and strategic “centre” in the world, through the creation of numerous energy and infrastructure projects and operations, which attract Chinese companies (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Russian Arctic Oil: a New Economic and Security Paradigm?”,The Red (Team) Analysis Society, October 12, 2016). Read full post.
