The Romanian hacker who claims to have breached Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server says he spoke with an FBI agent. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Romanian hacker Guccifer who claims to have breached Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server says he spoke with an agent from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) while being extradited to the United States. [...]

Former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Wednesday after a judge referred to him as a “serial child molester,” making him one of the highest-ranking politicians in US history to go to prison. Hastert, 74, pleaded guilty last year to paying $3.5 million in hush-money to a man to keep the molestation secret. [...]

Panama was basically carved off from Colombia in order to have a canal. It was created very much like Liberia. It’s not really a country in the sense that a country has its own currency and its own tax system. Panama uses U.S. dollars. So does Liberia. [...]

Don’t try to praise bestselling author, Peter Schiff, for accurately predicting the 2008/2009 crash. That is, because in his opinion, the financial crisis wasn’t the REAL crash… It was only a tremor before the big one hits. “Armageddon is inevitable,” says Peter. So will 2015 be the year when we finally run out of fools willing to lend to us? [...]

Last week, US President Barack Obama, US Vice President Joe Biden and Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Janet Yellen held a secret meeting at the White House, during which they discussed the US and global economy, an official statement released by the White House said. However, according to former US politician and political expert Ron Paul, the subject discussed behind closed doors could be m [...]

British Prime Minister David Cameron is facing increasing calls to resign in the wake of revelations that he had profited from offshore tax havens and personally intervened to prevent a crackdown on tax evasion in the United Kingdom. [...]

The United States have been professing to be fighting tax evasion all over the world, but at the same time, it’s opened up tax havens at home: in Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota, says journalist Ernst Wolff. Why would people move their offshore money to a relatively high-tax regime in the United States rather than say Ireland or Luxembourg? [...]

The British government’s claim to be tackling tax evasion is about as credible as Al Capone claiming to be leading the fight against organized crime. In fact, Britain is at the heart of the global tax haven network, and continues to lead the fight against its regulation. The 11 and a half million leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have proven, once again, [...]

US officials, always sensitive to anti-American leaks and harsh to whistleblowers, now appear unconcerned about how the Panama Papers came to light. Grilled by reporters, the State Department could not tell if the US-funded leak was actually data theft or not. [...]

The media hype has focused on Vladimir Putin (who was actually not named) and David Cameron (who wasn't either). However, the biggest loser from the Panama Paper’s fallout just might be Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. [...]

In the first instance of a prominent politician taken down by the 11.5 million documents leaked in the Panama Papers, Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday after fully 10 percent of Iceland's population rallied in protest of his wife's secret, offshore shell company holding millions. [...]

Big British banks have allegedly been helping the rich and powerful ferret away their wealth beyond the taxman’s reach for decades, according to explosive revelations in the Panama Papers. Some of the world’s biggest banks were implicated in the largest data leak in history on Monday, including Britain’s HSBC, Coutts, and Rothschild, and Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse. [...]

The Bundesbank has announced plans to repatriate some of Germany’s gold reserves from abroad. At least half of the country’s gold would be transferred to Frankfurt by 2020, according to Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann. Weidmann says 366 tons of gold worth €11.5 billion have been delivered to Frankfurt so far. "There are now about 1,400 tons or 41.5 percent of our gold reserves here," t [...]

A new study from CardHub.com says credit card debt in the US has jumped by about $71 billion to $917.7 billion in 2015. The average American household with credit card debt now owes $7,879, which is the highest figure since the 2008 financial crisis. [...]

Amid official economic statistics that claim “the world’s largest paper economy is in a marvelous recovery” and the insistence of leading US economists that the national debt doesn’t matter as it is owed to itself, geopolitical analyst F. William Engdahl argues that the country is almost bankrupt and its end could be nearer than any of us imagine. [...]

Canada has used up all of its gold reserves. For the first time since 1935 the country is out of gold. The volume of gold reserves in Canada has declined steadily over the past 50 years. In the mid-1960s, Canada’s gold reserves exceeded 1,000 tons. By 1985, half had been sold. In 2015, the reserves were down to three tons and now the country has no gold left. [...]

Political instability arising from European states’ crippling debt burdens may lead to the Eurozone’s implosion, ex-Bank of England (BoE) governor Mervyn King has said. The former central banker and staunch Euroskeptic made the prediction in his latest book, The End of Alchemy: Banking, the Global Economy and the Future of Money. [...]

If western banks respond to Russia's bond offering, which will become an additional source of revenue for its economy, it will be a fatal signal for the West and a political fiasco for the US and EU, according to western media. Russia has announced plans to issue sovereign bonds worth $3 billion and has invited European, Chinese and US banks to bid for the issue. [...]

American society is morally bankrupt and politically broken, and its vision of the future appears utterly dystopian. As the United States descends into the dark abyss of an updated form of totalitarianism, the unimaginable has become imaginable in that it has become possible not only to foresee the death of the essential principles of constitutional democracy, but also the birth of what Hannah Are [...]