The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) commonly factors in all kinds of risks when allocating the country's reserves, said the CBR chief, commenting on a major sell-off of US Treasury bonds. “We pursue the policy of safe and diversified holdings,” CBR Governor Elvira Nabiullina said while answering questions before Russia's lower house of parliament. [...]

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert look into whether the United States has entered the vicious ‘Medici cycle’, where money is used to get political power and political power is used to make money. Max and Stacy refer to the work of finance professor at the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business, Luigi Zingales. [...]

John Wight: The story of history is the story of the roads not taken, and never more so than when it comes to the life and legacy of John F Kennedy. The 55th anniversary of Kennedy’s ‘Peace Speech’, delivered in the form a commencement address to students and faculty at the American University in Washington on June 10, 1963, is a time to lament the loss of a leader who, by the time of his as [...]

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has cost the US taxpayer a whopping $17 million to date and returned no evidence of collusion. The investigation spent approximately $10 million between October 2017 and March this year, according to a Department of Justice report released Thursday. [...]

A Russian military contractor, specializing in electronic warfare, will use information gained from dissecting a US Tomahawk cruise missile, used during an attack on Syria, to boost the capabilities of its own equipment. The missile, delivered to Russia after the tri-party night attack on Syrian government targets by the US, the UK and France in April, is of particular interest to KRET, a leading [...]

Between globalization and nearly 20 years of constant warfare, the industrial part of the US military-industrial complex is not looking so good, putting future wars at risk, according to a new Pentagon report. The Annual Industrial Capabilities report, published by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, warns that reliance on foreign-sourced materials combined with � [...]

Tucker: Virtually all of official Washington, Republicans and Democrats, have united behind the idea that the United States has a moral obligation to go deeper into war in Syria after a suspected gas attack. Yet, our merely asking obvious questions, we are told to shut up and just obey. Tucker: Why is Washington united behind a war in Syria? Media accuses Tucker of pushing "Russia [...]

Bilateral trade between Russia and China has grown steadily and the positive trend will continue, according to Xu Sitao, chief economist with Deloitte, consulting in China. He warned US economy is facing risk of recession by 2020.  Xu said China has become the largest export market for Russia since 2017, accounting for roughly 12-13 percent of Russian exports. [...]

The US dollar is becoming less appealing for investors as American debt continues to soar and the greenback is printed to cover it, investor Jim Rogers said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The American currency will lose the status of main reserve currency much sooner than 2030, Rogers said at the Valdai Club’s discussion session, held as part of SPIEF. [...]

Settlements in US currency could be dropped by Russia in favor of the euro if the EU takes a stand against the latest US sanctions on Moscow, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “As we see, restrictions imposed by the American partners are of an extraterritorial nature. The possibility of switching from the US dollar to the euro in settlements [...]

Canadian journalist, Eva Barlett, completely dismantled mainstream media’s narrative on events taking place in Syria. The freelance journalist has repeatedly visited Syria since the conflict began in 2011, in a bid to get a sense of the realities on the ground. In a press conference organized on Friday by the Syrian mission to the United Nations, Barlett delivered her remarks regarding the [...]

US national debt tops $21 trillion for first time ever About a year ago, US President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate the national debt “over a period of eight years.” Treasury data now shows the debt has surpassed the $21 trillion mark this week for the first time in history. Last month Trump signed a suspension on the federal debt limit, allowing the government to borrow an unlimited am [...]

Vladimir Putin has criticized the US for failing to keep their end of the bargain in a host of international disarmament agreements. He says Moscow will not exit any existing treaties, but promised an “instant, symmetrical response” if Washington decides to quit first. [...]

In 1990, Western politicians repeatedly assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand east of Germany’s borders, but broke that promise less than a decade later, say insider archives from both sides of negotiations following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. [...]

A new report by Wealth-X showed the number of billionaires is currently at historic high, with US leading the list. In total, the richest one percent on the planet owns about half of the world’s wealth. The report revealed that the billionaire population and their wealth skyrocketed to record levels last year. They now control around $9.2 trillion in wealth – a 24 percent increase from 2016. [...]

Sources with direct knowledge of US intelligence reports say Russia is on the brink of developing a maneuverable, hypersonic nuclear-capable glider warhead that no US system can defeat. The sources, speaking to CNBC on condition of anonymity, reported that Russia tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle (presumably the Avangard) twice in 2016, and again in 2017. [...]

The Gaza protests have been making headlines across the world, but many people have hit back at US media outlets for a lack of coverage and an alleged pro-Israel bias. A total of 60 Palestinians were killed on Monday during protests against the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most of the fatalities resulted from Israeli sniper fir [...]

Get ready for a spike in oil prices up to $100 a barrel – a level not seen since 2014 – in 2019, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts forecast. Bank of America Corp said Brent futures, trading as high as $78 on Thursday, are expected to reach $90 in the second quarter of 2019, depending on geopolitical developments and other factors, with a risk it could hit as much as $100 per barre [...]

Comedian Lee Camp on his show Redacted Tonight recalls the first-ever audit of the Pentagon, which is taking 2,400 auditors to do the job, trying to understand where $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments went. In his show, Camp recalled that a couple of years ago professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary in the Department of Hou [...]

Many US presidents believed their country to be uniquely poised to decide on how the world should work. Donald Trump pushes the misconception further, apparently believing no international agreement can work without America in it. [...]

Meeting with Donald Trump would be pointless because the deep state – not the president – controls the US, Bashar Assad said in an interview. He noted that the agenda of the deep state is to create conflict aimed against Russia. In an exclusive interview with Athens daily Kathimerini, Assad said there was no reason to meet face-to-face with Trump, since the US president “says something today [...]

Former CIA officer Ray McGovern has been released by a court after being dragged out of Gina Haspel’s Senate confirmation hearing. He told RT the arrest caused him injury and that he had taken the hearing’s chairman “at his word.” McGovern, a retired CIA analyst, walked free from a court in Washington DC, after being arrested by Capitol Police and charged with resisting detention and disru [...]