The uptick marks a turning point in defence spending, according to Fenella McGerty, principal analyst at Jane’s, after a “lacklustre” period with budgets  constrained by the aftermath of the financial crash. “Defence spending returned to a healthy rate of growth in 2016, kicking off what we expect to be a decade of stronger global defence spending,” said Ms McGerty. “It should recover to pre-financial crisis levels by 2018.”

Once again this year, the US retained its long-held place as the world’s biggest spender on defence, with an outlay of $622 billion, up 1 percent, more than three times second-placed China, at $191.8 billion, and a 6 percent increase on the previous year. The UK held its third place spot at £53.8 billion, just 0.5 percent higher than 2015’s level.

He said he expected the country’s economy to grow sharply over the next few months before crashing in scenes not witnessed since the inter-war period. Mr Dent predicted: “I think this is going to be a stock market peak of a lifetime followed by a crash very similar to the early 1930s. This happens once in a lifetime.

“I think this is the last rally in this bull market. You can't have stocks keep going up at this rate when earnings are going nowhere.” He said Mr Trump’s many election pledges, primarily creating millions of jobs in the country and kick-starting dying industrial towns, would prove to be his downfall. 

Once his promises go unfulfilled, Mr Dent explained, investors would panic, withdrawing their funds and creating a devastating economic collapse.  The top finance expert also said economic instability in Europe, particularly Italy, could have a knock-on effect in America.

The stock market is up too, as you would expect when you have more optimism. Optimistic business owners invest today because they expect tomorrow to be better. That investment creates jobs and stimulates the economy, creating a self-fulfilling path to prosperity. Individual companies can fail and succeed as usual, but the economy as a whole is likely to do well when optimism is high.

In the ancient world, the big problem was resources, not optimism. You didn’t always have access to raw materials, the right kind of labor, or markets. But in 2016 we can generally find anything we need and move anything to anywhere. The physical element of economics is largely solved. All that matters today is how we think about the economy. That’s the key element.

The EU will establish a logistic hub and explore the creation of a European Medical Corps. They planned the setting up of a nucleus for an EU civilian-military headquarters that, according to Italy's foreign minister, could grow to become a European general staff. These structures could serve NATO, but in the end, are suitable for an EU army.

Berlin's attempt to pit the EU against the USA, by ostentatiously taking a distance to President-Elect Trump, has encountered opposition from the UK and several eastern EU countries. Leading European foreign policy makers called the EU a "superpower" expected to be a "global security provider."

The attempts to gradually shake off US influence and organize an EU military, are being flanked by calls for a "superpower Europe," as EU foreign policy chief, Mogherini formulated it. The EU is facing "increasing competition in the global market," explained Mogherini late last week. We can only succeed, if we "work together... with the full potential of a superpower, in the field of security and defense."

Mogherini, who, until now, has acted in accord with Berlin, was confident that there would be an increasing "demand of Europe" in global policy. "Request for a principled global security provider," for "a superpower that believes in multilateralism and in cooperation. We are a superpower," declared Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.

While Rogue One’s trailers did manage to achieve this, I also unconsciously noted that the heroes had more colors than a rainbow.  And when this observation was combined with my previous knowledge of how Hollywood, and particularly Star Wars, was going to force a PC narrative into their movies, Rogue One went back on the “meh” list of movies I’ll probably never get around to watching.

If the multi-ethnic, multi-color Reading-Rainbow-Rebel heroes of Rogue One (headed up by a “strong-independent woman™”, BTW) wasn’t a clue as to how there was going to be a political lecture, a blatant statement by one of Rogue One’s writers, Brett White, was:

“When I look at the ‘Rogue One’ trailers, I see what I want from America. I see a multicultural group standing strong together led by a rebellious and courageous woman. That’s what we are working towards, and what we will continue to work towards no matter what. That’s what America – a land created as a haven for the persecuted, to be able to realize their limitless dreams – was created to be.”

In order to settle the charges against it in the matter, yesterday’s filing shows that the beleaguered Deutsche Bank turned over to the plaintiffs’ attorneys “more than 350,000 pages of documents and 75 audio tapes” that implicate other banks in a very serious way. In addition to banks previously named in the lawsuit (Deutsche Bank, HSBC, The Bank of Nova Scotia and UBS), trader conversations captured in the material provided by Deutsche Bank seriously implicate Barclays, Standard Chartered, BNP Paribas Fortis and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.

With the evidence filed yesterday, there is no longer any justification for the Justice Department to dawdle further. From Libor rigging, to currency exchange rigging, to precious metals, to the charges of stock market rigging made in the Michael Lewis book, Flash Boys, there is an overarching appearance that every market has been rigged against average investors. We need a Justice Department that will grab the reins to restore trust, transparency and honest dealing in US markets.

The US dollar has been surging, companies are announcing that they are bringing jobs back to the US, and we are witnessing perhaps the greatest post-election stock market rally in Wall Street history.  In fact, the Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 all set new all-time record highs again on Thursday.  What we are seeing is absolutely unprecedented, and many believe that the good times will continue to roll as we head into 2017.

What has been most surprising to me is how well the stocks of the big Wall Street banks have been doing.  It is no secret that those banks poured a tremendous amount of money into Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Donald Trump had some tough things to say about them leading up to election day.

So you wouldn’t think that it would be particularly good news for those banks that Trump won the election.  However, we seem to be living in “Bizarro World” at the moment, and in so many ways things are happening exactly the opposite of what we would expect.  Since Trump’s victory, all of the big banking stocks have been skyrocketing…

Earlier today, a CNBC article pointed out that the cyclically-adjusted price to earnings ratio has only been higher than it is today at three points in our history… “The cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE), a valuation measure created by economist Robert Shiller now stands over 27 and has been exceeded only in the 1929 mania, the 2000 tech mania and the 2007 housing and stock bubble,” Alan Newman wrote in his Stock Market Crosscurrents letter at the end of November. Newman said even if the market’s earnings increase by 10 percent under Trump’s policies “we’re still dealing with the same picture, overvaluation on a very grand scale.” And of course a historic stock market crash immediately followed each of those three bubbles. So are we being set up for a huge crash in early 2017?

It won’t just be Trump the man or the president, but the people who elected him, who backed Brexit and who gave up on their system. The people who let loose the chaos that now consumes us. Their rage, their anger and their desperation is brewing unrest. The ascent of populism in the political arena has put the establishment in retreat, and revealed, at last, a most dangerous atmosphere, from which collapse can properly precipitate … one in which all regulatory steadiness on the part of the system has been thrown off balance and out of whack by popular revolt.

By the time the hammer falls, and the markets fall to the ground, the people rioting in the streets and losing their civility when ATMs stop working and store shelves go empty – these people will become the face of the disaster. The banks have been planning the next rise and fall for sometime; the next phase is all digital, and tightly monitored and controlled.

Right now so many people have been lulled into a sense of complacency because Donald Trump won the election. That is an enormous mistake. A shaking has already begun in the financial world, and this shaking could easily become an avalanche. Now is not a time to party.  Rather, it is time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for very rough seas ahead.

All of the things that so many experts warned were coming may have been delayed slightly, but without a doubt they are still on the way. So get prepared while you still can, because time is running out.

Unfortunately for all of us, history has shown that higher interest rates always cause an economic slowdown.  And this makes perfect sense, because economic activity naturally slows down when it becomes more expensive to borrow money.  The Obama administration had already set up the next president for a major recession anyway, but now this bond crash threatens to bring it on sooner rather than later.

For those that are not familiar with the bond market, when yields go up bond prices go down.  And when bond prices go down, that is bad news for economic growth. So we generally don’t want yields to go up. Unfortunately, yields have been absolutely soaring over the past couple of weeks, and the yield on 10 year Treasury notes has now jumped “one full percentage point since July”… If mortgage rates continue to shoot higher, there will be another housing crash.

Rates on auto loans, credit cards and student loans will also be affected.  Throughout our economic system it will become much more costly to borrow money, and that will inevitably slow the overall economy down. Yes, the stock market soared immediately following Trump’s election, but it wasn’t because economic conditions actually improved.

If you look at history, a stock market crash almost always follows a major bond crash.  So if bond prices keep declining rapidly that is going to be a very ominous sign for stock traders. And history has also shown us that no bull market can survive a major recession.  If the economy suffers a major downturn early in the Trump administration, it is inevitable that stock prices will follow. The waning days of the Obama administration have set us up perfectly for higher interest rates, a major recession and a giant stock market crash.

What are the facts? Nothing you will ever hear from the presstitutes or the corrupt Obama regime. The facts are that November produced only 9,000 full time jobs, an improvement over the previous month when full time employment declined by 103,000 jobs — another fact that you did not hear about from the presstitutes.

According to the BLS payroll jobs report, the jobs available in November were waitresses and bartenders, temporary help, and ambulatory health care services. These are not the kind of jobs that result in home ownership or an independent existence.

As there are no jobs, which is reflected in the continuing decline in the labor force participation rate, how did the rate of unemployment fall to 4.6%? The answer is that the unemployed are simply moved into the uncounted category of discouraged workers who are so discouraged about finding a job that they have ceased looking. If you are not looking for a job, you are not considered to be part of the labor force. Therefore, your unemployment is not counted.

Essentially, Wall Street and the global capitalists have de-industrialized America. They have destroyed the ladders of upward mobility that made the United States an “opportunity society.” It remains to be seen if Trump, even if so inclined, can do anything about the economy that globalism destroyed.