And the Fed isn’t alone. Central banks all over the world have been utilizing the same strategy of inflating their currency, and providing near zero interest rates. That’s because everybody wants to stay competitive by keeping their exports cheap. They’ve been racing to the bottom for years, but now it appears that the bottom has finally been reached.

Today Janet Yellen announced that the Fed would raise interest rates by a paltry .25%, in the hopes that such a small increase won’t scare investors and bring volatility to the markets. This is the first time rates have been raised since June of 2006, which is an extremely long period of time to go without a rate hike. Yellen admitted that rates would remain low for the foreseeable future, but would be raised incrementally as time goes on. She further added at a press conference that “We’ve worried about the fact that with interest rates at zero, we have less scope to respond to negative shocks.”

Or in other words, the Fed is shooting blanks. They can’t inflate the currency any more without bursting our bubble economy. On the other hand, they know that raising rates will cause the bubble to deflate, since easy money is the only thing supporting it. They’ve been stuck between a rock and a hard place for a long time, and they’ve just decided to take on the rock.

Brace yourselves. The easy money train has made its last stop, and history’s biggest credit expansion has reached its peak. There’s only one direction this economy could go from here, and that’s down.

Getting economies "back to normal" was always the hope during that remarkable time when the financial system was in danger of going bust. The financial crisis - a banking crisis which so damaged confidence and put the world in "risk-off" mode - more fundamentally damaged the global economy than many initially predicted. Paying off debts - deleveraging - and not taking on more risk became the order of the day for governments that had over-borrowed and banks, businesses and consumers that had become drunk on easy credit.

Global implications:

Rising US interest rates could mean higher debt repayments for emerging market governments and businesses - as the amount owed is denominated in dollars. And with higher interest rates in America, investment capital will be encouraged across the Atlantic and away from Asia in the hunt for better returns.

That could affect Europe as well. On the upside, the stronger dollar which has followed the rise might be good for European and Asian economies as it means exports to America are cheaper. The UK economy is strengthening, as is America's. Mr Carney has made it clear, in a way similar to the Federal Reserve, that when a rate rise comes it will be small and any subsequent increases will be gradual.

Homeowners with mortgages will need to factor in higher payments. Savers who have seen years of very low interest rates are likely to heave a sigh of relief as, finally, the world starts approaching economic normality.

Now it looks like the plans are not just formalising, but going further than anyone thought possible, with documents outlining what an EU army would look like, including the ability to take control of national borders without the consent of the government of the nation in question.

In theory, this would mean that EU army members could seize border controls, or lack thereof, from countries like the United Kingdom without the permission of the country’s leaders or elected representatives. According to the Times, the proposals for a 2,500-strong border and coast guard force could see armed personnel first deployed to areas like Greece or the Balkans.

Almost 18 months ago, UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, warned of the plans for an EU army in a big, pre-European Parliamentary Elections debate with then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg lost both televised debates in 2014, notably calling Mr Farage’s warning a “dangerous fantasy”. He said: “The idea there’s going to be a European air force, a European army, it is simply not true. This is a dangerous fantasy… it is not going to happen”.

The Times also reports that a major European summit, due to be dominated by UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s “renegotiation” demands to halt a British exit from the EU, will instead now focus on the plans for the EU army. The plans include the statement: “In urgent situations, the agency must be able to step in to ensure action is taken on the ground even where that member state considers there is no need for additional intervention”.

Moscow has identified more than 2,900 of its citizens suspected of joining ISIS and other radical Islamist groups, and is actively hunting them down both at home and abroad. In Syria Mr Putin's warplanes and feared Spetsnaz special forces troops are tracking and killing Russian-born jihadis to prevent them from returning home and carrying out terrorist atrocities.

So far they have taken out 198 radicalised jihadis in a matter of months, whilst a further 214 have fled back to Russia where they have been "put under close control" of the security services. Of the survivors, 80 are already behind bars after being convicted of terrorist offences, whilst a further 41 have been arrested and are awaiting trial.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Moscow are prosecuting more than a thousand ISIS sympathisers, recruiters and financiers in a huge bid to wipe their evil scourge from the country's history books. In contrast it emerged yesterday that overwhelmed British security services are allowing our homegrown jihadis to leave freely, deciding it is safer to get them out of the country than keep tabs on them.

“Most of the victims were slaughtered and most of the wounded [had suffered] machete cuts,” said Mustapha Karimbe, a civilian who has been helping the Nigerian military fight Boko Haram. The attacks on the three villages – Warwara, Mangari and Bura-Shika – happened on Saturday. All of the villages are located in the state of Borno, near Buratai, which is the hometown of Nigeria’s highest military.

The Nigeria-based Boko Haram terrorist group has killed more people than Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL), claiming 6,644 lives compared to 6,073 killed by IS, revealed the Global Terrorism Index recently published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). The Nigerian jihadists pledged allegiance to IS in March 2015.

This latest attack comes as Boko Haram fighters have intensified their attacks on Buratai and nearby settlements. Attackers usually come into a village and raid it. Last week Boko Haram brutally killed 14 people in the village of Kamuya, which is the hometown of the mother of Nigeria’s army chief and burned it down.

The United Nations agreement obliges nations to reduce greenhouse gases from 2020 onwards in an attempt to curb global warming. David Cameron heaped praise on the agreement, saying: “This global deal now means that the whole world has signed to play its part in halting climate change.”

But the UK will be forced back to the drawing board to revise its targets which are currently set on limiting global warming to a rise of 2C, after Energy Secretary Amber Rudd said Britain is “absolutely committed” to the deal. Experts have warned the UK’s commitment to the tougher targets will eradicate gas hobs and ovens and even gas-fired boilers - which are used by around 23 million British homes.

This information is followed by a new study which found that second cancers in Americans have increased a whopping 300 percent since the 1970s, all of which are a completely new type of cancer and not a reoccurrence of an old cancer.

The study also found that first cancers have spiked 70 percent over the last 45 years, highlighting the burgeoning profitability of an industry that shows no signs of slowing down as capital gains from cancer drugs reached the $100 billion mark last year.

Radiation, which may damage DNA, is believed to be responsible for 1.5 percent of cancer in the United States, and that's not just from cancer therapy treatments but also from other sources of radiological imaging such as mammograms and coronary artery and CT scans, the latter of which delivers 100 to 500 times the radiation of an ordinary X-ray.

The main reason for this is that the euro is merely a means to a much more coveted end — political union, as Germany’s Finance Minister glibly admitted in a 2011 interview with Welt am Sontag:

Schauble: “We decided to arrive at a political union via an economic and currency union. We had the hope – and we still have it today – that the Euro will gradually bring about political union. But we’re not there yet, and that’s one of the reasons why the markets are distrustful.”

Welt am Sontag: “So will the markets now force us into a political union?”

Schauble: “Most member states are not yet fully prepared to accept the necessary constraints on national sovereignty. But trust me, the problem can be solved.”

As Schauble promised, the constraints on national sovereignty in Europe have been severely tightened since 2011. European banking union became a reality last year, transferring supervisory authority over the banking systems of the euro zone’s 19 economies to the ECB, an institution with even less transparency and accountability than the European Commission.

Now the EU is planning to use a brand new crisis to expand its powers – Europe’s refugee crisis. As the Financial Times reported on Friday, Brussels is set to propose the creation of a standing European border force that could take control of the bloc’s external frontiers — even if a government objected. Even the pro-EU FT warily concedes, “the move would arguably represent the biggest transfer of sovereignty since the creation of the single currency.” After all, controlling one’s own borders is one of the core functions of a sovereign state.

At this critical juncture of European history, it bears remembering that the EU is not Europe and Europe is not the EU. The EU is a primarily a political project run by an unelected elite, with the so-called five presidents at the helm. As the British blogger John Ward eloquently notes, this elite routinely ignores the individual, ignores State sovereignty, ignores debt mountains, ignores currency realities, ignores poverty, ignores its responsibilities and above all, ignores every legal and constitutional obstacle in its way.

At the advent of each new crisis — often a crisis it itself created — it launches a new grab for power. Customs union, monetary union, banking union, defense union, digital union, energy union, fiscal union, political union… there is no limit to Brussels’ lust for power and control.

In the coming year or two, the people of Britain will have a once-in-a-generation chance to elude its grasp, to preserve its sovereignty. As a europhile British ex-pat who once firmly believed in the European dream but now sees it for the dystopian nightmare it has become, I urge them not to waste it.

America’s central bank is expected to start raising interest rates, in the first such move since the summer of 2006. The anticipated economic shift has been described as “momentous” and a hugely significant milestone of progress in the repairing of the US economy since the damage done by the Great Recession.

But for many City and financial services workers, it will mark an altogether new experience. Many now working on Wall Street were not even around for the last so-called “hiking cycle”. It is estimated that around a third of traders have seen nothing but near-zero interest rates during their careers. A large chunk were teenagers when the Fed last raised its rates.

The largest change since the crisis has been the growth of vast amounts of excess reserves – the amount of cash sloshing around banks – which has ballooned from a measly $2 billion before the crisis, to some $2.6 trillion today. The Fed is unlikely to lose control entirely, but how the process will unfold in these uncertain waters is an unknown. Several analysts have warned that the period following the first rate rise could be “turbulent”.

They are cleverly moving to develop a prominent role in what they see as emergence of the Chinese currency, the Renminbi (RMB), as a major global reserve currency. China for its part is taking cautious but firm steps to create that esteemed status for the Renminbi, something which could prepare the way for an exit of China and others from the dollar and from holding US Treasury debt.

Xi made a major visit to London at the end of October to meet not only Prime Minister Cameron but also Britain’s Queen. After his talks with Cameron, the Chinese President proclaimed that China and Britain will build a “global comprehensive strategic partnership” in the 21st century.

From Britain’s side it is a shrewd move by the financial institutions of the City of London to tie their financial future firmly with that of China as the Chinese Dragon moves to make the Renminbi one of the world’s major trade and reserve currencies. It is also bad news for dollar stakeholders as, clearly, Beijing will have little interest in supporting the debt-bloated dollar system in coming years.

There’s “absolutely no chance” Iran will delay its plan to increase shipments even as prices decline, said Amir Hossein Zamaninia, the nation’s deputy oil minister for international and commerce affairs. Oil slumped last week to levels last seen during the global financial crisis, while speculators increased bets on falling US crude prices to an all-time high after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries effectively abandoned production limits.

The supply glut will persist at least until late 2016 as demand growth slows and Opec shows “renewed determination” to maximise output, according to the International Energy Agency. “Gloom nourishes gloom,” said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “The market is fully acknowledging that Opec is no longer in price-control mode or providing a floor, and that the group is unlikely to change that strategy any time soon.”