The researchers drew data from over 1,800 different policy initiatives dating from 1981 to 2002. They concluded that wealthy, well-connected families are the ones who steer the direction of nearly everything politically in the United States.

“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy,” they explain, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

The pair found that regardless of whether one is Republican or Democratic was of no significant difference. The results showed that more often than not, policy followed the interests of corporations and the 1%. The research notes recent Supreme Court decisions that allow more money in politics – pointing to this as a likely factor in this transformation into an oligarchy – stretching back to the 1980s.

Amid the ongoing crude carnage the province has seen soaring property crime, rising food bank usage and, sadly, elevated suicide rates, as Albertans struggle to comprehend how things up north could have gone south (so to speak) so quickly. The plunging loonie “can only serve to worsen the death of the 'Canadian Dream'" we said on Tuesday. As it turns out, we were right.

The currency's decline is having a pronounced effect on Canadians' grocery bills. As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada imports around 80% of its fresh fruits and vegetables. When the loonie slides, prices for those goods soar. "With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress" Bloomberg continues.

Of course with the layoffs piling up, you can expect more households to fall into the "lower-income" category where they will have to fight to afford things like $3 cucumbers, $8 cauliflower, and $15 Frosted Flakes. As Bloomberg notes, James Price, director of Capital Markets Products at Richardson GMP, recently joked during an interview on BloombergTV Canada that "we're going to be paying a buck a banana pretty soon."

That one-two punch caused the Dow and S&P 500 to suffer their worst start to a trading year on record last week. The S&P 500's market valuation has plunged by $1.04 trillion since the end of 2015, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

To put that stunning figure in context, it's like wiping out the combined value of the following tech giants: Google ($508 billion), Facebook ($281 billion), Intel ($154 billion), Netflix ($50 billion) and Yahoo ($29 billion).

The Dow's market cap has plunged by $310 billion through Monday's close, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. That's equivalent to ExxonMobil ($309.5 billion) being erased from the index. No wonder there are lots of signs of rising fear on Wall Street.

CNNMoney's Fear & Greed Index is now flashing "extreme fear," a dramatic reversal from "neutral" just two weeks ago.

The Societe Generale (SocGen) analyst believes that the coming market “carnage is an indirect result of the failure of the [US] Fed’s quantitative easing”. He argued that investors would “reap the whirlwind” of central bank attempts to support their respective economies with looser monetary policy.

Mr Edwards believes that this coming collapse would result in a “trade war not unlike that in the 1930s”, mirroring the deflationary bust and trade war of the Great Depression era. “I realise most people think I am talking utter garbage but I'm used to that,” he added. His calls do not chime with mainstream economists, who believe that US GDP will rise by 2.6 percent this year.

Mr Edwards' contrarian forecasts come days after Andrew Roberts, an RBS analyst, published a research note warning clients to “sell everything except high quality bonds” on worries that 2016 would be a “cataclysmic year” for investors. Global disinflation could morph into global deflation this year, Mr Roberts said, as conditions appear “very dangerous for every investor in the world”.

This followed his announcement earlier this summer 2015 when fears over nebulous Federal intentions with operation "Jade Helm" were running high, that "to address concerns that Texas citizens and to ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure, and informed about military procedures occurring in their vicinity, I am directing the state guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15."

Prior to this, Abbott was again in the news back in June when he signed a bill into law that would allow Texas to build a gold and silver bullion depository, which would allow Texas to repatriate $1 billion worth of bullion from the New York Fed to the new facility once completed.

In short: the Federal government and the state of Texas have been on a collision course of many months, one which culminated on Friday when Abbott called for a Constitutional Convention of states, spearheaded by Texas, and which would amend the US Constitution to wrest power from a federal government "run amok."

To achieve that, Abbott proposed nine amendments to "restore the Rule of Law and return the Constitution to its intended purpose."

• Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one state.

• Require Congress to balance its budget.

• Prohibit administrative agencies from creating federal law.

• Prohibit administrative agencies from pre-empting state law.

• Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a US Supreme Court decision.

• Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for US Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law.

• Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution.

• Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds.

• Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a federal law or regulation.

Whether Abbott's proposal will gain steam and ultimately succeed is unknown, but it is virtually certain that the more the Obama administration governs via executive orders and other means to bypass the Legislative and short circuit the US government, the more powerful the grass-roots response at the state level will be, until eventually there is enough anger at the dysfunctional US government at the 34 required states to do precisely as the Texan wants... that, or Trump is voted into the Oval Office as a protest against everything that is broken with the current political status quo.

"Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction," Mr Obama told lawmakers in Washington. Republican presidential hopefuls attacked many of his assertions. And South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said in the party's official response his record "had fallen short of his soaring words".

How Republican presidential hopefuls saw it:

"The State Of The Union speech was one of the most boring, rambling and non-substantive I have heard in a long time," tweeted frontrunner Donald Trump.

For Ted Cruz the speech was "less a State of the Union and more a state of denial".

"While Isis is beheading people and burning them in cages he says climate change is our greatest threat," said Marco Rubio in a video response.

"Safer? Isis on the rise. North Korea testing nukes. Syria in chaos. Taliban on the march. This president is living in a different world," said Jeb Bush.

“I believe that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the two greatest dangers to world peace,” Senator Black told RT. “It is Saudi Arabia, through the Wahhabist doctrine, that is spreading terrorism across the globe. It’s not Iran, it’s not Syria or any other country.”

Saudi Arabia’s state-sponsored teachings of Wahhabism promote an ultra-conservative, austere version of Sunni Islam. Meanwhile, Black told RT that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to impose an absolute dictatorship.

“Erdogan has a dream of becoming a new Ottoman Empire,” Black said. “He’s a very calculating, very vicious individual and, I think, a great danger. Erdogan won an absolute majority of the Turkish parliament, which will enable him to rewrite the constitution. Once he had that total power to impose an absolute dictatorship – which he intends to do – and he publicly said that his model is that of Adolph Hitler.”

No, Frans Timmermans says, unfortunately he still hasn't received an answer. The deputy head of the European Commission has written to the government in Warsaw twice in recent weeks to express his concern over the rule of law in Poland. Instead of the requested letter, all he got was gloating on the part of new Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszcykowski. Any EU official "who came to office via political connections" is "not a legitimate partner" for a government elected by the people, Waszcykowski scoffed.

In less than two months, the country's new nationalist-conservative government has succeeded in disempowering the constitutional court, passing a law establishing government control over public broadcasting and installing party-aligned political appointees at the head of its intelligence services. "We want to cure our country of a few illnesses," Foreign Minister Waszcykowski told Germany's tabloid Bild earlier this month.

It's a choice of words most often associated with autocrats and has alarmed the European Commission. On Wednesday, the EU executive is expected to discuss whether or not it will open the so-called "rule of law mechanism." Should it do so, it would mark the first time a member state has been subjected to that level of scrutiny for violating the fundamental values of the European Union.

The procedures were established in 2014 as a kind of early-warning system to counter anti-democratic developments. If invoked, it stipulates that governments must account to the EU for changes to legal and constitutional changes - and ultimately to repeal those laws that run afoul of EU policy.

“The scientists and technicians of the DPRK are in high spirit to detonate H-bombs … capable of wiping out the whole territory of the US all at once,” North Korean KCNA news agency said. Along with the ‘wiping-out-US’ comments, Pyongyang added that the test “was neither to ‘threaten’ anyone nor to ‘provoke’ someone for a certain purpose.”

“It was a process indispensable for carrying out the WPK's line on simultaneously carrying out the economic construction and the building of nuclear force to cope with the US ever-more undisguised hostile policy toward the DPRK,” the agency said. North Korea has recently made the headlines after it claimed to have carried out a hydrogen bomb test. The announcement raised concerns over the security of the region.

It’s an everyday occurrence for more than 100,000 middle and high school students across the city. On this morning, as on every school day, senior Justin Feldeo prepares to be pulled aside for separate screening by a hand wand. Feldeo is studying to be a firefighter and the boots he wears for class trigger the metal detectors.

Fifteen minutes after the formal start of the school day, students are still pouring in, even later for having to go through the machines. Almost as many New York City students run the gauntlet of x-ray machines each day as pass through the scanners at busy Miami International Airport. And the procedure is numbingly similar. Students must remove belts, shoes, and sometimes bobby pins as the wait stretches as long as an hour.