The Federal Reserve will still be recklessly creating gigantic mountains of new money out of thin air and massively intervening in the financial marketplace. It will just be slightly less than before. However, this very well could represent a very important psychological turning point for investors. It is a signal that "the party is starting to end" and that the great bull market of the past four years is drawing to a close. So what is all of this going to mean for average Americans? The following are 8 ways that "the taper" is going to affect you and your family...

• Interest Rates Are Going To Go Up

• Home Sales Are Likely Going To Go Down

• Your Stocks Are Going To Go Down

• The Money In Your Bank Account Is Constantly Being Devalued

• Quantitative Easing Has Been Causing The Cost Of Living To Rise

• Quantitative Easing Did Not Reduce Unemployment And Tapering Won't Either

• The Rest Of The World Is Going To Continue To Lose Faith In Our Financial System

• The Economy As A Whole Is Going To Continue To Get Even Worse

So don't believe the hype. The economy is getting worse, not better. Quantitative easing did not "rescue the economy", but it sure has made our long-term problems a whole lot worse. And this "tapering" is not a sign of better things to come. Rather, it is a sign that the bubble of false prosperity that we have been enjoying for the past few years is beginning to end.

The massive data breach involving "unauthorized access to Target payment card data" occurred at stores across the country between November 27 and December 15, potentially exposing both cards issued by Target and major brands such as Visa and Mastercard.The stolen data includes customer names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates and the three-digit security codes located on the backs of cards.

In a letter to consumers, Target recommended that anyone who shopped at the store during the two-plus-week security breach check their accounts and report any unauthorized purchases or suspicious activity. Consumers can also monitor their credit report moving forward to flag issues with their accounts. Target says anyone who suspects they are a victim of unauthorized activity should call them at 866-852-8680.

Hong Kong and Singapore are THE two dominant financial centers in Asia. For years they’ve been locked in competition with one another, much like New York and London. So their public partnership is a very big deal… indicative of the clear objective they have in front of them. Bottom line – finance executives in Asia see the writing on the wall. They can see that the dollar is in a period of terminal decline, and it’s clear that the Chinese renminbi is going to take tremendous market share away from the dollar. They want a big piece of the action.

The renminbi has already surpassed the euro to become the #2 most-used currency in the world when it comes to trade settlement, according to a report released yesterday by the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). Right now the renminbi has about an 8.6% share of the global market for trade settlement. Granted, the dollar has the lion’s share of trade settlement at more than 80%.

But just look at how quickly the renminbi has grown; in January 2012, its share of the global market was just 1.9%. So it’s grown by nearly a factor of 5x in less than two years. With today’s agreement between Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s financial exchanges, that growth will likely accelerate. As we’ve discussed before, the dollar is in a unique position simply because it is the world’s dominant reserve currency.

This means that when a rice distributor in Vietnam does business with a Brazilian merchant, they’ll close the deal by trading US dollars with each other… even though neither nation actually uses the dollar. It’s been this way since World War II, simply because there has been such a long tradition of trust in the United States, and a steady supply of dollars throughout the world. But this confidence is fading rapidly as merchants and banks around the world have been seeking alternatives, primarily the Chinese renminbi.

As trade in these renminbi products grows, the dollar will be closer and closer to its reckoning day. Years from now when this has played out, it’s going to seem so obvious. The warning signs are all in front of us. And last week’s agreement between Hong Kong and Singapore is one of the strongest signs yet.

Angela Merkel scored a personal triumph in the 2013 general election and has never been politically stronger. The grand coalition between Merkel's CDU-CSU Christian democrats and the SPD social democrats, now at last in place in Berlin, has an overwhelming majority in the Bundestag. No other significant nation in the current EU has both a strong economy and a strong government – certainly not France, clinging to the past and teetering on the brink of a new recession. Not Britain either, we should note.

The stage ought therefore to be set for a strong and broadly based new Merkel government to lead Germany and Europe on a new and more purposeful course. Some of us have tried from time to time to persuade ourselves that this may indeed now happen – that a third-term Merkel government might shake off the cautious, just-in-time approach that her earlier governments brought to the task of dealing with Europe's shared but unsolved problems.

We also speculated optimistically that an alliance with the SPD might provide the reassurance both for a bipartisan, reforming approach to Germany's own economic problems and for a less deflationary, austerity-driven approach to those of Greece, Spain and, Portugal and the rest of the eurozone.

He won't say it in public, but David Cameron continues to hope that the Merkel alliance is the key to Britain remaining a member of the EU. Cameron is hopeful that an ever-pragmatic Merkel will somehow help him to construct a plausible offer that a re-elected Tory premier can put to the British people in a referendum in 2017 with a good prospect of winning the vote to stay in the EU.

In an interview with Russia Today TV on December 7, Farouq Qaddoumi, the former political bureau head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said that Arabs were “enthusiastic supporters” of the Nazis during World War II.

“I don't think it would be wrong to say that we were enthusiastic supporters of Germany,” Qaddoumi said in the interview, when asked by the interviewer, “Were you sympathetic with Nazi Germany in WWII?” The interviewer, seeking to clarify, then said, “You supported Hitler and his people.” Qaddoumi replied, “Germany, yes. This was common among the Palestinians, especially since our enemy was Zionism, and we saw that Zionism was hostile to Germany, and vice versa.”

These remarks are just the latest evidence of the support by Arab nationalists for Nazism and for the genocide of Jews. Many Israelis point to the lionization of Nazi and other anti-Semitic figures as a reason to doubt the sincerity of the Palestinian Authority's commitment to any future peace agreement.

Those living on the margins are being drawn into “indiscriminate and violent protest, a sterile lurch towards total opposition”. His latest speech is a veritable Jeremiad. Thousands of companies are on the “brink of collapse”. Great masses of the working people are on the dole or at risk of losing their jobs. Very high rates of youth unemployment (41 percent) are leading to dangerous alienation.

“The recession is still biting hard, and there is a pervasive sense that it will be difficult to escape, to find a way back to full growth,” he said. Now why might that be? Might it not have something to do with the central overriding fact that Italy has a currency overvalued by 20 percent or more within EMU: that it is trapped in a 1930s fixed-exchange system run by a 1930s central bank that is standing idly by (for political reasons) as M3 growth stalls, credit contracts, and deflation looms?

Mr Napolitano offers no answer.

The orders from MI6's headquarters to intelligence officers came as Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was telling MPs that anyone who is captured "should be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Convention". The report published by Sir Peter Gibson disclosed that in 2002 spies working for MI6 overseas were told to turn a "blind eye" to any evidence they witnessed of breaches of the Convention, which sets out how prisoners should be treated.

Documents uncovered by the inquiry showed that “officers were advised that, faced with apparent breaches of Geneva Convention standards, there was no obligation to intervene”, the report said. "Officers were also advised that such conduct should only be raised with the detaining authority ‘if circumstances allow’. Officers were not advised to cease any interview immediately if they felt that the detainee was not being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards.”

He spoke out after being given a formal warning by Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas and Justice Secretary Chris Grayling for judicial misconduct. An inquiry by the Office for Judicial Complaints, the body that polices the behaviour of judges, had found his speeches and newspaper articles were ‘incompatible with his judicial responsibilities’.

Last December the office advised Sir Paul to take a lower profile after he had protested about the devastating impact of family break-up on children, criticised cohabitation, and called for greater support for marriage. Sir Paul, who handles family cases as Mr Justice Coleridge, could have served for another five years and was effectively forced out.

He said: ‘I would like to refute the erroneous suggestion that my fellow judges are opposed to what I have been doing. With one or two exceptions they have been very, if quietly, supportive.’ Sir Paul said he was a whistleblower who needed to speak out against the collapse of family life.

Last week Sir Paul wrote an article in the Daily Mail in which he said people who wanted to be parents should get married and added that supporting marriage was ‘something our courts no longer seem able or willing to do’. He said: ‘The fact is that the single most vital factor, by far, in the successful development of children is a committed, healthy relationship between their parents.’

Stimulus of this kind is designed to lower interest rates and boost economic activity. The Fed's governing committee cited stronger job growth as a reason for the decision to pullback its programme of bond buying. The announcement followed a two-day meeting in Washington DC. With its decision, the US's central bank is recognizing the improvement in the world's largest economy.

But this is by no means a job done. Ben Bernanke spoke about the many Americans who have dropped out of the workforce. But given the immediate reaction by financial markets, it appears as if the central bank has successfully managed its shift in policy. Now, it falls to incoming chairwoman Janet Yellen to continue the fine art of taking the Fed's foot off the gas.

As part of the Pentagon’s overall defense strategy to pivot to the Pacific, the US should buy more Virginia-class attack submarines, prioritize long-range anti-ship missiles, carrier-based drones, and missile defense technology, the analysts told the House Armed Services’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.

Seth Cropsey, a senior fellow at The Hudson Institute, told the subcommittee that the US needs a detailed war plan for China in the event that conflict arises. “Chinese leaders are ambitious and they are moving toward great power status. The US is not taking this possibility as seriously as it should.”

Much of the hearing was focused on how the US can counter-balance Chinese strategic moves to deny access to certain areas in the region through the use of long-range missiles, guided missile destroyers and submarines. In particular, the analysts said China has sought to control waterways, choke points and restrict access to key islands and territories in the region.

John Freeman told Argentina's Deputy Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain a law passed by Buenos Aires effectively criminalising British oil companies working off the Falklands coast has no weight. Ambassador Freeman made the comments after the Argentine government claimed Britain was violating international law by allowing drilling to take place.

On Monday, Foreign Office director for the Americas, Kate Smith, lodged a formal protest with the Argentine charge d'affaires, Oscar Horacio Galli over the oil dispute. The protest drew a response from Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which asserts that Argentine law applies to the waters around the "Malvinas" - Argentina's name for the Falklands - South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands because they are an "integral part of the Argentine territory" which is "unlawfully occupied" by Britain.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Following the UK protest about Argentina's attempt to criminalise hydrocarbons activity around the Falkland Islands, our Ambassador to Argentina met Deputy Foreign Minister Zuain yesterday. The Minister presented our Ambassador with a letter outlining Argentina's stance on the issue. During the meeting our Ambassador reiterated that Argentine domestic law does not apply to the Falkland Islands, and that it appears to be another attempt to intimidate the people who live there."

Mr Cameron fears the Bill, which promises to give the British public a vote on membership of the European Union by 2017, could be killed in the House of Lords by Labour and Liberal Democrat peers. That would leave the Conservatives vulnerable to attacks by Ukip in the next election.

The Act, which has been used only seven times in the past century, is sometimes described as the “nuclear” option of parliamentary process to break stalemates between the Commons and the Lords. It asserts the superiority of the House of Commons by allowing Bills that cannot clear the Lords to become law, but is intended to be used only in exceptional circumstances.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to London said US-led diplomacy in the region was risking the stability of the Middle East. Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz al-Saud said his country is determined to independently arm Syria rebels and could not stand idly by while thousands of children were being killed by Syria’s regime. Despite almost a century of friendly ties with countries such as Britain and America, the oil rich monarchy can no longer follow its allies as they pursue diplomacy with its Middle Eastern enemies.

“We believe that many of the West’s policies on both Iran and Syria risk the stability and security of the Middle East,” he wrote in the New York Times. “The West has allowed one regime to survive and the other to continue its programme for uranium enrichment, with all the consequent dangers of weaponisation.”

Introducing the planned rules, EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said the use of cloning for farm animals and the import of cloned animals will be banned in the 28-member bloc. He added that the marketing of food from cloned animals would also be prohibited. "These proposals intend to address animal welfare and other ethical concerns related to the use of the technique," the Commission said. However, "there is no proposal on labelling" any produce arising from the offspring of cloned animals, be it milk or meat, said Borg.

The only country cloning animals as a food source within the European Union is Denmark. While cloned meat is not often eaten because of its high price, the embryos and semen of such animals are exported and widely used. The United States, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are among countries that farm the offspring of cloned animals.

Hours later, after midnight, officers walked through the front door, rounded up the people inside, and kept them in handcuffs in the front yard for an hour and a half. The only potential problem, at least from a constitutional standpoint, was that the cops didn't have a search warrant. They got one later, before they seized the boxes of pseudoephedrine, stripped lithium batteries, and other meth-making materials, while the alleged meth cooks waited around in handcuffs, but by then they'd already waltzed through the home uninvited.

They neglected to mention this on their warrant application, identifying a confidential informant as their only source of information. There was more than enough time to secure a search warrant before the officers' intrusion into the premises, but they deliberately chose not to attempt to obtain it until after they had conducted the unlawful entry.

Further, had the officers entered the home and found the occupants only baking cupcakes, the officers would not have bothered to then obtain the warrant at all. It was only after unlawfully entering and finding suspicious activity that they felt the need to then secure the warrant in order to cover their tracks and collect the evidence without the taint of their entry.

CCA Judge Lawrence Meyers argues that the confidential informant's report that Wehrenberg was "fixing to" cook meth wasn't independent evidence but a prediction of a future crime. The majority's decision, he writes, means that "search warrants may now be based on predictions of the commission of future crimes," which is an uncomfortable concept to say the least.