"What is the difference between outright currency manipulation versus the collateral damage to one's currency based on central bank programs?" he rhetorically asks, "in my mind, very little, but obviously, in the minds of many leaders of G-7 developed economies, there's a huge distinction."

And therein lies the rub. As Japan follows Bernanke's decade-old plan to reflate by literally printing money into existence - just as every other developed fiat currency nation - their argument is that they are fighting deflation - or stimulating growth - when, in fact "The distinction between collateral damage and outright manipulation is absolute malarkey."

Now that the currency wars have gone global - no matter what well-placed op-eds will try to convince otherwise - Santelli sums it all up perfectly, "in the end when you don't have a standard and you have printing and fiat currency, what level of value is real?"

Benedict, who announced his resignation on Monday in a move that stunned the Roman Catholic world, also indicated that he would not hold a public role once his resignation became official on February 28. Benedict is the first pope to step down in nearly 600 years.

“Though I am now retiring to a life of prayer, I will always be close to all of you, and I am sure all of you will be close to me, even though I remain hidden to the world,” Benedict, 85, and increasingly frail, told the assembly of hundreds of priests, who had greeted him with a long standing ovation and some tears.

Once retired, Benedict will live in a convent in Vatican City, and will be tended to by the nuns who look after him now. Father Lombardi said Benedict’s longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who was also named prefect of the papal household two months ago, would continue to work for him.

Father Lombardi said he saw no conflict of interest if Archbishop Gänswein served the current pope and his successor. The prefect is responsible for logistical duties, and “in this sense it is not a profound problem, I think,” Father Lombardi said.

It will pass closer even than the geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth, but there is no risk of impacts or collisions. Its closest approach will be 19:25 GMT. For regions in darkness around that time, it will be visible using good binoculars or a telescope. As it passes - at 7.8km/s (17,450 mi/hr) - it will come from "under" the Earth and return back toward the Sun from "above".

It will pass over directly over the eastern Indian Ocean, making for the best viewing in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia. But keen viewers anywhere can find one of several live streams of the event on the internet, including a feed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Nasa, available from 19:00 GMT.

A fireball was seen streaking through the sky above the city of Yekaterinburg, followed by loud bangs. 514 people injured in the Chelyabinsk region, 11 were being treated in hospital, the regional emergencies agency said in a statement.

Scientists have played down suggestions that there is any link between the event in the Urals and 2012 DA14, an asteroid expected to race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200 miles) - the closest ever predicted for an object of that size.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast, said there was "almost definitely" no connection. "One reason is that 2012 DA14 is approaching Earth from the south, and this object hit in the northern hemisphere," he told BBC News. "This is literally a cosmic coincidence, although a spectacular one."

Meanwhile, the meat industry has been merrily gorging away on antibiotics — and churning out meat rife with antibiotic-resistant pathogens — if the latest data from the FDA itself is any indication. The Pew Charitable Trusts crunched the agency's numbers on antibiotic use on livestock farms and compared them to data on human use of antibiotics to treat illness.

While human antibiotic use has leveled off at below 8 billion pounds annually, livestock farms have been sucking in more and more of the drugs each year — and consumption reached a record nearly 29.9 billion pounds in 2011.

To put it another way, the livestock industry is now consuming nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics used in the US, and its appetite for them is growing.

Euro area GDP fell 0.6 percent in the last three months of 2012, marking the currency bloc's first full year in which no quarter produced growth, extending back to 1995, according to figures from European statistical agency Eurostat. The worse-than-expected decline - the deepest since the first quarter of 2009 - was driven by GDP slumps in the bloc's major economies, including a shock 0.6 percent contraction in Germany and a 0.3 percent fall in French output in the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile in Italy, the next largest eurozone economy, fourth quarter GDP shrunk a more-than-expected 0.9 percent. In Germany, where preliminary data showed the economy still grew on the year, albeit at just 0.1 percent, weak exports from the nation's muscular manufacturing industry were blamed for the sharp fall in output.

In France, Europe's second biggest economy, the fourth quarter GDP contraction obliterated a tentative recovery made in quarter three and signalled that the nation could be lurching back towards recession.

The document is an unprecedented window into the terrorist operation, indicating that al-Qaida predicted the military intervention that would dislodge it in January and recognized its own vulnerability.

The letter also shows a sharp division within al-Qaida's Africa chapter over how quickly and how strictly to apply Islamic law, with its senior commander expressing dismay over the whipping of women and the destruction of Timbuktu's ancient monuments. It moreover leaves no doubt that despite a temporary withdrawal into the desert, al-Qaida plans to operate in the region over the long haul, and is willing to make short-term concessions on ideology to gain the allies it acknowledges it needs.

The more than nine-page document, found by The Associated Press in a building occupied by the Islamic extremists for almost a year, is signed by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the nom de guerre of Abdelmalek Droukdel, the senior commander appointed by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaida's branch in Africa.

The clear-headed, point-by-point assessment resembles a memo from a CEO to his top managers and lays out for his jihadists in Mali what they have done wrong in months past, and what they need to do to correct their behavior in the future.

Papal elections are among the world's most mysterious, with no declared candidates and more bluffing than a high-stakes poker game. No cardinal can openly campaign for a job whose election is said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. But behind the scenes, at meetings inside the Vatican's thick walls and dinners at the finer Roman restaurants, the cardinal electors size up potential candidates among themselves and drop subtle hints to Vatican watchers in the media about who's up or down.

This round of discreet discussions, dubbed "totopapa" or "pope sweepstakes" by irreverent Romans, was only kicked into a higher gear on Monday when Benedict announced the first papal abdication for centuries. It will go into overdrive when cardinals from around the world arrive in the next few days.

When the most powerful man in the world holds a State of the Union address, as President Barack Obama did on Tuesday evening in Washington, political stakeholders listen closely. They comb through the text, looking for messages in the lines and between them.

This year, however, some of the most attentive listeners were not sitting in the joint Congressional session on Capitol Hill, or even in the US at all. Rather, they were sitting in capital cities across Europe. European Union leaders, Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron chief among them, were hoping for a clear commitment to the pursuit of a trans-Atlantic free-trade zone. It is an idea the Europeans threw their support behind at the last EU summit in Brussels.

And Obama didn't disappoint. "Tonight, I'm announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive trans-Atlantic trade and investment partnership with the European Union," he said. "Because trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs."

Finally, the project that has long been cause for euphoria among trans-Atlanticists has received an official seal of approval from the highest level. America and Europe, in different weight classes when it comes to foreign and military policy, are to fight the economic battle in a class of their very own: Super heavyweight.

Kyle Bass writes:

Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn. Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation.

Former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner – who has made some big accurate calls, and counts major hedge funds, banks, brokerage houses, and high net worth individuals as clients – says there will be “a major war starting at the end of 2012 to 2013”, which will drive the Dow to 5,000.

Veteran investor adviser James Dines forecasts a war as epochal as World Wars I and II, starting in the Middle East.

We’re in the middle of a global currency war – ie a situation where nations all compete to devalue their currencies the most in order to boost exports. And Brazilian president-elect Rousseff said in 2010: The last time there was a series of competitive devaluations … it ended in world war two.

Since the 1970s, the US dollar has been the currency that the international community has used to trade oil around the globe. This has created an overwhelming demand for US dollars and US debt. But what happens when the rest of the globe starts rejecting the increasingly unstable US dollar and figures out that gold can be used as a currency in international trade?

The truth is that it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure that out. Demand for the US dollar and US debt would fall off the map and there would be a rush into gold unlike anything we have ever seen before. So are Russia and China accumulating unprecedented amounts of gold right now because they eventually plan to cut the legs out from under the petrodollar and they want to gobble up huge stockpiles of gold before the cat is out of the bag? Of course they will never admit this publicly, but there are rumblings out there that this is exactly what is happening.

Not that you can really blame any nation that wants to get into gold right now. News outlets all over the globe are telling us that we are in the midst of a "currency war" as central banks all over the planet race to devalue their currencies. So why would anyone want to be in paper in such an environment?

A select group of cardinals then get together in a secretive conclave and a successor is chosen, in a clean break from the past. All that has been turned on its head by Benedict’s surprise resignation, the first in the papacy since 1415. It raises a potential difficulty for the Vatican – that even after his retirement, he could become a lightning rod for dissatisfaction and dissent with his successor, whoever that might be.

When Benedict formally resigns on the evening of February 28, he will be taken probably by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo, the traditional summer retreat of popes, in the hills outside Rome. The 85-year-old is expected to remain there for 15 to 20 days, until the conclave of around 120 cardinals drawn from around the world gathers at the Vatican and elects a new pontiff. Benedict will then take up residence in a cloistered monastery within the Vatican City State. His title at that point? Unclear.

Inevitably he will run into his successor and will still be in daily touch with cardinals and other influential figures within the Holy See. Not only that but, according to the Vatican spokesman, Benedict will continue to write and publish treatises and essays – he is a noted theologian who recently completed a trilogy on the life of Christ. That could produce a situation where the former pope says one thing on an important matter, while his successor says something different.

“Traditionally popes have not resigned because there is this question of what do you do with two popes,” says John Thavis, an American who has covered the Vatican for 30 years and recently wrote an insider’s account of the Holy See – “The Vatican Diaries.” “What should be the role of a former pope – does he have to stay quiet for the rest of his life? What if he speaks up and disagrees with his successor? You then have the prospect of the Church effectively having two popes.”

Meanwhile, the rise of evangelical Churches, especially in Latin America and Africa, is checking the growth of Catholic congregations, which are also threatened in some areas by religious intolerance. Benedict XVI rejected calls for a debate on the issue of clerical celibacy, and reaffirmed the ban on Communion for divorced Catholics who remarry.

Equality laws being debated in several Western countries are a major issue. Benedict XVI has said the Church's strict positions on abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality are "not negotiable", and such outspoken orthodoxy has alienated liberal-minded Catholics. And the next Pope will also have to shore up confidence in an institution that been rocked for several years by the sexual abuse of minors by priests.

The recent leaking of Vatican documents by the Pope's butler have exposed the Church's central government - the Curia - as a seriously dysfunctional institution. It appears to be "riddled with rival factions and there were accusations of corruption in high places", says veteran Vatican analyst Clifford Longley. "The reform of the Vatican, which he only began at the margins, has a long way to go yet," says Mr Longley. "Decentralisation is now imperative. His successor has a huge and unenviable task."

Systems of oversight need to be put in place to ensure corruption is detected and halted, while Vatican financial transactions need to be made more transparent. "The one issue which overshadows all others is the growing pressure on Catholics because of equality laws in the West," says Catholic commentator Austen Ivereigh. Gay marriage legislation in France and the UK, the closure of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK, the battle in US courts between leading Catholic institutions and the State over sexual equality are all serving to have a chilling effect on the Church in the West, he says. "Equality laws such as same-sex marriage make Christians and church organisations vulnerable to lawsuits and anti-discrimination claims."

Ultimately, says Mr Ivereigh, the State could be developing positions through equality legislation that will serve to marginalise Catholics and the presence of the Church in public life. "There is no bigger file in the Pope's inbox," he says.