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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro unveiled  a series of economic measures on Tuesday following the release of a new poll predicting a victory for the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) in December parliamentary elections. Among the measures are various modifications to Venezuela’s Fair Price Law aimed at fighting speculation by private retailers, which has become rampant amid soaring inflation.

A new category of maximum price will applied to all goods and services, stipulating a 30% maximum profit for retailers determined on the basis of “real costs of production and commercialization”. Within this new schema, importers will be entitled to a maximum profit of 20%, while domestic producers will be allowed to take in a 30% maximum gain in an effort to stimulate national production. By capping profits in each rung of the production chain, the government aims to put a halt to the speculative spiral rapidly driving up the prices of everyday goods, which constantly erodes the purchasing power of Venezuela’s popular sectors. Additionally, Maduro announced a modification applying to food and health services, a category, which the government says has been manipulated by private retailers. The new “Fair Price” registry will be determined unilaterally by Venezuela’s National Superintendence of Fair Prices over the next 30 days. In order to enforce the new “fair price” regime, Maduro also unveiled tougher punishments for speculation, which will be detected by evaluating the net income of private firms in light of new regulations on maximum price and maximum profit. The government will now impose steeper penalties on retailers who remark the price of goods, which may include jail time. Furthermore, the common practice of fixing prices on the basis of the parallel dollar will now be considered an offense. Apart from measures against speculation, Maduro also announced a 30% across-the-board salary increase for public sector workers and armed forces personnel, which comes on the heels of a 30% raise in the national minimum wage announced last week. The salary adjustment was coupled with the approval of 110,000 new pensioners as part of the national pension system, which has been massively expanded under the Bolivarian administrations of Chávez and Maduro.

Lastly, the Venezuelan president indicated that the ministries of industry and commerce would be fused in order to better coordinate efforts to combat speculation and guarantee the distribution of essential goods.

In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts. One potentially devastating effect, a new study finds, will be more societal inequality. In other words, the staggering costs of the longest war in American history — almost 17 years running, since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 — are being deferred to the future. In the process, the government is contributing to this country’s skyrocketing income inequality. Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent $5.6 trillion on its war on terror, according to the Costs of War Project, which I co-direct, at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. This is a far higher number than the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion estimate, which only counts expenses for what are known as “overseas contingency operations,” or OCO — that is, a pot of supplemental money, outside the regular annual budget, dedicated to funding wartime operations. The $5.6 trillion figure, on the other hand, includes not just what the U.S. has spent on overseas military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, but also portions of Homeland Security spending related to counterterrorism on American soil, and future obligations to care for wounded or traumatized post-9/11 military veterans. The financial burden of the post-9/11 wars across the Greater Middle East — and still spreading, through Africa and other regions — is far larger than most Americans recognize.

Reporter David Fahrenthold got a phone call around 11 a.m. Friday from a source with a tip about Donald Trump. The source asked: Would Fahrenthold be interested in seeing some previously unaired video of Trump? Fahrenthold didn’t hesitate. Within a few moments of watching an outtake of footage from a 2005 segment on “Access Hollywood,” the Washington Post reporter was on the phone, calling Trump’s campaign, “Access Hollywood” and NBC for reaction. By 4 p.m., his story was causing shock waves.

Fahrenthold’s story about the recording — which some observers said might deal a death blow to Trump’s presidential campaign — was the second major revelation, or “October surprise,” that came courtesy of an anonymous source. The New York Times last week revealed that Trump took a $916 million loss on his 1995 taxes, which could have relieved him from paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years. The Times’ story was based on tax returns supplied by a source whose identity is unknown even to the Times. Fahrenthold, a 16-year veteran of The Post, said he knows who pointed him to the “Access Hollywood” video, but he will not reveal the identity because he promised anonymity to his tipster. But like many readers, he said he was surprised and shocked by what he saw on the tape.

As it happens, Fahrenthold was racing to produce his story in competition with “Access Hollywood” itself. The syndicated show, owned by NBC Universal, had found the Trump recording in its archives and was preparing its own story. NBC News, tipped by “Access Hollywood,” was also aware of the tape and was preparing a story, which it intended to broadcast after the entertainment show aired the recording. It was not clear, however, when “Access Hollywood” and NBC News were planning to go ahead with their stories.

The US has launched missiles against three radar sites in the Houthi-controlled part of Yemen. The strikes came in response to two attacks on the USS Mason, which operates in international waters off the Red Sea coast of Yemen. The Houthis are also thought to have fired rockets at an United Arab Emirates military vessel earlier this month. The US military “targeted radar sites involved in the recent missile launches threatening USS Mason and other vessels operating in international waters in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb,” according to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. The Bab al-Mandeb is a strait located between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. “These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Cook continued. Cook added that the “United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate, and will continue to maintain our freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and elsewhere around the world.”

The US has launched missiles against three radar sites in the Houthi-controlled part of Yemen. The strikes came in response to two attacks on the USS Mason, which operates in international waters off the Red Sea coast of Yemen. The Houthis are also thought to have fired rockets at an United Arab Emirates military vessel earlier this month. The US military “targeted radar sites involved in the recent missile launches threatening USS Mason and other vessels operating in international waters in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb,” according to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. The Bab al-Mandeb is a strait located between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. “These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Cook continued. Cook added that the “United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate, and will continue to maintain our freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and elsewhere around the world.”

Separately, the US Navy released a video, just over one minute long, of the USS Nitze launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at the radar sites. The cruise missile were fired just hours after the USS Mason was forced to respond to an incoming missile for the second time this week. No one was injured in the failed missile attacks, but the USS Mason had to employ “defensive countermeasures.”

Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today.  The report is being launched as political and business elites gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’ reveals how the global economy enables a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes while hundreds of millions of people are struggling to survive on poverty pay. Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2 percent. The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017. It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year. It would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top 5 companies in the garment sector in 2016.

On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year. But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

The disconnect between the job market and workers’ paychecks has fueled much of the recent activism in states and cities around raising minimum wages, and it also has become a factor in at least some of this year’s congressional campaigns.

After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.

In its last months the Obama administration ordered the intelligence agencies to collect and distribute information of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. This to prevent any change by the Trump administration of the hostile policy towards Russia that the Obama administration instituted. The intent was also to give the intelligence services blackmail material against the Trump crew to prevent any changes in their undue, freewheeling independence. The above is reported in a little discussed New York Times piece published yesterday. The reporting angle captured in the headline is biased to set the Obama efforts into a positive light: Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking.

Make no mistake by straight-reading that headline. Not single shred of evidence has been provided that "Russia hacked the election" or had anything to do with various leaks of Clinton related emails. A lot of fluff and chaff was thrown around but not even one tiny bit of evidence. The Obama effort was clearly to sabotage the announced policy of the incoming administration of seeking better relations with Russia. Obama intended to undermine the will of the voters by abusing instruments of the state. Excerpts from the piece: In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about  ... possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.