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There was some good news and some not so good news in the Fed's latest annual Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households. First the good news. The report, based on the Board's fourth annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking conducted in October 2016, presents a "picture of improving financial well-being among Americans", at least according to the report (read on to see if this is merited). Overall, 70% of the more than 6,600 respondents said they were either "living comfortably" or "doing okay," up 1% from 2015 and up 8% from the first survey results in 2013.

Now, the not so good news. Nearly eight years into an economic recovery, nearly half of Americans didn’t have enough cash available to cover a $400 emergency. Specifically, the survey found that, in line with what the Fed had disclosed in previous years, 44% of respondents said they wouldn’t be able to cover an unexpected $400 expense like a car repair or medical bill, or would have to borrow money or sell something to meet it. Troubling as this statistic remains, the overall share of adults who would struggle to come up with $400 in a pinch has declined by 2% from the last survey conducted in 2015, and down 6% since 2013. Of the group that could not pay in cash, 45% said they would go further in debt and use a credit card to pay off the expense over time. while a quarter would borrow from friends of family, and another 27% just couldn’t pay the expense. Others would turn to selling items or using a payday loan.

The breakdown was largely by education attainment: 79% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree said they would still be able to pay all of their other bills in full if hit with a $400 charge. Just 52% of those with no more than a high school diploma said the same. Just as concerning were other findings from the study: just under one-fourth of adults, or 23%, are not able to pay all of their current month’s bills in full while 25% reported skipping medical treatments due to cost in the prior year. Additionally, 28% of adults who haven’t retired yet reported to being grossly unprepared, indicating they had no retirement savings or pension whatsoever.

The House of Representatives on Monday voted 366-30 to declare what has long been known — that it has not authorized U.S. action in support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, but other than urging the parties to come to a negotiated solution, the resolution did not actually do anything to end American participation in the conflict. Since the Saudi bombing of Yemen started in the spring of 2015 — when Saudi forces intervened on the side of ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi — the U.S. has played a close support role. It has aided Saudi bombers with targeting and assisted with refueling. It has also sold tens of billions of dollars in munitions to the Saudis since the war began, while the kingdom has used U.S.-produced aircraft, laser-guided bombs, and internationally banned cluster bombs to target and destroy schools, markets, power plants, and a hospital, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths. Following a deadly strike on a Yemeni funeral in 2016, the U.S. actually doubled fuel support for Saudi airplanes. The war has led to an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions.

Months after Russia became the first country to announce the creation of a state-backed Cryptorouble, Venezuela has followed suit, announcing the creation of El Petro, a state-sanctioned cryptocurrency to be backed by Venezuela’s extensive reserves of crude oil. Venezuela has already broken free of Dollar dependence months ago when Caracas announced it would be trading its oil using China’s Petroyuan. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also stated that he would like to begin trade with Russia in the Rouble. With Venezuela heavily sanctioned by the United States, El Petro looks to be another tool which Venezuela can use to continue and conduct international commerce without relying on Dollar based financial institution.

Crucially, while existing Cryptocurrencies tend to create their initial value through an arithmetic process called “mining”, leaving them heavily subject to market fluctuation, El Petro will be backed by a known commodity, oil, thus giving it a clear advantage for risk-averse investors. While the world’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has seen its value skyrocket against the Dollar, some remain unconvinced of its long-term prospects for stability. A currency, backed by oil would, by contrast, ostensibly fluctuate in accordance with the well established global price of Brent Crude.

An official oil-backed cryptocurrency could work in tandem with Russia’s soon to be launched Cryptorouble, a digital currency which will ostensibly be backed by the vast resources of the Russian state. With western governments ambivalent about how to treat existing cryptocurrencies, Russia and Venezuela have taken the lead to both normalize cryptos while backing them by well-known assets.

While Trump's Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader's "anti-Muslim videos", there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video. That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed "moderate".  So a sitting US president shared a video which reveals a Syrian "rebel" fighter committing war crimes who was part of one of the very groups backed by the CIA as official US policy under the Obama administration. Of course it is likely that Trump himself is not fully aware of this, yet the astounding geopolitical irony in this should not be missed, even as public outrage is reduced to merely discussing "anti-Muslim bigotry" and whether or not Trump is being "presidential".

nd while multiple media outlets, for example NPR, continue to claim the videos are "unverified" and "have no context" or are of "murky origins" (as the Washington Post wrongly claims), this particular video especially was widely shared and discussed among the world's top Syria analysts and Middle East scholars at the time. The video was taken in 2013 and shows the Wahhabi cleric and FSA commander smashing the Christian statue in connection with the US-backed group's prior attack on Yakubiya in Idlib province. The book, The Islamic State: Combating The Caliphate Without Borders, authored by counter-terrorism experts Yonah and Dean Alexander, gives his full name as Omar Gharba al-Khojji and like vast numbers of FSA fighters he eventually jointed ISIS (some online sources alternately list his name as Omar Raghba).

akubiyah was a mostly Christian village principally comprised of Armenian Orthodox and Catholic churches which after being taken over by the FSA was subsequently held by ISIS. The local Christians saw no distinction between the invading FSA and ISIS fighters as it was primarily the US-backed FSA which began massacring Christians and looting churches. Even the US government funded Voice of America news had this to say based on an interview with a Christian survivor: Christian refugees described to VOA the execution of a half dozen of their co-religionists in the northwestern village of al-Yakubiye, in Idlib province, by Sunni Muslims aligned with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. Rahel, a 45-year-old former teacher, said, “Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army.”   ...Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, an estimated 600,000, have fled the country. Before the war, Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 22 million. And The Daily Beast also confirmed at the time that "nearly all Christians have fled [Yakubiyah] after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped" by the US sponsored FSA. Furthermore, an October 2013 report in Arabic media confirmed that, Terrorists belonging to al-Nusra front broke into homes in Yakubiyah in Syria's Idlib province, killed a Chrisitan man and destroyed a Virgin Mary statue. Upon arrival at a house that had the statue of virgin Mary, Wahhabi cleric, Omar Gharba' carried the statue of the Virgin Mary after it was taken over by militants from the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and broke it by throwing it on the ground. He stated that he and his fellow Wahhabis won't tolerate any form of worship except strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.   "God willing, Only God will be worshipped in the land of the Levant," the terrorist who destroyed the statue said, noting that "no other idol will be worshiped after these days . We won't accept but the religion of Allah and the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed bin Abdullah." In 2012 and 2013 Omar Gharba's name appeared somewhat frequently in Western news reports as he was interviewed on a few occasions and presented as a "moderate" rebel, for example by BBC Arabic in 2012. The below video is one such example of Omar Gharba insisting that he and his fellow FSA militants would be tolerant and respectful of Christians and other religious minorities should they inherit power by toppling the Assad government  - though he was subsequently outed as the destroyer of the Virgin Mary statue, as the edit of the video interview makes clear.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani says his nation is ready to support Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip, days after the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.Soleimani, commander of the Al Quds force, made the offer in a phone call late Monday with leaders of groups in Gaza, according to the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ website, Sepah News, which didn’t give details of the assistance proffered. Other forces in the region are ready to defend the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Soleimani also told the Gaza faction leaders, without identifying them. The mosque is Islam’s third-holiest shrine and a frequent flashpoint for tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.Palestinians claim Jerusalem’s eastern sector, where the mosque stands, as the capital of a future state, and they oppose the U.S. move. Hamas has called for another uprising against Israel in response, though so far protests have been limited. Soleimani spoke a day after the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, called on all “resistance” groups in the region to come up with a unified strategy to take back Jerusalem. Iran’s Quds force operates beyond the country’s borders and has fought Islamic State in Iraq and backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iran also supports proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas that have warred with Israel.

The Mexican Senate is set to approve a new law that would mark a qualitative step in the militarization of Mexican society. The law would put the military in charge of “internal security” and give the armed forces the authority to conduct massive spying operations under the guise of fighting against organized crime. The Interior Security Law was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on November 30, will soon be voted on by the Senate, and is expected to be signed by President Enrique Peña Nieto in the coming months. The Interior Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Interior) would authorize the president to deploy the Armed Forces in cases of “grave danger to the collective integrity of people and/or the functionality of institutions,” or even in situations that could “potentially become threats to internal security.” Any such operation would supposedly last up to one year. However, the bill specifies that the president can, without any congressional or judicial approval, extend this period if he or she considers that a “threat” is still present. Under current conditions of deep social and political crisis, the law opens the door to establishing what would amount to a military dictatorship. Small but substantial protests have taken place throughout the country against the law.

Russian financial institutions and firms are ready to work without SWIFT's interbank cash transfer services, according to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. “Certainly, it is unpleasant, as it will prove a stumbling block for companies and banks, and will slow down work. It will be inevitable to deploy some aged technologies for information transfer and calculations. However, the companies are technically and psychologically ready for the shutdown as this threat was repeatedly voiced,” Dvorkovich said, as quoted by TASS.He added that the measure may have a negative impact on corporations working in the US and Europe.

The potential disconnection of Russia from SWIFT has been under discussion since 2014, when the EU and the US introduced the first round of international penalties against Moscow over alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis and the reunification with Crimea.At the time, the European Parliament called for strong actions against Russia, including expelling the country from money transfer services. However, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication regarded the recommendations as violating rights and damaging for businesses.

In 2017, Russia’s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina told President Vladimir Putin that the banking sector had been provided with all the necessary conditions for operating lenders and payment systems in case of disconnection from SWIFT. According to the regulator, 90 percent of ATMs in Russia were ready to accept the Mir payment system, a domestic version of Visa and MasterCard.The Mir payment system was introduced in 2015 after clients of several Russian banks (SMP Bank, InvestCapitalBank, Russia Bank and Sobinbank) were unable to use Visa and MasterCard due to the sanctions.