USA - A collapse of major chunks of the economy is widely viewed as “impossible” because the federal government can borrow and spend unlimited amounts of money because the Federal Reserve can create unlimited amounts of money: the government borrows $1 trillion by selling $1 trillion in Treasury bonds, the Fed prints $1 trillion dollars to buy the bonds. Rinse and repeat to near-infinity.

ISRAEL - The fact that it has been the UAE — the most moderate and progressive of the Gulf states — to take this step forward should come as no surprise. This move would have been co-ordinated closely with other Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia. With some luck and some patience, other Gulf states will follow the UAE's lead. The opening between the UAE and Israel formalises a strategic realignment that has been under way in the Middle East for some time. For a number of years now, the interests of Israel and much of the Arab world have been converging. Foremost among these interests is concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile program, and its regional destabilisation efforts and support to terrorist groups, from Yemen to Syria and Lebanon.

UNITED NATIONS - On Friday, the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution presented by US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, aimed at an indefinite extension of the UN arms embargo on Iran. Only one of the 15 members, the Dominican Republic, supported the US resolution. Eleven abstained. And two – Russia and China, voted against it. The resolution would have needed 8 to pass and would have needed to avoid a veto by one of the five permanent members. But it failed by 13 to 2. China and Russia did not even have to brandish a veto. It is hard to remember another vote on which the US was humiliated quite this badly… Let us underline this. The most powerful countries in the world and the current representatives of the main global blocs just sided with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against Donald J Trump. The United States is no longer the leader of the free world.

USA - California has seen a horrific resurgence of the deadly Bubonic Plague, with one resident falling ill after walking their dog in South Lake Tahoe. The resident was confirmed to have contracted the fatal disease by the El Dorado County Department of Health and Human Services. While insects and some animals carry the bubonic plague in the region, the resident is the first human case of the disease in five years. A statement from the county department said the resident was an “avid walker”, and may have been bitten by an infected flea while walking their dog. The statement added their infection may have taken place in the Tahoe Keys area or along the "Truckee River Corridor" north of Highway 50. It also said the patient is currently recovering at home under the care of medical professionals.

CHINA - Plague alerts in China have led officials to quarantine the village of Suji Xincun, Inner Mongolia, commanding daily disinfection of homes after a resident died of the disease. Is the bubonic plague back in 2020? Bubonic plague cases have seemingly made a resurgence amidst the calamitous backdrop of 2020, with several people now dead after contracting the ancient disease. The shutdown of Suji Xincun is the latest measure taken by authorities in the vicinity of Mongolia, which has seen the bulk of cases spread from contact with animals. The district of Damao Banner, in which the village resides, is on a level three alert for plague prevention in hopes to stem the potential tide of infections, caused by bites from bacteria-carrying fleas. The bubonic plague is the most famous, and amongst the most deadly, diseases in the world. Notable outbreaks before and during the Middle Ages killed millions of people worldwide, at the time a significant portion of the population.

CHINA - China’s Gansu province has been left devastated as heavy rain has caused severe mudslides in the area trapping thousands of people. Early reports have indicated that more than 10,000 local residents in Longnan, a city in the country of Wenxian have been trapped. Other areas have begun taking precautions to prevent a similar incident in other provinces. Today China's Sichuan province raised its flood emergency response to its highest level. This is due to the Yangtze river flooding rapidly. According to China's ministry of emergency management, the floods have impacted 63 million people. The economic damage for flooding has been estimated at $25.8 billion and is expected to rise.

USA - Donald Trump has declared war on Germany. In a manner of speaking. Europe’s most important country, potentially America’s most valuable partner, has in the mind of the president become an adversary. Of all Trump’s many foreign policy disasters, this is perhaps his most significant.

USA - In all of US history, we have never seen anything like “the mass exodus of 2020”. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the major cities on both coasts in search of a better life. Homelessness, crime and drug use were already on the rise in many of our large cities prior to 2020, but many big city residents were willing to put up with a certain amount of chaos in order to maintain their lifestyles. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and months of civil unrest have finally pushed a lot of people over the edge. Moving companies on both coasts are doing a booming business as wealthy and middle class families flee at a blistering pace, and most of those families do not plan to ever return.

MIDDLE EAST - There is finally some good news in a year that has been buffeted by the coronavirus crisis. The agreement between the UAE and Israel, announced by the White House on Thursday, is more than just an agreement to normalize relations between Israel and an Arab country. I believe it is the beginning of regionwide peace. It is a catalyst for more countries in the Middle East to actually envision a better future for their children, and it confirms to the entire world that there are still righteous women and men who have worked tirelessly for this moment. It also shows us that there are still leaders who have the courage to make difficult and bold steps in the name of peace.

MIDDLE EAST - After decades of dominating and defining tensions across the Middle East, the Palestinians are no longer a pressing priority; they also seem increasingly irrelevant to the region's trendlines. Their brethren are abandoning them. "The conflict is decidedly less important to leaders in the region," Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, told me. The agreement is "a visible demonstration of the fatigue of some Arab leaders, in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular, with the Palestinian leadership and their cause. They no longer want to be held back by what they see as Palestinian rejectionism." The Palestinians have to sort out their own political mess before the Arab world will again expend much political clout to help their cause. Israel's deal with the UAE alters a fundamental premise of peace, Sachs noted. For decades, the framework of international diplomacy was based on "land for peace" in exchange for the Arabs promising no future aggression. The new premise is "peace for peace."

USA - Proponents of children questioning and even changing their biological sex have produced a musical compilation dubbed Trans and Nonbinary Kids Mix to benefit a summer camp in New Hampshire that caters to parents who believe young children can choose their gender. According to the LGBT Foundation, children understand and should be counted in this category: “Non-binary is used to describe people who feel their gender cannot be defined within the margins of gender binary. Instead, they understand their gender in a way that goes beyond simply identifying as either a man or woman. Some non-binary people may feel comfortable within trans communities and find this is a safe space to be with others who don’t identify as cis, but this isn’t always the case.”

USA - San Francisco state Senator Scott Wiener has introduced a new bill to decriminalize adult men having sex with boys and he and his allies in the media are smearing all opposition as "homophobic" and "anti-Semitic." LGBT activists have pushed reasonable notions of equality to its limits with obscene perversions. Wiener argues all forms of sex should be treated equally under the law. The Law Will Protect Exploitation of Minors.

USA - By supporting the “Deal of the Century”, the UAE and Saudi Arabia had made a strategic decision that pursuing peace with Israel was in the long-term collective security interest of the Gulf Arab States. It therefore should not come as a surprise to anyone that there would be a last-ditch effort at diplomacy to save the deal by providing Netanyahu an off-ramp from his very public decision to pursue annexation.

MIDDLE EAST - Israel and the United Arab Emirates have announced an agreement leading to full diplomatic relations - with the help of US President Donald Trump (who has a Zionist daughter and son-in-law Jared Kushner). Sealed after a long-running series of negotiations and confirmed in a phone call on August 13 among Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli co-prime minister, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, and Donald Trump, the US president, the participants will formally sign the accord at the White House in coming weeks.

USA - It begins: Black Lives Matter mob demands white people move out of homes and leave them for black people. Coming soon to a Democrat-run city near you! A Black Lives Matter mob held a rally in a gentrified neighborhood reportedly in Seattle on Wednesday where they demanded that white people leave their homes and give them to black people.