Economy

Despite the least jobless claims this year in 14 years - since the dot.com bubble - jobless claims rose to end the year. Of course a lot of those lack of jobless claims is because people dropped out of the workforce.

The bubble in Chinese production is forcing some to move to Africa.

"Hebei may simply be at a loss as to how to scale back businesses that they recognize have become massively bloated. Officials in China’s construction-related industries clearly have too much capacity and too little demand."

That's a bubble.

Billionaires pretend philanthropy while gratifying themselves. There's not a big market for space tourism. Plutocrat self-gratification posing as philanthropy has been around for a century.

Crisis in the German economy. That's not good.

"There is no country that has suffered the pains of Russian sanctions in the West more than Germany because the Russian market has compensated Germany in the past years, covering up many problems of the German economy from the euro crisis. As the economy has turned down inside the EU, German sales of products declined. That decline was replaced with Russian buyers of everything from food to German cars. With Russian trade now cut off, the economic decline in Germany is starting to become visible. There is also a rising anti-foreigner trend emerging in Germany with the economic decline in motion. The German Press, perhaps the last real free press, warn of the coming police state in Germany."

Sounds like the US, but flight to the dollar enables US rulers to loot us more.

Dow closes up 11 percent for the year.