Moody's downgraded Turkey's long-term foreign debt rating to Ba3 from Ba2. Additionally, Moody's shifted the outlook to negative from watch negative.

There are ample warning signs that another serious financial crisis is on the way.

These warning signs are being soundly ignored by the majority, though. Perhaps understandably so.

After 10 years of near-constant central bank interventions to prop up markets and make stocks, bonds and real estate rise in price -- while also simultaneously hammering commodities to mask the inflationary impact of their money printing from the masses -- it’s difficult to imagine that “they” will allow markets to ever fall again.

This is known as the “central bank put”: whenever the markets begin to teeter, the central banks will step in to prop/nudge/cajole the markets back towards the “correct” direction, which is always: Up!

It’s easy in retrospect to see how the central banks have become caught in this trap of their own making, where they're now responsible for supporting all the markets all the time.

NASA is working hard to stop relying on Russian rocket engines, as said by Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

This is a result of the new sanctions on Russia announced by the Trump administration on August 8th. The sanctions were imposed due to the alleged use of chemical weapons against Russian ex-intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the UK city of Salisbury in March.

Gary Christenson wrote this article for Miles Franklin. The addictive behaviors of drug addicts are similar to the actions of a modern “Keynesian” economy addicted to “money printing” by central banks and fractional reserve banking.

The Lira and Turkish stocks are sliding notably after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned that Washington is preparing more sanctions for Turkey due to the lack of progress on the release of Pastor Brunson.

Following a Turkish court's refusal yesterday to release American pastor Andrew Brunson, Mnuchin warned at a White House cabinet meeting today that U.S. has more sanctions prepared for Turkey if Brunson isn't quickly released.

Additionally, as Bloomberg reports, President Donald Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday that Turkey hasn’t turned out to be a great friend to the U.S., and he complained that his administration secured the release of a Turkish citizen from an unnamed country on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s behalf.

“We got somebody out for him,” Trump said, from “some place,” but Turkey continues to hold pastor Andrew Brunson. It’s “not right” and a “terrible thing,” he said.

According to the Islamist Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit quoted by Ahvalnews, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an is ready for war.

“The secret to successful states is their readiness for war. We are ready with everything we have,” said Erdo?an on Monday in a meeting with ambassadors in Ankara.

According to reports, the US has instrumented a currency war targeted against the Turkish lira.

“Erdo?an’s comments come as the Turkish currency continues to slide against the U.S. dollar following Washington’s announcement of sanctions against Ankara this month”. Ahvalnews

The decline is indicated in the chart below (Bloomberg), from 4.85 Lira to the dollar on July 16 to approximately 5.94 Lira to the dollar on August 16.

Between 2011 and 2016, fracked oil and gas wells in the U.S. pumped out record-breaking amounts of wastewater, which is laced with toxic and radioactive materials, a new Duke University study concludes. The amount of wastewater from fracking rose 1,440 percent during that period.

Over the same time, the total amount of water used for fracking rose roughly half as much, 770 percent, according to the paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

"Previous studies suggested hydraulic fracturing does not use significantly more water than other energy sources, but those findings were based only on aggregated data from the early years of fracking," Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, said in a statement. "After more than a decade of fracking operation, we now have more years of data to draw upon from multiple verifiable sources."

The researchers predict that spike in water use will continue to climb.

Hysteria reigned supreme after the first round of US sanctions were reinstated against Iran over the past week. War scenarios abound, and yet the key aspect of the economic war unleashed by the Trump administration has been overlooked: Iran is a major piece in a much larger chessboard.

The US sanctions offensive, launched after Washington’s unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, should be interpreted as an advance gambit in the New Great Game at whose center lies China’s New Silk Road – arguably the most important infrastructure project of the 21st century — and overall Eurasia integration.

The Trump administration’s maneuvers are a testament to how China’s New Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), threaten the US establishment.

Starting August 23, an additional $16 billion dollars of exports from China to the U.S. will be subject to a 25% tariff, as the trade war between the two nations continues unabated. In preparation for these tariffs, China signaled that it would impose an equivalent amount of tariffs on U.S. imports. With both sides far apart, China has searched for alternative strategies to force a resolution of the deteriorating trade situation.

The Yuan is surging, alongside S&P futures, while the Japanese Yen has erased its gains and US Treasury futures are slumping on a Bloomberg report that China's Vice Commerce Minister, Wang Shouwen, will lead a delegation to the U.S. in late August, the Ministry of Commerce says on website, adding that the visit comes at the invitation of the US.

Additionally, China reiterates that it opposes unilateralism and trade protectionism, and won’t accept any unilateral trade restriction measures. It also "welcomes communications and dialogue on the basis of equality and integrity."

The news is quickly being interpreted by the market as a possible thaw in the trade war tit-for-tat, and has sent H-shares sharply higher, while S&P futures jumped 10 points:

As governments raise taxes to cope with their unending spending habits, people are increasingly being forced to supplement their own income with loans. And according to most financial experts, this debt problem is so big that it will usher in a global economic collapse of epic proportions.

According to the Institute of International Finance’s latest Global Debt Monitor, the amount of debt held in the world rose by the biggest amount in two years during the first quarter of 2018. It grew by $8 trillion to hit a new all-time high of $247 trillion, up from $238 trillion as of December 31, 2017. And that’s up by $30 trillion from the end of 2016.

These excuses for unstable systems and disasters stem from a propaganda ploy developed by DARPA called “Linchpin Theory.” It is the widely promoted idea that human systems collapse “naturally” when they become “too complex,” and all it takes to start this collapse in motion is a single well placed “linchpin” pulled at the right moment. In other words, DARPA wants you to believe that there is no such thing as organized conspiracy and that all disasters are caused by chance.

Russia, Iran, China, and now Turkey are in the same boat, as all have become the target of US sanctions. But none of those nations has bowed under the pressure.

With Samsung pushing the envelope on the price of flagship smartphones with its $1,250 512GB Galaxy Note 9, it's only a matter of time before we have a $2,000 iPhone.

US tech giant Apple became the first company to reach an historic $1 trillion in market capitalization recently, but it still doesn’t like paying more taxes, according to recent reports.

Apple has been at odds with California’s Santa Clara County over the value of its property. As the local newspaper San Francisco Chronicle reports, Apple evaluates a cluster of properties around its brand-new Apple Park at just $200. Santa Clara County's tax assessor says the properties are worth $1 billion.

In California, businesses and individuals pay a property tax. It is calculated according to the value of the land and the buildings on it.