Though it's as yet uncertain whether the Pentagon is actually going to execute the plan, Trump is mulling keeping a small US troop contingency in Syria in order to "secure the oil".

The president said at a cabinet meeting Monday: “I always said if you’re going in, keep the oil,” the WSJ reported. “We’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, so that they have some cash flow. Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

In response, former special presidential anti-ISIL envoy Brett McGurk, who served under both the Obama and Trump administrations, stated the obvious: “Oil, like it or not, is owned by the Syrian state,” he said Monday. “Maybe there are new lawyers, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets."

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, President Trump bragged about his efforts to try to get the US “out of wars,” then warned that “we may have to get in wars, too. OK?“

Trump continued on talking about how ready the US is for a war with Iran, and how Iran will get hit “like they’ve never been hit before.” The implication is clear that Trump is nominally ending wars, but that America’s hawks will get fresh, new wars to replace them.

That’s likely a rather cynical political ploy, given how much political heat the administration is under for appearing to almost end the Syrian War. That war may not be ending, but offering to trade it for a much bigger Iran War would probably placate many critics.

It’s likely also related to Trump’s interest in portraying himself as generally tough and the best at war. That, and his fondness for threatening Iran with unprecedented horrors seem destined to keep threatening an Iran War forever a possibility.

So much for Deutsche Bank's once legendary fixed income division being insulated from the unprecedented layoffs sweeping across the bank.

Months after unveiling that double-digit percent of its equity-linked employees will be let go as part of an ongoing restructuring that has left the largest German bank looking like a pale shadow of its former self, Bloomberg reports that Deutsche Bank is now also considering "substantial cuts" to the unit that trades interest-rate securities, a division that survived unscathed the mass layoffs announced as part of the lender’s sweeping revamp in July.

CEO Christian Sewing has concluded that it’s possible to cut enough of the associated technology costs to outweigh the loss in revenue, Bloomberg sources report, adding that the bank will likely cut a low double-digit percentage of jobs at the business.

In an unrelated case before the WTO that dates back to the Obama era and has nothing to do with the US-China trade beef, Beijing is seeking $2.4 billion in retaliatory sanctions against the US for non-compliance with a WTO ruling, Reuters reports.

The reported war games are being held a few months after the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between Russia and the US, which was prompted by Washington’s move to withdraw from the accord on 2 August.

NATO allies are holding secret military exercises in Germany, which aim to drill a nuclear war scenario, the German newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports.

During the drills, codenamed “Steadfast Noon”, the military personnel utilise warplanes which could be equipped with nuclear weapons in the event of a war.

Authored by Doug Bandow via The American Conservative blog,

Recently Ukraine has been thrown into the spotlight as Democrats gear up to impeach President Donald Trump. More important, though, is its role in damaging America’s relations with Russia, which has resulted in a mini-Cold War that the U.S. needs to end.

In 2014, Washington and European governments backed a street putsch against the elected, though highly corrupt, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. The Putin government responded by annexing Crimea and backing separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. Washington and Brussels imposed economic sanctions on Russia and provided military aid to Kiev.

Authored by 'Spengler' via The Asia Times,

Beijing’s biggest support package ever for President Erdogan arrives at a critical time...

Despite the US threat to “obliterate and destroy” Turkey’s economy, the Turkish lira and Turkish interest rates barely have budged in the past week (Turkish stocks, especially banks, are down sharply, in part due to the US criminal charges against Halkbank for aiding Iran sanctions violations). That is remarkable given the fragility of Turkey’s currency earlier in 2019. Between February and May, the Turkish lira fell from 5.2 to the US dollar to 6.2 in response to US sanctions, before recovering to 5.88 to the dollar today. The Turkish central bank leaned on Turkish banks to refrain from offering liquidity to short-sellers, but Turkish money markets remained orderly.

Russia imposed the Astana process instead of Geneva for peace talks, it offered countries to use their local currencies for commerce rather than the dollar, and it is dealing pragmatically with Iran and Saudi Arabia, and with Assad and Erdogan. The Americans, by their recklessness, showed themselves incapable of diplomacy.

Moscow mediated between the Syrian Kurds and the central government in Damascus even when these had been under US control for years. Putin behaved wisely with Israel even when he accused Tel Aviv of provoking the killing of his officers, and stayed relatively neutral in relation to the Iran-Israel struggle.

On the other hand, Tel Aviv never thought Syria would be reunited. Today Damascus has armed drones, precision and cruise missiles from Iran, supersonic anti-ship Russian missiles- and has survived the destruction of its infrastructure and so many years of war.

Via AlmasdarNews.com,

The U.S. Armed Forces are not withdrawing from the eastern Euphrates River Valley region of Deir Ezzor or its plethora of oil fields, a military source in Damascus told Al-Masdar News.

According to the source, the U.S. Armed Forces won’t withdraw from these areas because of Iran’s presence in eastern Syria and the reality that Damascus would again have access to Deir Ezzor’s vital oil fields.

He would add the United States' two largest military bases in Syria are in the east near some of the country’s largest oil fields like Al-Omar.

Damascus has wanted the Al-Omar and Conoco oil fields to be returned to their government; however, with the U.S.’ large military presence in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, they have found themselves blocked from these critical petrol supplies.

State Department investigators probing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state discovered nearly 600 security incidents that violated agency policy, according to a report the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained.

The investigation, conducted by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, found 38 individuals were culpable for 91 security violations. Another 497 violations were found, but no individuals were found culpable in those incidents.

The investigation concluded Sept. 6, and the report was issued Sept. 13.

The investigation sought to determine if the exchange of emails on Clinton’s server “represented failure to properly safeguard classified information” and whether any individuals at State were culpable for any of the failures. (RELATED: State Department Reboots Hillary Clinton Email Probe)

Update (1415ET): Boeing shares have accelerated lower as more details of the 'smoking gun' messages comes out.

A Boeing test pilot complained in one of the messages that a flight control system, known as MCAS, was difficult to control, according to the messages, obtained by NBC News.

“It’s running rampant in the sim on me”, the pilot, Mark Forkner, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot, said in 2016 to a colleague, referring to the simulator, according to the transcript. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”

His colleague replied that they would have to update the description of the system.

“So I basically lied to regulators (unknowingly),” read Forkner’s reply. Forkner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

And now Southwest Pilots Union has come out swinging, confirming that Mark Forkner is a Southwest aviator and blasting Boeing for "misleading" the FAA, saying that Boeing's "fraud" put "the flying public at risk."

For months it has been reported, here and elsewhere, that Hunter Biden 'made $50,000 per month sitting on the board Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.'

The truth behind payments to Biden is much more complicated, as revealed by the Daily Caller's Andrew Kerr who reviewed bank records submitted in an unrelated criminal case involving Biden's friend and business partner, Devon Archer in which Archer was found guilty of defrauding an American Indian Tribe (a conviction which was later overturned).

So - Burisma did not directly pay Hunter, although the firm's chairman, Alan Apter told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that Biden (and Archer) would receive a salary for their independent directorship.

Watch out! At this very moment, professional economists of all stripes are making plans on your behalf. They’re dreaming and scheming new and innovative ways to spend your money long before you’ve earned it.

While you’re busy at the gristmill, grinding away for clients and customers, claims are being laid upon your life. Your future earnings are being directed to boondoggles galore. Yet these claims are in addition to everything Washington’s already signed you up for.

The reality is the growth of federal debt has been out of control for decades. The solution that’s always repeated for reeling this back is that, somehow, the economy will grow its way out of it. This has yet to transpire despite a variety of policies over the years that have generally involved borrowing money from the future and spending it today.

By now, you should already know that Baltimore City is imploding on itself. The housing market has stalled, millennials are trapped in overpriced rowhomes, and widespread violent crime has taken over the region.

The deteriorating situation in Baltimore is nothing new. It started in the late 1950s when deindustrialization began, and white flight of the 1960s/70s/80s sent hundreds of thousands of Baltimoreans packing their bags for the suburbs. From the late 1950s to let's say today, the city's population has collapsed from 960,000 to around 600,000.

The city is a hollow out shell of something that was great, and also is an accurate depiction of our country at the moment.

Violent crime in the city spiked during the 1980s and surged even more during the crack epidemic of the 1990s. But a revival was in the making by the mid-2000s (violent crime dipped and a housing boom began), it was the millennials, who picked up the broken baton and wanted to revive Baltimore.

Ever since the new round of 'tanker wars' began in Strait of Hormuz in mid-June with a mysterious mine attack on multiple tankers, one involving a Japanese-owned ship, Tokyo has reportedly mulled sending a Japanese defense force to the area to help protect vital shipping lanes.

In a rare move, the pacifist nation appears ready to pull the trigger, as FT reports, citing chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, who indicated that "the government was planning to deploy forces in a region where a Japanese tanker, the Kokuka Courageous, was recently attacked with a limpet mine."