Around $6 trillion of fake US Treasury bonds and other securities in Switzerland have been seized under ‘Operation Vulcanica’, a year-long joint operation launched by Italian, Swiss and the US authorities.

Congressman and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has issued a statement strongly condemning Gene Sperling's call for a global minimum tax. Sperling is President Obama's director of the National Economic Council. See comments below:

What would happen if the Federal Reserve was shut down permanently? That is a question that CNBC asked recently, but unfortunately most Americans don’t really think about the Fed much. Most Americans are content with believing that the Federal Reserve is just another stuffy government agency that sets our interest rates and that is watching out for the best interests of the American people. But that is not the case at all.

Over the past four years, the slow creep of government into the private sector has become a gallop. Unfortunately, a high level of structural unemployment is the unintended consequence of social engineering, picking winners, over-taxing and over-regulating every aspect of the business process.

If the global economy is not heading for a recession, then why is global shipping slowing down so dramatically? Many economists believe that measures of global shipping such as the Baltic Dry Index are leading economic indicators.