This week Ellie Ismailidou published on Market Watch that over $24 billion were pulled from equity funds in the month of January alone. Supposedly, this remarkable pull-out comes as a response to the dramatic drop in oil prices (which despite Obama’s beliefs is not inherently a good thing) causing the financial markets to plunge so far in 2016.
For those who do not actively follow the economy, this sign simply means that investors are anticipating the worst to happen, and thus have decided to get rid of some of their potential risk (keep in mind however, that $24 billion is a relatively small amount when compared to how investors have previously unloaded risk).
Additionally, a professor at Kent State is under investigation by the FBI for being a recruiter for the Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS or ISIL. The professor has repeatedly expressed his hatred for supporters of Israeli, and was quoted as writing in an open letter, “Jihad until victory!” The professor continues to hold his position at the college, and receives a taxpayer-subsidized salary.
Also, a college student from the University of Virginia was detained in Pyongyang, North Korea for supposedly wanting to “destroy the country’s unity.” 3500 people are being held hostage in Iraq by ISIS. Iran is now a year away from producing an Atomic weapon.
Amazingly, Donald Trump was able to steal the attention of the nation once again, in the face of all the previously enumerated stories that should’ve grasped the attention of the media. On Tuesday, January 19th, Sarah Palin publicly announced her endorsement for Donald Trump. Palin’s speech was the subject of every major news program and every late night talk show. Seemingly everyone wanted to get in on the excitement of publicly humiliating the former governor (I’m not saying it wasn’t warranted).
If one considers that the announcement came just 13 days before the Iowa caucus, the choice by Trump to have Palin speak at this particular time seems unbelievably strategic. Perhaps it is possible that Trump needed a last minute push of media attention going into the Iowa caucuses, and as such he needed a powerful voice with both political pull and entertainment value.
After Trump has been accused of not being conservative enough, or what the Tea Party would call a RINO (Republican in name only), it makes a lot of political sense to have Sarah Palin, a well known Tea Party activist and grassroots conservative, endorse him on the campaign trail. Perhaps this media attention is enough to allow Trump to grasp a victory in Iowa. If so, this subject would be the most alarming and frightening piece of news in this article.
