Venezuela's currency controls including its fixed exchange rate are among the most controversial of Chavez-era policies. Under former president Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's currency was fixed, and exchange controls were imposed. The initial objective of Chavez's currency policies was to stem capital flight amid the 2002-03 oil strikes, but they are now a well established part of the government's economic policy; particularly aimed at controlling inflation and sheltering domestic industries, among other goals.

It's important to note that this isn't the first time Venezuela has seen a fixed exchange rate. After coming off the gold standard in 1930, Venezuela's currency was fixed. Until 1983, Venezuela's currency was widely perceived as among the most stable in the region. From 1983-89, the country had a multiple exchange rate regime, with room for a parallel exchange market. However, by the time controls were lifted in 1989 there was around a 132% difference between the official and parallel rates.

Argentina appears powerless in the face of the hemorrhage of the peso, as the central bank reported Thursday it had burned through $2.1 billion in reserves in January alone.

The government is struggling to beat back a mounting rush into dollars that has stoked 26 percent inflation despite price controls on many items and pressure on businesses to avoid price increases.

Foreign reserves, crucial to service foreign debts and pay for needed imports like fuels, have tumbled from $52 billion at the beginning of 2011 to $28.5 billion as of January 30, according to Central Bank data.

Just in case you had any lingering doubt about how hopelessly screwed the world's monetary and financial system really is, all you have to do is learn that in a series of ceremonies (because that is so appropriate with a record number Americans on food stamps) celebrating Ben Bernanke in recent days incoming Fed head Janet Yellen likened Bernanke to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the wise, experienced Jedi Knight mentor to his protégé Luke Skywalker in Star Wars movies.

There's nothing that makes you feel more warm and fuzzy inside than the recognition that the soon to be most powerful person in the world thinks that printing trillions of dollars and giving it to criminals at zero interest qualifies as attributes of a intergalactic Jedi Master.

On the flip-side, this right here is what 95% of Americans think of Bernanke and his criminal cartel.

© Skynews
Hogan apologised to his victim's family before he died

A man is executed in Oklahoma by a lethal injection that includes a drug used to euthanise animals and leaves the "body burning"

Oklahoma has executed an inmate with a lethal injection of a drug that is usually used to euthanise animals.

The drug has sparked controversy over pain the prisoner may suffer while dying.

Kenneth Hogan, 52, admitted stabbing 21-year-old friend Lisa Stanley in 1988, but said he did so in self-defence after she lunged at him with a knife.

Prosecutors said Hogan stabbed the woman more than 25 times in the back, neck and chest, then knocked over several objects in her Oklahoma City apartment to make it appear as though she had been robbed.

Hogan finally confessed.

"I am guilty for what I'm here for, and I take full responsibility for my actions," Hogan said in his final statement in the death chamber.

"And to Lisa's family, I say I'm sorry that I can't undo it.

"And I'm sorry to my family for all the pain I've caused," he said.

DONG ENERGY, Denmark's biggest utility, needs capital. For a long time, the state-controlled power producer's plans to sell a 19% stake to Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, alongside smaller sales to two pension funds, flew under the radar. But this week, the plans suddenly erupted into a public controversy that nearly brought down the left-leaning government. The sale had been approved - but it cost the ruling coalition the left-wing Socialist People's Party, which left the government. (It said it will still support the government from outside.)

Denmark's centre-right won three elections in a row until 2011. Then Helle Thorning-Schmidt's (pictured) Social Democrats and allies finally won a small majority, and she assembled a government with the Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People's Party. Danes on the left looked forward to a partial rollback of the centre-right's agenda. This is why they were so surprised to see one of Denmark's state-owned companies raise money from a sale to Goldman Sachs.

Five years into the Obama presidency, the American economy is finally showing some momentum.

The Commerce Department reported on Thursday that the economy grew by 3.2 percent in the final quarter of 2013, echoing the even stronger 4.1 percent pace of expansion in the summer months and providing the White House with a rare bit of good news despite dismal public approval ratings.

But even if 2014 turns out to be what the president called a "breakout year" in his State of the Union address Tuesday, the country will still have a lot of catching up to do before the gains recorded under Mr. Obama match those of his two predecessors in the White House.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it would seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 20-year-old man whom prosecutors have accused of bombing the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 200 others.

"The nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm compel this decision," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a short statement. Read the indictment

The announcement ended months of speculation over the issue. Although Holder has said that he is personally opposed to the death penalty, the bombing was among the worst terrorist attacks in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings.

The decision sets the stage for the biggest federal capital murder case since Timothy Mc­Veigh went on trial for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

This is why the "powers that be"were comfortable with Reagan in the White House


More info at Seth Rosenfeld: Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power

I never liked Ronald Reagan and I couldn't understand how he got elected and how anyone could not fail to see through his obvious bullshit.

But he did have a world class promotion team working for him and he was a good, if "B Level", actor and I've become a little more understanding as I get older.

That said, if there is still anyone out there who thinks Ronald Reagan was anything but Satan's Spawn, please wake the you-know-what up.

Fox News and its owner Rupert Murdoch loves the guy and tries to present him as a statesmen.

He was nothing more or less than a mobbed up piece of self-propelled garbage and the front man for a band of thieves that in the last 43 years has run the country into the ground.

If you make a big show of punishing someone, and when you're done they still don't think they have a behavior problem, you probably picked the wrong punishment. Every parent on earth knows this implicitly - but does the Obama White House finally get it, too, now, after Jamie Dimon's raise?

When the board of JP Morgan Chase gave its blowdried, tirelessly self-regarding CEO a whopping 74 percent raise - after a year in which the Justice Department blasted the bank with $20 billion in sanctions - it was one of those rare instances where Main Street and Wall Street were mostly in agreement.

Everyone from the Financial Times to Forbes.com to the Huffington Post decried the move. The Wall Street pundits mostly thought it was a dumb play by the Chase board from a self-interest perspective, one guaranteed to inspire further investigations by the government. Meanwhile, the non-financial press generally denounced the raise as a moral obscenity, yet another example of the serial coddling of Wall Street's habitually overcompensated executive class.

Both groups were right. But to me the biggest news was how brutal an indictment Jamie's raise was of the Obama/Holder Justice Department, which continues to profoundly misunderstand the mindset of the finance villains they claim to be regulating.

Chase's responses to Holder's record penalties have been hilarious. Their first move was to make sure people outside the penthouse boardroom took on all the pain, laying off 7,500 employees and freezing salaries for the non-CEO class of line employees.

Next, Chase's board members sat down, put their misshapen heads together, considered the impact of this disastrous year of settlements, and decided to respond by more than doubling the take-home pay of the executive in charge, giving Dimon about $20 million in salary and equity.

Millions of consumers who've seen skyrocketing utility bills are likely to see another spike in January and February

First came the deep cold, then sharply higher heating bills.

Bone-chilling temperatures have rattled consumers across the nation since mid-December. Bitter cold is likely to linger over the Northeast and Midwest, and unseasonably low temperatures are forecast for the Southeast, so millions of consumers who've seen skyrocketing utility bills are likely to see another spike in January and February.

The Energy Information Administration predicted that more than 90% of the nation's 116 million homes would have higher heating bills this winter, projecting rises of 2% (for those heating with electricity) to 13% (natural gas). Homes heated with propane were expected to spend 9% more than last year, while those using heating oil were expected to get a 2% price break. Those estimates came in October, before two-decade-low temperatures, rising demand and lower energy stockpiles gripped much of the nation. Revised EIA estimates from earlier this month peg some home heating bills rising as much as 23.5% in the Midwest. But even those estimates may be too low.

"I don't think they factored in the polar vortex or what's happening now,'' says Steve Schork of energy markets tracker The Schork Report, who says extended cold temperatures could push winter utility bills to their highest levels since 2008.