USA - Hospitals beg fired unvaxed nurses to come back amid staffing shortages. A certain hospital system in Cleveland is paying RNs upwards of $2,000 per 12-hour shift now, due to similar staffing issues. Who’d have thought a vaccine mandate would have such an adverse effect on staffing…

ISRAEL - The Israeli military has reportedly drawn up several scenarios to strike Iranian targets, but warned the government that the outcomes of such actions – or their effects on Tehran’s nuclear program – were difficult to predict. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was allocated some nine billion shekels ($2.9 billion) to prepare for a possible attack on Iran, Haaretz reported on Wednesday. To this end, the IDF has reportedly acquired advanced weapons, run air force training exercises and selected new strike targets in recent months. Meanwhile, the IDF is apparently working to strengthen defense ties with Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece and some Gulf states, through intelligence-gathering and joint counter-terrorism operations. The officials reportedly said this would “grant greater legitimacy” to potential strikes against Iran.

RUSSIA - As the US and Russia are preparing to hold security talks in January, Russian officials continue to criticize Washington’s military posture. On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov accused the US of lowering the threshold for the possible use of nuclear weapons. "We in Moscow are committed to raising the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. An opposite trend has been seen in the United States over the recent years, with the means for nuclear destruction appearing to be perceived more and more as a battlefield weapon. This is a dangerous trend," Ryabkov said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. Ryabkov warned the US attitude towards nuclear weapons risks leading to an incident similar to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, something he said must not happen. Russian leaders have repeatedly warned the US against deploying missiles to Ukraine that could target Moscow and are seeking guarantees that Washington would refrain from such a provocation.

USA - US President Joe Biden has signed into law a $768 billion defense package. It represents an overall increase in military spending and includes $300 million to be set aside for security initiatives related to Moscow and Beijing. Biden signed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Monday, marking a $25 billion increase on his original proposal and authorizing a 5% boost in US military spending from 2021. The vast spending package includes $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which, according to supporters in the Senate, will be used to train and equip Ukrainian forces to defend against alleged “Russian aggression.” Another $150 million was earmarked for “Baltic security cooperation” – another project aimed at deterring Moscow – while a larger sum of $4 billion will be spent on the European Defense Initiative, which is intended to bolster Washington’s NATO allies.

JAPAN - As China and Japan continue their long-running spat over contested islands in the East China Sea, Tokyo and Beijing are set to establish a communications line in a bid to improve relations, Japanese defense officials have said. Speaking to reporters on Monday following a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe, Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said the new line was now in the works, stressing the need for dialogue to smooth over outstanding disagreements.

USA - American cattle ranchers, many operating family-owned businesses that have withstood generations, are facing bankruptcy as concentrated corporate power in the meatpacking industry squeezes their profits. In interviews with the New York Times, ranchers said the corporate meatpackers that dominate the beef market — Tyson Foods, Cargill, the National Beef Packing Company, and JBS — are pushing them into insolvency and out of the market entirely. The four meatpacking conglomerates once owned 35 percent of the market. Today, their share of the market stands at 85 percent as presidential administrations and Congress have been unwilling to step in with antitrust maneuvers, once readily used to break up corporate monopolies.

USA - Americans have more money in their pockets than they ever have before. That sounds like really great news, but it isn’t, because the cost of living is rising much faster than our incomes are. In addition, much of the “new wealth” that has been created over the past couple of years has ended up in the hands of the very wealthy, and this has caused the gap between the rich and the poor to grow even wider.

CHINA - Beijing on Tuesday accused the United States of irresponsible and unsafe conduct in space over two "close encounters" between the Chinese space station and satellites operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Tiangong, China's new space station, had to maneuver to avoid colliding with one Starlink satellite in July and with another in October, according to a note submitted by Beijing to the United Nations space agency this month. The note said the incidents "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station".

IRAN - Iran has published and distributed a video of rockets and drones being used to attack Dimona in the Negev Desert. It says the attack took place during the recent 17th Great Prophet drill with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the IRGC Air Force. Tehran says it “simulated a missile and drone attack on the Dimona nuclear center using 16 ballistic missiles and five suicide drones, successfully,” according to its semi-official Fars News Agency. The Jerusalem Post reported on the initial videos on Saturday. Iran has now doubled down with its own reports, bragging about its abilities. This matters more than in the past because Iran is threatening to attack the Dimona nuclear facility, a dangerous escalation in rhetoric. It is also tied to Tehran revealing aspects of its drone program and new technology.

IRAN - The Biden Administration faces a potential confrontation with a longtime rival that is better armed and more hard-line than at any time in its modern history. The bizarre diplomacy, Malley told me, took on unprecedented urgency in November. “We’ve seen Iran’s nuclear program expand, and we’ve seen Tehran become more belligerent, more bellicose in its regional activities,” he said. “They are miscalculating and playing with fire.” The stakes extend well beyond Iran. The world’s nuclear order, already perilous, is now at risk of unravelling. Nuclear pacts hammered out in the last century are dated or fraying, as the US, Russia, and China modernize their arsenals. The Pentagon estimates that China could have at least a thousand bombs by 2030. The talks with Tehran are designed to prevent a tenth nation — the latest was North Korea, in 2006 — from getting the bomb in the Middle East, Israel has had a nuclear weapon since the late nineteen-sixties. Saudi officials have also threatened to pursue the bomb if Iran obtains one. “The Iranian nuclear crisis can’t be viewed in a vacuum,” Kelsey Davenport, of the Arms Control Association, told me. “The broader nuclear order is in chaos.” The collapse of the talks with Iran — Biden’s first major diplomatic foray — would have consequences worldwide.

USA - What would be truly optimistic would be to surrender our dependence on asset bubbles and malinvested debt to prop up an unstable delusion of effortless "wealth." The most sacred liturgy of American culture is to always be positive and optimistic. The greatest taboo is breaking this sacred duty to say something upbeat and optimistic; it is acceptable (barely) to make awkwardly negative observations, but only if you immediately follow up the negative comments with a treacly, double-serving of sugary optimism: for example, inflation is transitory, the economy is growing strongly, wages are rising, etc. And so we sleepwalk into 2022, ill-prepared to deal with reality which most annoyingly continues responding to systemic dynamics no matter how much sugary optimism is spread around.

USA - A US Navy warship with a fully vaccinated crew has paused its deployment in Cuba on Friday following a COVID outbreak. The USS Milwaukee, a littoral combat ship, has been forced to stay in port at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay where it had stopped for a visit. The ship had only been on the water for less than two weeks following its deployment from Mayport, Florida, on December 14 where it was heading into the US Southern Command region. The Navy said in a statement that the ship’s crew is ‘100 percent immunized’ and that all of those who tested positive for COVID-19 have been isolated on the ship away from other crew members.

JAPAN - First reported in Japan's Kyodo news agency on Thursday, unnamed Japanese officials detailed the plan was struck between the US and Japanese militaries, and arranges for a forward operating base to be establish on southwest islands, where the US Marine Corps would rapidly deploy troops. Kyodo details that "Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the US military have drawn up a draft joint operation plan that would enable the setup of an attack base along the Nansei island chain in the country's southwest in the event of a Taiwan contingency, according to Japanese government sources." This comes as the past year has seen Tokyo go from a much more neutral stance on the Taiwan issue to firmly and vocally being in Washington's corner, which has resulted in Beijing lashing out with warnings and threats on multiple occasions.

JAPAN - According to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, an earthquake struck at a depth of 10 km. The earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck the Ryukyu Islands in the southwest of Japan. According to the EMSC, the quake was registered about 232km from the city of Naha, Japan. No damage or casualties have as yet been reported. No tsunami warnings have been issued. Japan is located in a seismically active zone known as the Ring of Fire and regularly suffers from powerful earthquakes.

EUROPE - Two decades ago, a new currency was introduced across Europe. Since then, its limitations as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for diverse economies have been exposed, and its future is as uncertain as the EU’s itself. The euro became legal tender in 12 European Union member states on that day. Gone were the Deutsche mark, the franc, the peseta, the Italian lira – to name but a few – and in came the Frankfurt-controlled euro. It was a day to be celebrated by those who had dreamed of a federal Europe for many years. A few weeks back, the eurozone’s finance ministers gathered in Brussels to toast the 20th anniversary of the currency. There would have been lots of back-slapping and champagne drunk no doubt. But will the euro see its 30th, 40th, or 50th birthday? I am not so sure. Cracks within the EU are widening, and at some point in the future the bloc will have to decide what it wants to be: either a European superstate or a looser collection of independent states. If it fails to make this decision, the EU may well fragment – and the euro will inevitably suffer the same fate.