A report published Tuesday by a British newspaper sent shockwaves across the world. The Independent story, entitled "The demise of the dollar," claimed that several key governments around the world were conspiring in secret meetings to stop trading oil in U.S. federal reserve notes.

Switzerland overtook the United States as the most competitive economy in the world, according to the global competitiveness index released this week by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The statist rulers of the so-called “BRICS” countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — have been subtly calling for an end to the U.S. dollar’s status as the world reserve currency for years. Now, they are making more moves to turn that rhetoric into reality, proposing a jointly controlled “development” bank and working to sideline America’s already-troubled Federal Reserve Notes in trade by relying more heavily on their own fiat currencies.

As the Federal Reserve came under increasing scrutiny by outraged lawmakers and the public in recent years, it hired a lobbyist to defend its controversial secrecy and produced propaganda-filled comic books aimed at young children. It even sought to develop a tool to spy on concerned citizens over the Internet.

As scrutiny of the Federal Reserve System and public outrage over its actions continue to build, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are working on proposals that would supposedly rein in the Fed or at least change the way it operates. And a new measure aims to tackle some of the issues head on.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers this week that the government’s borrowing was at “clearly unsustainable” levels, warning that its wild budget deficits increase the possibility of a sudden fiscal crisis which is creeping “ever closer.” The central bank chief also said Washington’s exploding debts would crowd out private-sector investment with damaging consequences for the economy.

Billionaire investor George Soros, infamous for his lavish funding of big-government and globalist causes, dropped several bombshells during a recent interview with Newsweek including a bold forecast of potential Western economic collapse, massive civil unrest, and the end of what he likes to paint as the “free market.” He also sees the emergence of one of the most dangerous periods in modern history, describing it as a time of “evil.”

The latest international Index of Economic Freedom revealed that the economy of the United States lost even more liberty for a fourth consecutive year, dropping from ninth to tenth place under the Obama administration and solidifying its designation as “mostly free” — earned in 2009, down from “free” the year before that.

American taxpayers are sending over $100 million per year to a bloated international bureaucracy that has morphed into a “cartel enforcer” for welfare-state politicians seeking to prevent tax competition, according to a new study.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) now predicts that the size of China’s economy will surpass America’s by 2016, far earlier than most mainstream economists have been forecasting. Some analysts ridiculed the Fund’s prediction, but others warned that it could happen even sooner.