January 1, BREAKING: Up to 4,000 US Troops Get Ready for Iraq

This Day in History | 1863

Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.

Happy New Year Middle Americans. 

We were planning on just completing the final list of the biggest stories of 2019 today, but this situation in Iraq appears to be very serious. More American troops are headed to Iraq to help secure the situation.  Read more about it below. 

And as promised the complete list is below. It might not be the sexiest story, but the fact that the US economy has been growing for 10 years makes it the most significant story, not just from 2019, but from the last decade. Think about where this country was 10 years ago. The economy was in the gutter, just starting to recover from the Great Recession. Now its roaring. But it was also roaring in 1920.  We are seeing references to the roaring 20’s all over the place.  So what will happen between 2020-2029?  

Read all about it

– Fraser Dixon

BREAKING: Up to 4,000 US Troops Could Deploy to Middle East Amid Baghdad Unrest

(Fox News) – The U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division’s alert brigade has been issued orders to deploy rapidly to Kuwait amid the unrest in Baghdad, three U.S. defense officials told Fox News on Tuesday.

At least 750 paratroopers are set to deploy to the region immediately, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in a statement.

The alert brigade of roughly 4,000 paratroopers, known as the DRB — the Deployment Ready Brigade — has been told to prepare for a possible deployment in the days ahead after hundreds of Iranian-backed militiamen tried to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad Tuesday.

Within that alert brigade, three rifle battalions had a certain alert sequence, 18 hours, 36 hours and 54 hours for the third. The entire brigade had a 96-hour alert window to deploy.

Read more here

The 7 Biggest Stories of 2019

#7) The US Women’s National Soccer Team and Equal Pay Push 

#6) Internet Censorship

#5) Hurricane Dorian Slams the Bahamas, Barely Misses US

#4) The Streaming Wars Heat Up

#3) Investigating the Investigators

#2)  Russia, Ukraine & Impeachment

#1) The Economy 

As 2010s Conclude, Investors Have Enjoyed Bull Market for the Ages — but Many Americans Have Been Left Out

(Washington Post) – The U.S. stock market concluded the decade in record territory, a boom that emerged from the wreckage of the financial crisis but left on the sidelines the millions of Americans without money to invest.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which tracks the biggest American companies, has registered a total return of about 256 percent, or 13.5 percent annually, since the beginning of 2010, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at the S&P Dow Jones Indices. That compares with an average annual total return, including dividends, of 10.3 percent since the 1920s, he said.

That means someone who had $10,000 in the S&P 500 at the start of the decade has ended it with close to $36,000. In 2019 alone, investors saw a total return of more than 31 percent.

The stock market has contributed to a high degree of economic satisfaction across the country, on top of a very low unemployment rate and modest but steady economic growth, surveys show. People who got into the market early in the decade, or even joined more lately, will have seen their retirement assets, college savings and other investments increase measurably.

Read more here