Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, February 05, 2015
Argentina's President Fends Off Challenges from the Intelligence Service / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced Jan. 26 that she would reform her country's civilian intelligence organization, the Intelligence Secretariat (SI). Soon after, the office of the president said it would submit a draft law to reform the SI to the Senate on Feb. 3. In addition to changing the organization's name to the Federal Intelligence Agency, the reform is expected to significantly weaken the SI by limiting its ability to gather signals intelligence, revealing a wider political dispute.
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Thursday, February 05, 2015
Greece Have A Little Faith In Blotto / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
What, Greece again? Sorry!! But I see a lot of things flash by that make me want to say something. Today it’s the alleged 180 that Syriza made on debt reduction, before that it was their alleged kow-towing to Brussels on Russia sanctions, and tomorrow it’ll be something else again. It’s all media formatted bite-size and pre-chewed chunks, but the Greece-Troika stand-off is anything but.
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Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Greece - Why There’s No Political Fix / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Tuesday’s markets really liked hearing that Greece’s new “radical-left” leaders had, once in office, backpedalled on their demand for debt restructuring. Now they apparently just want the country’s unmanageable debt to be rescheduled. See Hopes for Greek Debt Deal Rise After Athens Softens Tone.
This, of course, is just semantics. Either a big chunk of Greece’s debt somehow goes away or its economy implodes, so whatever they call the deal it will have to amount to a massive haircut if it’s to prevent a default in 2015.
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Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Australia Coming Apart at the Seams, Government on the Brink of Collapse / Politics / Austrailia
With the huge spotlight on Europe, Greece, the US Dollar, Canada, Switzerland, and China, it's easy to lose track of major things outside of mainstream attention.
Like what? Like Australia.
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Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Greece and the Bravado of Borrowers / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2015
Last week a scene unfolded in Athens, largely unnoticed by American eyes, that provided all the visual and metaphorical symbols needed to define the current state of the global economy. Hollywood's best screenwriters couldn't have laid it out any better.
Tiring of being told by self-righteous foreigners to pay for past borrowing with current austerity, the Greek people had just elected the most radically left-wing government in recent memory, whose stated goal was to tell their creditors that they were not going to take it anymore. The leadership of the victorious Syriza Party, a collection of mostly young Marxist and Trotskyite academics, had promised the Greek people a clean break from the past and an end to years of economic malaise. Although their plan seemed fundamentally contradictory (telling foreign creditors to butt out even while courting more aid), Syriza nonetheless appealed to a frustrated electorate through their dynamism and optimism.
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Greece - Is It Socialism or Just Failure? / Politics / Social Issues
It’s all still about Greece, and that makes sense, if nothing else Syriza is a breath if not a tornado of fresh air. But those too pass. The question at the end remains: did anything really change? It’s quite possible, don’t get me wrong, but Tsipras and Vanoufakis are busy looking out for the people who voted for them, not the rest of the Europe, or the world for that matter. And neither should they.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
Delusional America / Politics / US Politics
Robert Parry is one of my favorite columnists. He is truthful, has a sense of justice, and delivers a firm punch. He used to be a “mainstream journalist,” like me, but we were too truthful for them. They kicked us out.
I can’t say Parry has always been one of my favorite journalists. During the 1980s he spent a lot of time on Reagan’s case. Having been on corporate boards, I know that CEOs seldom know everything that is going on in the company. There are just too many people and too many programs representing too many agendas. For presidents of countries with governments as large as the US government, there is far more going on than a president has time to learn about even if he could get accurate information.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
U.S. Escalation in Ukraine Is Illegitimate and Will Make Matters Worse / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at Brookings, writes “The West, including the United States, needs to get serious about assisting Ukraine if it does not wish to see the situation deteriorate further. That means committing real money now to aid Ukraine’s defense.”
He’s dead wrong. No matter who is in the right or wrong in Ukraine, the U.S. shouldn’t intervene further. It shouldn’t have intervened in the first place.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
How to Start a Nuclear War / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
Eric Margolis writes: The United States has just made an exceptionally dangerous, even reckless decision over Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, warns it may lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Rule number one of geopolitics: nuclear-armed powers must never, ever fight.
Yet Washington just announced that by spring, it will deploy unspecified numbers of military “trainers” to Ukraine to help build Kiev’s ramshackle national guard. Also being sent are significant numbers of US special heavy, mine resistant armored vehicles that have been widely used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US and Poland are currently covertly supplying Ukraine with some weapons.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
Greece vs Wall Street / Politics / Euro-Zone
On the one hand, I’ve written so much about Greece lately I fear I’m reaching overkill. On the other hand, there’s so much going on with Greece, and so fast, that I wouldn’t know here to begin. Moreover, I’m thinking and trying to figure what is what and what is actually happening so much it’s hard to stay focused for more than a short while before something else happens again and it all starts all over. And I’m thinking it must feel that way for the Syriza guys as well.
One thing I do increasingly ponder is that it gets ever harder to see the eurozone survive. In its present shape and form, that is. Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t, is an expression I’ve used before. It’s like this big experiment that a bunch of power hungry Europeans really get off on, that now all of a sudden is confronted with the democracy they all only thought existed in books of history anymore.
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Friday, January 30, 2015
An Often Overlooked Predator: State Governments and Income Taxes / Politics / Taxes
Nick Giambruno writes: International Man is all about making the most of your personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world. To do this, by definition, you must minimize the amount of money any government takes from you.
Unlike every other country in the world, the US successfully taxes its nonresident citizens on their global income. This means Americans living abroad have to not only deal with the tax system in the foreign country in which they live, but also with the multiple layers of tax bureaucracy from the US. It’s a uniquely American burden.
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Friday, January 30, 2015
Socialism Is Like a Nude Beach - Sounds Like a Great Idea Until You Get There / Politics / Social Issues
Jared Dillian writes: I’ve been following the activities of Syriza for a long time. They started putting up big numbers in the polls in Greece three or four years ago.
Syriza has a message that’s very popular with Greeks: Screw Germany. The word they use to describe what’s happened to Greece during the period of time since the debt crisis is “humiliation.”
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
Ron Paul on U.S. Fed, Central Bankers Monetary Psychopaths / Politics / Central Banks
Over the last 100 years the Fed has had many mandates and policy changes in its pursuit of becoming the chief central economic planner for the United States. Not only has it pursued this utopian dream of planning the US economy and financing every boondoggle conceivable in the welfare/warfare state, it has become the manipulator of the premier world reserve currency.
As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke explained to me, the once profoundly successful world currency – gold – was no longer money. This meant that he believed, and the world has accepted, the fiat dollar as the most important currency of the world, and the US has the privilege and responsibility for managing it. He might even believe, along with his Fed colleagues, both past and present, that the fiat dollar will replace gold for millennia to come. I remain unconvinced.
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
EU Threatens Russia, Greece Pivots to Russia as War in Ukraine Intensifies / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
EU foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels today to discuss imposing further sanctions on Russia following an upsurge in fighting in east Ukraine.
A new poll shows 80 percent of Russians would give up Western food for a stronger economy. Reuters
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
Exploring the Clash Within Civilizations - Mind the Gap / Politics / Religion
Jay Ogilvy writes: The Charlie Hebdo attack and its aftermath in the streets and in the press tempt one to dust off Samuel Huntington's 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Despite the criticisms he provoked with that book and his earlier 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, recent events would seem to be proving him prescient.
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
Doomsday Clock. There is no safe place. No where to hide! / Politics / Social Issues
If I criticize the U.S. government, I am put on a "watch list". If I quote an Israeli, I am attacked by anti-Zionists. If I defend the Palestinians, I am an anti-Semitic. If I defend the police, I am considered an apologist of police brutality. If I defend unarmed black kids shot by copes, I am an enemy of the police. If I defend the rights of Islamists, I am a promoter of "terrorism". If I quote the Pope, I am the target of anti-clerics in Europe. If I quote a "New Atheist", I am a spokesman for Satan. If I propose gun regulation, I will be threatened by NRA people. If I defend the right to own and carry guns, I will be labeled a "2nd Amen" fanatic by liberals. If I agree with Ron Paul, I am an anarchist. If I agree with Bernie Sanders, I am a communist. If I say Vladimir Putin is a tyrant, I am considered brainwashed by Western propaganda. If I claim Putin never invaded Ukraine, I am an anti-American. If I warn of a market collapse and Great Great Depression, I am a Cassandra. If I predict the DOW hitting 20,000 in four months, I am a paid agent for Wall Street. If I claim Charlie Hedbro promoted racism, I am an enemy of free speech. If I defend free speech, I am told to shut-up. If I decide to take to the North Woods until the wars spend themselves, I am an escapist. If I jump into the morass and voice one opinion about one topic...well...considering what I know and have just outlined...I would be a damn fool, wouldn't I!
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Davos Man Fears Social Instability Due to Inequality and Injustice / Politics / Social Issues
"No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order."
September 30, 1934
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015
The Age of Intervention Continues / Politics / Government Intervention
By Dennis Miller
One key perk to working alongside investing seers is the opportunity to ask them the big questions. Wondering what lies ahead, I asked Casey Research Chief Economist Bud Conrad and technical analyst Dominick Graziano to share their views on what investors should expect in 2015.
These two gentlemen blow me away. Bud can make big-picture forecasts with uncanny accuracy. Dominick is a pure trader, relying on historical charts and graphs and seeing relationships in a way I had never before experienced. He is totally unemotional in his approach and makes decisions based on what the charts tell him. Like Bud, Dominick has made so many calls ahead of time I’ve stopped keeping track.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015
The Fed and ECB Take the West back to when the Rich Owned Everything / Politics / Social Issues
When the former Goldman Sachs executive who runs the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that he was going to print 720 billion euros annually with which to purchase bad debts from the politically connected big banks, the euro sank and the stock market and Swiss france shot up. As in the US, quantitative easing (QE) serves to enrich the already rich. It has no other purpose.
The well-heeled financial institutions that bought up the troubled sovereign debt of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain at low prices will now sell the bonds to the ECB for high prices. And despite depression level unemployment in most of Europe and austerity imposed on citizens, the stock market rose in anticipation that much of the 60 billion new euros that will be created each month will find its way into equity prices. Liquidity fuels the stock market.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Washington's War on Russia / Politics / GeoPolitics
Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.
The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk status.
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