Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Limits to Employment Participation, and Societal Change / Politics / Employment
By: Submissions
Raymond Matison writes: Ever since the calamitous financial meltdown in 2008, economists, market analysts, and media pundits persistently have envisioned an economic recovery, with an attendant increase in employment. However, critics maintain that such a recovery has never really occurred – prompting the pundit response that ours is a jobless recovery. Recently, President Obama promoted raising the minimum wage, and increasing payment for overtime work, as a means to help provide a higher wage for workers. This effort is good politics, but is not really a sound bureaucratic practice. The direction and future of unemployment is easy to see, as is the future employment participation rate, and the resulting direction of national income. Globally embedded, strategic economic trends are more powerful than presidential edict and the Federal Reserve Bank, and so economics will trump central planning. This article discusses a possible outcome of these trends.
Friday, April 11, 2014
US Moves To Restrict Travelers Taking International Flights / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
The US government is using the Malaysian Airlines flight 370 to tackle the "widespread lack of passport screening in all countries." The US is stepping up their processes. Already each passport of incoming visitors to the US is screened through multiple databases. After flight 370 disappeared, the US has started this process for all outgoing passengers.
"Coupled with this information and the new abilities to act on that information definitely makes air travel a lot safer," according to one government official.
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Thursday, April 10, 2014
Ronald Reagan's Fear Of Energy Dependence On The Evil Empire / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Andrew_McKillop
Destroy the Evil Empire
As a Hollywood B-movie actor Ronald Reagan never made it, but as a New Age politician preaching New Age economics he was so popular that in 1984 Reagan was triumphantly re-elected to a second and last term as US president. From at latest 1982, his first administration beat the drum on Europe's dangerous energy dependence on the Evil Empire (which was also known as the USSR).
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Wednesday, April 09, 2014
France’s Delusional Valls Is No Bill Clinton / Politics / France
By: Steve_H_Hanke
President Francois Hollande has put in place a new French government led by Prime Minister Manuel Valls. This maneuver has all the hallmarks of shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Yes, one has the chilling feeling that accidents are waiting to happen.
President Hollande’s new lineup is loaded with contradictions. That’s not a good sign.
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Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Central Banker Liars, New Currency, Fatal Errors, Psycho War / Politics / Banksters
By: Jim_Willie_CB
A global clash of nations is underway in full gear. The storm is picking up speed, power, intensity, and damaging force. Many are the swirls of the current situation. A hodgepodge of topics have been caught and trapped, best to discharge on paper, the effect like a wondrous enema. The banker lies grow thicker, as they are unable to so easily deceive anymore. The potential currency fix appears more imminent, as the solution seen as an assault on American interests (military angle). Any nation getting off the US Wagon Train is a rogue nation, the theme having become tired and ineffective. The fatal errors committed by the US economists and banker elite have finally resulted in clear signs of systemic failure.
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
The Great Unwashed American Energy Independence / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The eurocrisis is over, the US Navy makes fuel from seawater, and America will be energy independent by 2037, according to the EIA. Boy, where do we begin? We’re getting flooded with an increasing amount of sheer nonsense wrapped in sheep’s clothing, and it’s hard to keep up. We not only live in a pretend economy, by now most of what we think we see isn’t really there at all. Indeed, there’s not even a there there anymore. Look, if you believe that the Navy can power its fleet with fuel made from seawater, you should probably know there’s a lot of gold in the oceans as well. Which means that you are potentially very wealthy. All you have to do is dig it out.
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Peter Schiff Goes to Puerto Rico / Politics / Taxes
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno
It’s been a little over a year since I sat down with Peter Schiff at his house in Connecticut to discuss the importance of international diversification. Since then, the options available to take protective measures have declined in many ways, especially as the destructive FATCA law comes into force.
While some doors have closed, others have opened. And perhaps one of the most significant new opportunities in the world today is the tax incentives in Puerto Rico.
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Wednesday, April 09, 2014
CORPORATOCRACY / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
Record US corporate profits are the beneficiary of easy money, near zero interest rates and monopolist aided government tax policies. The upward surge in earnings since the depths of the financial collapse proves one incontrovertible fact; namely, tax regulations, implemented to aid favorite companies, is the operational model of the corporatist economy. Americans for tax fairness for 2013 report on 10 Companies and Their Tax Loopholes. Included in this examination on Bank of America, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, Merck, Microsoft, Pfizer and Verizon, indicated "corporations have stepped into the fray with some of the most aggressive lobbying we’ve seen in years – calling for cuts to corporate tax rates, a widening of offshore tax loopholes."
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
From Financial Subprime To Global Energy Subprime / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Andrew_McKillop
Russian Sanctions and the Energy Subprime
The U.S. subprime crisis of 2008, although it was cast in stone by 2006-2007, was a dreadful surprise for political deciders. It sprang at them from the murky world of Wall Street's frenzied brewing of incomprehensible financial instruments with names like algos, swaps and derivatives. The crisis surged at them from outside, forcing deciders to make a panic recourse to more government debt and massive new borrowing, to shore up the financial economy and then the real economy.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Donetsk Crimea 2.0 - Russia Ukraine Invasion and Annexation Before End of May 2014 / Politics / Eastern Europe
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Czar Putin having finished digesting Crimea being a mere entree of the main meal ahead that could ultimately seek to devour as much as 50% of Ukraine's original land mass, whilst the mainstream media's attention remains diverted by the likes of the irrelevant Oscar Pistorius court case, another expenses fiddling MP or the search for Flight MH370. However Putin's dark totalitarian forces have been quietly busy preparing the facts on the ground for a re-run of a Crimea style theft of territory enabling Russia to rip several more pounds of flesh off of Ukraine's body.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Armageddon - Obama Issues Threats To Russia And NATO / Politics / New Cold War
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The Obama regime has issued simultaneous threats to the enemy it is making out of Russia and to its European NATO allies on which Washington is relying to support sanctions on Russia. This cannot end well.
As even Americans living in a controlled media environment are aware, Europeans, South Americans, and Chinese are infuriated that the National Stasi Agency is spying on their communications. NSA’s affront to legality, the US Constitution, and international diplomatic norms is unprecedented. Yet, the spying continues, while Congress sits sucking its thumb and betraying its oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
Monday, April 07, 2014
Humans, A Smart Species? / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
And once again the markets are happily and excitedly awaiting more free zombie capital from a major central bank, this time the ECB. Of course this is capital the markets, judging from where stock exchanges find themselves, absolutely don’t need, but, you know, gift horses have foul breath and all that.
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Monday, April 07, 2014
Ukraine Accuses Russia Of Economic Aggression / Politics / Eastern Europe
By: Andrew_McKillop
Gas is Getting Expensive
Quoted by 'Eurasia Review' and other media, April 7, Ukraine's SBU internal security force said it had detained 15 persons it called plotters who it said possessed a large cache of weapons and explosives and were attempting to overthrow pro-Kiev forces in the Russian-speaking east of the country, near the town of Luhansk. In Donetsk, a group of protesters estimated at about 2000 persons barricaded themselves inside the regional administration building and threatened to set up a “people’s council”, demanding a referendum like the one organized in Crimea, on whether the region should join Russia.
Monday, April 07, 2014
Zombification of America - Welcome To Terminus, Collapse will be Sudden / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.” – Edward Teller
I was a late arrival to the Walking Dead television program. I don’t watch much of the mindless drivel passing for entertainment on the 600 worthless channels available 24/7 on cable TV. I assumed it was another superficial zombie horror show on par with the teenage vampire crap polluting the airwaves. Last year a friend told me I had to watch the show. I was hooked immediately and after some marathon watching of seasons one and two, I understood the various storylines and back stories. What the show doesn’t openly reveal is the deeper meanings, symbolism, and lessons we can learn from viewing human beings trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. In my opinion, the horror and gore is secondary to the human responses to horrific circumstances and the consequences of individual and group decisions to their survival.
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Monday, April 07, 2014
How Minimum Wage Laws Increase Poverty / Politics / Economic Theory
By: George_Reisman
An Open letter to Thomas Perez, U.S. Secretary of Labor
Dear Secretary Perez:
Raising the minimum wage is a formula for causing unemployment among the least-skilled members of society. The higher wages are, the higher costs of production are. The higher costs of production are, the higher prices are. The higher prices are, the smaller are the quantities of goods and services demanded and the number of workers employed in producing them. These are all propositions of elementary economics that you and the President should well know.
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Monday, April 07, 2014
Ron Paul - Ft. Hood, An Avoidable Tragedy / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week we saw yet another tragedy at Ft. Hood, Texas, as a distraught Iraq war veteran killed three of his fellow soldiers before killing himself. It is nearly five years after the last Ft. Hood shooting, where 13 people were killed. These tragedies are heartbreaking and we certainly feel much sympathy for the families of the victims.
Sunday, April 06, 2014
The Unsustainable Distortion That is America / Politics / US Debt
By: Gordon_T_Long
The Peril of a Two Class Society
Since the end of WWII the US might be considered as being divided into two eras. The first from after the war untill 1979 and the second from 1979 until today. The era's are determined by the growth of family income.
As dramatically different as these two eras are, they are even worse when we consider the structural change, where the US family income shifted from a single to a two family income, which closely mirrors these two eras.
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Saturday, April 05, 2014
Another Fake Afghan Election / Politics / Afghanistan
By: LewRockwell
Eric Margolis writes: Afghanistan’s national election held this week is a sham. A group of candidates, handpicked by the US, will pretend to compete in an election whose outcome has already been determined – by Washington.
The candidates include US groomed politicians, and drug-dealing warlords from the Tajik and Uzbek north. Chief among them, Rashid Dostam, a major war criminal and principal CIA ally who ordered the massacre of over 2,000 Taliban prisoners.
Saturday, April 05, 2014
Russia and U.S. Waging Financial War? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Julian_DW_Phillips
As the Ukrainian crisis unfolded threats of financial war came from Russia and to a lesser extent from the E.U. and the U.S. They were not carried out except a few sanctions targeting key personnel in Russia. These were shrugged off and the crisis appears to have dropped to a series of posturing by both sides. A sigh of relief crossed the developed world and investment life went back to normal. In the past we have had similar events that were defused in a similar way. But history teaches us that that the world can suppurate easily and quickly in tense situation like this. The First World War started because of one shot from a pistol. He Second World War were preceded by trumpeting of 'peace in our time' as mistaken politicians thought they had made peace with Germany.
Saturday, April 05, 2014
Party Time Over For French Political Ecology / Politics / France
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Once-Was Natural Party of Government
When President Hollande swept to power a long time ago on the political timescale - nearly 24 months ago – sweeping out the eccentric and ever more-corrupt Sarkozy with his non-performing economy and ever-rising jobless numbers, budget deficits and national debt, Hollande also swept in the ecologists. To do just the same thing as Sarko! French ecology politicians banded together in a shifting coalition called Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV, and were handed key roles in Hollande's first government, of course receiving the Energy-Ecology ministry, and also the Housing ministry.
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