Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
The Fed Could Simply CANCEL $2 Trillion of U.S. Government Debt / Politics / US Debt
By: Washingtons_Blog
Bipartisan Proposal Would Substantially Reduce Budget Crisis
Congressman Alan Grayson and former congressman Ron Paul are two of the fiercest warriors against an out-of-control Federal Reserve.
Paul has campaigned to dissolve the Fed for 35 years, and wrote an entire book called “End the Fed“. Grayson has repeatedly slammed the Fed, and absolutely demolished it … to its face. Paul and Grayson also co-sponsored a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. (Their desire to rein in the Fed is supported by numerous top economists.)
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Saturday, October 12, 2013
Fracking - An Unconventional Poisoning / Politics / Fracking
By: Richard_Mills
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it's more commonly referred to, is used to stimulate the production of oil and gas from unconventional oil and gas deposits - shales, coalbeds, and tight sands. These types of deposits need to be stimulated because they have a lower permeability than conventional reservoirs and require the additional stimulation for production.
Friday, October 11, 2013
My Antidote to the Dirty Obamacare Pill / Politics / US Politics
By: Don_Miller
I wish I never had to write this article, but I cannot put it off any longer. There are life-threatening secrets you need to know today.
In the fall of 2009, my wife Jo and I went to a town hall meeting in Illinois. The guest speaker was a member of the House of Representatives who served on the committee putting together the law now known as Obamacare. The Congressman stood next to a draft of the bill and answered our questions by reading straight from the text. Most of us left terrified, hoping the bill would never pass.
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Friday, October 11, 2013
Janet Yellen as Loose as a Goose / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Fred_Sheehan
President Obama's nomination of Janet Yellen is not unexpected. Nevertheless, it is greeted here with unrequited abjection. Unless the world's financial hocus-pocus comes unglued between now and then, she will inflate electronic money accounts without compunction. By doing so, Yellen will make matters worse (a sampling: real incomes will fall further, the gap between the rich and the poor will increase). She will redefine an acceptable inflation rate at 4.0%. Currently, the Fed is gunning for 2.0% inflation. This will be part and parcel to Yellen's attempt to drive interest rates down at all maturities. The objective will grow harder so require larger electronic deposits. She will beget looser money and a more destructive policy than Ben Bernanke's: a -4.0% real rate of interest.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Republican Party Debt Ceiling Delusions / Politics / US Debt
By: Peter_Schiff
The popular take on the current debt ceiling stand-off is that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has a delusional belief that it can hit the brakes on new debt creation without bringing on an economic catastrophe. While Republicans are indeed kidding themselves if they believe that their actions will not unleash deep economic turmoil, there are much deeper and more significant delusions on the other side of the aisle. Democrats, and the President in particular, believe that continually taking on more debt to pay existing debt is a more responsible course of action. Even worse, they appear to believe that debt accumulation is the equivalent of economic growth.
Friday, October 11, 2013
U.S. Debt Ceiling Political Economic Blood Sport / Politics / US Debt
By: Ty_Andros
In what is BECOMING the deadliest game of CHICKEN since the August 2011 US debt ceiling Showdown, we are at the doorstep of part II. In a game of chicken, two cars rush headlong towards each other to see who veers off first. Occasionally, neither driver does and both parties perish in the collision. Usually, it is just the drivers who pass away from their imprudence; in this case it will be the spectators. Just like children playing with FIRE who BURN the HOUSE down. Blood sport of the worst sort.
I have commented a number of times that since 2008 elected veto-proof majorities, the implementation of socialism went into HYPERDRIVE during the 2008 to 2010 period. The affordable care act was, and has been, the dream of socialists since 1945.
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Thursday, October 10, 2013
Ron Paul - The End of U.S. Dollar Hegemony / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno, Editor, International Man:
I spent the past weekend in Tucson for the Casey Research 2013 Summit, indeed a memorable and information-packed experience. It was truly a pleasure to meet with everyone who joined us.
Notably, it was extremely encouraging to meet so many intelligent people who had taken concrete steps to internationalize their savings and obtain a second passport—and thus reducing their exposure to whatever happens in their home countries.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Bail In's the New Meachnisms for Stealing Private Wealth / Politics / Banksters
By: Dan_Amerman
A new method of taking private sector wealth has been spreading around the world this year. This mechanism is called a "bail in", and it is based on the premise that there are certain entities which are too important for the well-being of the general public to allow them to go into bankruptcy or to be liquidated.
The new "twist" is that the entity – which could be a major bank, or it could be the public retirement system for an entire country – is not bailed out through using outside funds from the general public, even though the protection of the general public is the reason for the intervention. Instead, funds are taken from the inside, on an involuntary basis, from selected classes of private sector investors who are judged as having the ability to pay, and the costs of maintaining the viability of this entity for the "greater good" are thereby concentrated in a small part of the private sector.
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Thursday, October 10, 2013
U.S. Debt Default? The Perversion of the Constitution / Politics / US Debt
By: John_Mauldin
David Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Cumberland Advisors (and our host at "Camp Kotok" for the annual "Shadow Fed" fishing expedition), leads off today's Outside the Box by meticulously dissecting the roadkill that is our federal government's process for deciding whether they will continue to pay their bills and federal employees' wages.
Will the US default? David doesn't think so, and neither do I; but oh, the foolishness, even to tempt the economic fates (read: the markets) this way. David notes that global investors think differently about US default risk than we US-centric types do. Well, David Zervos is with me here at Barefoot, and we just heard that one foreign prime broker (and now maybe two?) is calling hedge funds to say they will not take short-term T-bills as collateral and will mark T-bills down to zero in the event of an actual default. The ultimate risk-free asset is now full of risk? REALLY? This is an unthinkable event. This broker is a Primary Dealer, and I assume they will very shortly get some irate phone calls; but these things start with one bank and then it turns into a herd.
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Wednesday, October 09, 2013
U.S. Global Torture Black Sites / Politics / War on Terror
By: Stephen_Lendman
On October 5, US Delta Force commandos, CIA operatives, and FBI agents abducted Abu Anas al-Liby. Doing so highlights what’s been out-of-control since 9/11.
In the 1980s, al-Liby was one of many CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters. They were used against Afghanistan’s Soviet occupiers.
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Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Janet Yellen the Right choice for the Fed / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Bloomberg
Former President Bush top economist and current Chairman of the Economics department at Harvard University, Greg Mankiw joined Bloomberg Television’s Erik Schatzker and Scarlet Fu on “Market Makers” today and said he agreed with Republicans who say that as long as we pay off interest, we won’t be in a default.
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Gordon Gecko Moved To London To Finish Where He Left Off / Politics / UK Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Last week I saw a headline in the Daily Telegraph that got me thinking. It encapsulates a lot of what poses as philosophy in our world today, as a valid way of thinking and a relevant approach to all the crises we live through simultaneously at the moment. One which, when you look longer and closer, appears at least at first glance to lack all philosophical value - since it doesn't actually weigh any pros and cons -, and turns out to be a rehash of a hodge-podge of the very failed old theories that have led us into our crises.
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
The Roots of the U.S. Government Shutdown / Politics / US Politics
By: STRATFOR
In general, Stratfor deals with U.S. domestic politics only to the extent that it affects international affairs. Certainly, this topic has been argued and analyzed extensively. Nevertheless, the shutdown of the American government is a topic that must be understood from our point of view, because it raises the issue of whether the leading global power is involved in a political crisis so profound that it is both losing its internal cohesion and the capacity to govern. If that were so, it would mean the United States would not be able to act in global affairs, and that in turn would mean that the international system would undergo a profound change. I am not interested in the debate over who is right. I am, however, interested in the question of what caused this shutdown, and ultimately what it tells us about the U.S. capacity to act.
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Will Russia Survive U.S. Debt Default? / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2013
By: Pravda
U.S. President Barack Obama said that the conservative wing of the Republican Party could lead the U.S. to a default on public debt. Experts agree that this is an internal political crisis, but it will affect the countries that have invested in U.S. Treasuries. Since 2009 Russia has been consistently reducing the share of this investment in its state currency reserves.
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Monday, October 07, 2013
Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse? / Politics / US Politics
By: Ellen_Brown
The government seems to be getting ready for the next crisis. What about you?
Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?
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Monday, October 07, 2013
U.S. Debt Ceiling Deception / Politics / US Debt
By: Michael_Pento
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson weighed in on the budget and debt ceiling gridlock in Washington and offered a solution last week by saying, "I hate the whole concept of a debt ceiling". He also indicated that putting a legal limit on our nation's borrowing authority is a "flaw in the system". In other words, if we just did away with the strictures of a debt limit our problems would go away. Unfortunately, this view is shared by most in our government.
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Monday, October 07, 2013
Nuclear Weapons Now / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: Andrew_McKillop
WHY WORRY?
Pretending the destructive threat of nuclear weapons is overblown, or just as bad that they have been around a long time and haven't been used – so we can forget all about them – are two themes attacked by Eric Schlosser. Described as a techno-thriller by critics and given major acclaim and wide publicity, the book by reporter and author Schlosser, “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety” (Kodiak-Penguin) includes a minute-by-minute account of a near-fatal accident at a Titan II nuclear missile silo in Arkansas, in 1980.
Monday, October 07, 2013
Effects of U.S. Government Shutdown on Paying Taxes and Economic Reports / Politics / US Politics
By: Money_Morning
Garrett Baldwin writes: Welcome to the decade of the politicization of everything. With the government shutdown in its first week, it is starting to look more and more like this temper tantrum from both sides could lead up to the debt ceiling deadline.
Monday, October 07, 2013
What Government Shutdown? These Facts Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running! / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Michael Snyder writes:
All of this whining and crying about a “government shutdown” is a total joke. You see, there really is very little reason why this “government shutdown” cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running. 63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this “shutdown”. Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in Washington D.C. is being conducted pretty much as usual. It turns out that the definition of “essential personnel” has expanded so much over the years that almost everyone is considered “essential” at this point. In fact, this shutdown is such a non-event that even referring to it as a “partial government shutdown” would really be overstating what is actually happening. The following are 36 facts which prove that almost everything is still running during this government shutdown…
Monday, October 07, 2013
Man Sets Himself on Fire, The Madness of Crumbling Empires / Politics / US Politics
By: Jack_D_Douglas
Setting one’s self on fire is a form of the ancient practice of “committing suicide on the head of someone” to blame them for something serious. The modern form of this as a political protest has been world famous since the Buddhist monk’s self-immolation in South Vietnam which helped to galvanize the Buddhist majority against the U.S. and the U.S.-Francophile puppet regime. That single act against the repressors of Buddhists, the majority of people, was a crucial trigger in the national revolt that led to the total defeat of the vast U.S. war machine even thought it cost the Vietnamese many millions of dead, maimed, wounded, MIA’s, and destroyed families and lives. [Gen. Giap, who led that total defeat of the U.S. by a poor peasant guerrilla army died yesterday at 102.
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