Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
ECB Bazooka Economics / Politics / Central Banks
By: Stephen_Lendman
Did he or didn't he? ECB president Mario Draghi promised "whatever it takes." Great expectations arose. August 2 was D-Day.
Fizzle followed sizzle. Bazooka plans stalled. More on Draghi's pronouncement below and what it means.
Europe's economy is broken. Monetary intervention solved nothing. Core problems fester and grow. Contagion spreads everywhere. Effective solutions are absent.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
The Economic Austerity Hoax / Politics / Economic Austerity
By: Stephen_Lendman
Since 2008, Western nations have force-fed their people austerity poison. Decline replaces prosperity. Millions suffer. Living standards deteriorate. Societies become no longer fit to live in.
Neoliberal and imperial priorities let essential public needs go begging. How much more people will take before erupting remains to be seen.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Central Banks Have Now Been Revealed to be Impotent! / Politics / Central Banks
By: Sy_Harding
This week central banks and euro-zone officials showed us that is the predicament they’re in.
In the U.S. the Federal Reserve, repeatedly threatened by a stumbling economic recovery, has fired off rounds of quantitative easing each time, accompanied by considerable hullabaloo. The effect was limited, the menace soon returning. And it’s become debatable whether firing off the quantitative easing was itself helpful, or if the temporary reprieve each time was just due to the hope raised by the accompanying rhetoric.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Corporatist Coup d'Etat Led By Think Tanks, Democracy Sold to the Highest Bidder / Politics / US Politics
By: Jesse
“The mess we’re in now did not begin on Wall Street. Long before the financial collapse, the dismantlement of government regulation was well under way. All the consequences are the result of a brilliantly executed coup. This is the story of the biggest heist in American history.”
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Thursday, August 02, 2012
Angela Merkel Will NOT Lose Germany’s AAA Status Before Her Re-election / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
Here’s a story you might not have heard… In some areas of Germany, you can once again use Deutsche Marks as legal tender:
Who Needs the Euro When You Can Pay With Deutsche Marks?
Shopping for pain reliever here on a recent sunny morning, Ulrike Berger giddily counted her coins and approached the pharmacy counter. She had just enough to make the purchase: 31.09 deutsche marks.
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Thursday, August 02, 2012
Obama Tells Entrepreneurs "You Didn't Build That" / Politics / US Politics
By: MISES
Gary Galles writes: President Obama's "you didn't build that" statement to successful business owners has created a serious backlash. In rebuttal, his defenders point to his more complete statement for "clarification":
Read full article... Read full article...If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Geithner Calls on Europe and Congress to Spur Economic Growth / Politics / Economic Stimulus
By: Bloomberg
BLOOMBERG TV EXCLUSIVE: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner spoke with Bloomberg Television's Peter Cook from Los Angeles last night, where he discussed the European debt crisis and the U.S. economy.
Geithner said that European leaders must take steps including "bring down interest rates in the countries that are reforming and making sure those banking systems can provide the credit those economies need." He also said that "they are committed to doing what's necessary to hold the European Union together" and "I absolutely believe they have the means to do it."
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Escape From Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Readers ask me from time to time to recommend a book from which they can learn about economics.
The problem with reading a book to learn economics that is taught in the universities and practiced in Washington is that economics is now a highly formalized subject based on abstract models and assumptions and has been mathematized. It is not that the subject is totally useless and without any applicability to real world problems. Rather, the problem is that the discipline both lags an ever-changing world and got some things wrong at the beginning. Consequently, learning economics places one inside a box where some of the tools and understanding provided are outdated and incorrect.
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012
The Record of Olympic Economics / Politics / Government Spending
By: BATR
As the world economy plunges and the financial markets debate the future of EU, the London Olympics provide a pretext to take a holiday and party all night. The latest example of excess and self-absorbed haughtiness, promotes an agenda of internationalism. The spirit of the games is less about sportsmanship than promotion of indoctrination. The cost to produce such an extravaganza approaches sums that necessitate a bailout from the IMF. The article, Winner's curse? The economics of hosting the Olympic Games, illustrates a disturbing cost for hosting the Games.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Justice Roberts is Right: Obama Healthcare Plan Won't Work / Politics / US Politics
By: Peter_Schiff
Now that the Supreme Court has given its narrow blessing to the Affordable Care Act, the big question is whether it will deliver the benefits that its proponents promise. Unfortunately, as it is now constructed, the plan will backfire causing fewer healthy people to buy insurance, raise premiums for those who do, destroy employment opportunities, cripple the health insurance industry, and weaken the economy.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
The Ignorance of “Intelligence” / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
Some years ago, I meet a major in American intelligence, a member of the “Red Cell Unit.”
As he explained it to me, his unit was actually charged with assessing other spy shops by offering other views, critiquing intelligence estimates and perhaps even evaluating security systems like the specialists who test airport systems by probing for their soft spots and vulnerabilities, and seeing if they can beat them.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Ron Paul - Audit the Fed Moves Forward! / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed my legislation calling for a full and effective audit of the Federal Reserve. Well over 300 of my Congressional colleagues supported the bill, each casting a landmark vote that marks the culmination of decades of work. We have taken a big step toward bringing transparency to the most destructive financial institution in the world.
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Monday, July 30, 2012
U.S. Backs Al Qaeda Death Squads in Syria / Politics / Middle East
By: Stephen_Lendman
Washington's agenda involves death squad diplomacy. Evidence mounts proving it. It's standard practice in all US direct and proxy wars. It's how America treats its enemies.
Massacres and unspeakable atrocities are committed. Women are raped. Civilians are treated like combatants. They're indiscriminately killed.
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Sunday, July 29, 2012
Doctors Are Like Cops, Dangerous / Politics / Healthcare Sector
By: LewRockwell
Jack D. Douglas writes: This is a good study of the soaring rate of dangerous MRSA infection from hospital stays by academic hospital insiders who used their inside knowledge of the U. of Chicago hospital and three others to correct for the massive 30% to 50% official underreporting and found that one out of twenty plus patients now gets serious MRSA hospital infection in the U.S., more than all the influenza and AIDS hospitalizations combined. That was a 100% increase in five years and the study ended in '08, so there has probably been another near doubling, or less if the growing infection control efforts coming out of Hopkins, etc., are beginning to pay off.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Auditing The Fed is Like Auditing a Mafia Counterfeiting Operation / Politics / Central Banks
By: Jeff_Berwick
Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act (H.R. 459), or “Audit the Fed,” passed Wednesday July 25, 2012 in the U.S. House of Representatives by a wide margin of 327-98, exceeding the two-thirds majority needed. It had 274 cosponsors. But, by the evening of the same day, mainstream press around the country was already preparing the people for the bill’s fate in the Democrat-controlled Senate. As the Chicago Tribune and others reported, it had little chance of passing in the Senate, let alone being signed into law by the President. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said that the Senate will not even consider the bill, because, as Ron Paul told CSPAN, he didn’t have the “guts.” With this in mind, as well as their own reputations, Romney, Boehner and Cantor backed it. Even Harry Reid backed it… in 1987 and 2010, but now he has changed his mind on a Fed audit for some reason.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Our Debts Must be Redeemed / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2012
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
In mid-October 2011, a group of Occupy protesters in London set up tents and encamped outside of St. Paul's Cathedral for almost four months before finally being evicted by the Corporation of London. At first, the Church welcomed the protesters and preached to them, acknowledging the ways in which governments and banks were clearly contravening Christian teachings.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Fukushima - Japanese Local Children Radioactive Guinea Pigs / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: OilPrice_Com
Seventeen months after the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Tokyo Electric Power Company's six-reactor complex at its Fukushima Daiichi, discussions continue about the possible effects of the radiation "dusting" the prefecture's inhabitants received, and their consequences.
Far outside most media coverage, 2012 is shaping up to be the media battleground between the massed proponents of the ongoing 'safety' of nuclear power, as opposed to a motley coalition of environmentalists, renegade nuclear scientists and anti-nuclear opponents, largely bereft of media contact.
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Thursday, July 26, 2012
The South China Sea Spat, A Glimpse into the Future / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Money_Morning
William Patalon III writes: If you've been following the worrisome and escalating South China Sea controversy, you know that China has been flexing its muscles laying claim to thousands of square miles of islands and ocean that other countries - Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, to name the main ones - also claim to control.
This isn't some foreign skirmish that we can easily dismiss because of its distance, and because it doesn't affect us here at home.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
London Olympics Economic Boost Failing to Materialise / Politics / UK Politics
By: Adrian_Ash
"Hello London, this is the mayor, and this is the big one."
- Tannoy announcement replayed endlessly over the last month to London commuters waiting for the city's creaking transport system to cough out their train
LAST TIME the UK government backed and boosted a major export industry, we got the banking and finance crisis. This time they got smart – and spent lots of taxpayer cash in advance.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Project Europe is Over / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I don't really know why it is, but as much as I see pundits and experts and everyone in between address the euro mudbath lately, nobody seems to have caught on to the two main events (inflexion points?!) that shape the latest reincarnation of said bath. So here's for them, and you, and anyone who's not yet tired of the story:
Event no. 1: it’s not so much that it's an entirely new notion, it's the realization that it has come to pass that is new. And even then it will take a while for most pundits and experts to understand the significance.
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