Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Empty Fort Knox Gold and Loaded Guns / Politics / US Politics
By: Gary_North
All guns are loaded. Never forget this.
I never knew my great uncle Gerald. That's because he was killed in an accident. His son shot him.
Uncle Gerald was a hunter in Oregon. He had taught his son to regard every gun as loaded. He always was careful to unload his gun whenever he came in from hunting. But one day he forgot. His son, knowing that his father was meticulous about such things, for some reason pulled the trigger.
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Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Eurocrats and Their Vassals / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Fred_Sheehan
On February 29, 2012, the European Central Bank (ECB) lent €529 to European banks, most of it, in three-year loans. This was the second such operation, launched with another mind-numbing acronym: LTRO (long-term financing operation). In the first LTRO (December 2011), €489 was lent to European banks. In the February 29, 2012, operation, 800 banks borrowed. According to the Financial Times, "broader collateral rules drew in smaller banks."
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Wednesday, March 07, 2012
U.S. Fed Flying Blind / Politics / Central Banks
By: Axel_Merk
In assessing whether to make tough decisions, policy makers tend to weigh the cost of action versus inaction. As critical as we are of our dear policy makers, when push comes to shove, they may rise to the occasion. But what if they are not told when it's time to act, when it's time to stop printing and spending trillions? In our assessment, the voice of reason has been silenced, posing potential risks to economic stability, as well as the U.S. dollar. That voice of reason is no other than the market itself. Let us explain.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
The Mainstream Media Still Doesn’t Get the ECB Greek Debt Swap / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
First off, the details of the swap are as follows: the ECB simply exchanged 50€ billion worth of old Greek sovereign bonds (which were soon to be worth much less if not be outright worthless) for 50€ billion worth of new Greek sovereign bonds which would not be exposed to default risk or any kind of debt restructuring (unlike those bonds held by private Greek bond holders).
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
The Debt Deleveraging Big Lie / Politics / US Debt
By: James_Quinn
Cause, Effect & The Fallacy Of Return To Normalcy
“Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought of as poor.” - Robert Mallett
I hear the term de-leveraging relentlessly from the mainstream media. The storyline that the American consumer has been denying themselves and paying down debt is completely 100% false. The proliferation of this Big Lie has been spread by Wall Street and their mouthpieces in the corporate media. The purpose is to convince the ignorant masses they have deprived themselves long enough and deserve to start spending again. The propaganda being spouted by those who depend on Americans to go further into debt is relentless. The “fantastic” automaker recovery is being driven by 0% financing for seven years peddled to subprime (aka deadbeats) borrowers for mammoth SUVs and pickup trucks that get 15 mpg as gas prices surge past $4.00 a gallon. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario? Furniture merchants are offering no interest, no payment deals for four years on their product lines. Of course, the interest rate from your friends at GE Capital reverts retroactively to 29.99% at the end of four years after the average dolt forgot to save enough to pay off the balance. I’m again receiving two to three credit card offers per day in the mail. According to the Wall Street vampire squids that continue to suck the life blood from what’s left of the American economy, this is a return to normalcy.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Assessing China's Strategy / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Simply put, China has three core strategic interests.
Paramount among them is the maintenance of domestic security. Historically, when China involves itself in global trade, as it did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the coastal region prospers, while the interior of China -- which begins about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the coast and runs about 1,600 kilometers to the west -- languishes. Roughly 80 percent of all Chinese citizens currently have household incomes lower than the average household income in Bolivia. Most of China's poor are located west of the richer coastal region. This disparity of wealth time and again has exposed tensions between the interests of the coast and those of the interior. After a failed rising in Shanghai in 1927, Mao Zedong exploited these tensions by undertaking the Long March into the interior, raising a peasant army and ultimately conquering the coastal region. He shut China off from the international trading system, leaving China more united and equal, but extremely poor.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Catch 22 for Western Democracies / Politics / Global Economy
By: Mario_Innecco
The Catch-22 , not only for the P.I.I.G.S., but for the whole of the Western democracies is the size of government and the need to cut the size of government. The equation for calculating G.D.P. is G.D.P. = C + I + G + (X-M) which stands for Private Consumption + Gross Investment + Government Spending + (Exports - Imports).
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Western Civilisation Slow Decline or Fast Fall? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: John_Mauldin
I had my nose in Niall Ferguson's newest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, at every possible moment during my recent trip to Hong Kong and Singapore. It's powerful and very, very timely, and I strongly recommend it. To help get the word out, I asked Niall for a short, somewhat personal piece on the thinking behind the book – in other words, what moved him to write it?
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Sweet Home Chicago: G8 Meeting Moved But Protests Will Continue / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
Who called whom first?
Did the Obama alumni Association in Chicago---David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Bill Daley---get nervous and call the White House, or was it Barack himself, having disposed/co-opted one threat by the name of Netanyahu, who recognized he had a more serious problem the horizon.
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Monday, March 05, 2012
Ron Paul, Fed Up with the Fed / Politics / Central Banks
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
While the Fed has recently released an unprecedented amount of information on its activities, there is still much that remains unknown. Predictably, every push towards transparency has been fought tooth and nail. It took disclosure requirements enacted within the Dodd-Frank Act to get the Fed to provide data on its emergency lending facilities. It took lawsuits filed by Bloomberg and Fox News to provide data on discount window lending during the worst parts of the financial crisis. And it will take further concerted action on the part of Congress, the media, and the public to keep up pressure on the Fed to become and remain transparent.
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Monday, March 05, 2012
Germany Marches East - Russia Moves West, Putins Energy Diplomacy / Politics / Natural Gas
By: Andrew_McKillop
ITS THE GAS, STUPID
LUBMIN, Germany, Nov 8, 2011 — Chancellor Angela Merkel and outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev met in the village of Lubmin on Germany's Baltic coast to inaugurate the 7.4 billion euro natural gas pipeline that links Germany directly with Siberia's vast gas reserves. The 1220-kilometre Nord Stream pipeline, claimed as the world's longest continuous underwater pipeline, will in its first year bring about 27.5 billion cubic metres of gas, but by end-2013 will double in capacity. French prime minister Francois Fillon and his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte also attended the Lubmin ceremony in a sign of the political importance of Europe's newest energy link: the keywords used by all these European political leaders were "strengthening the security of European energy supplies".
Monday, March 05, 2012
What's Ahead for the Middle Class, Dim Light, Long Tunnel / Politics / Social Issues
By: Gary_North
MarketWatch ran an article on the lack of optimism for the American job market. It offered no analysis of why the market is bad, but it made it clear that it is not likely to get better anytime soon.
The article focused on the job market since 2008. It included a chart on salaries since 1980. It has three categories: college graduates, high school dropouts, and total. The chart reveals that there has not been much improvement for a decade. The flat-lining of salaries began a decade ago, not in 2008.
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Monday, March 05, 2012
U.S. Recession Explanations, Does the ECRI Believe Its Own Economic Indicators? / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Mike_Shedlock
Late last month in ECRI Sticks with Recession Call on CNBC; More than a Bit of an Exaggeration by Achuthan to Make His Call? I questioned the ECRI's use of coincident indicators to make a claim regarding recession
I count three instances between 1990 and 2000 where ECRI coincident indicators flagged a recession by the methodology Achuthan cited.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Greece and Credit Default Swaps: Bucking the ISDA Cartel / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Janet_Tavakoli
Credit derivatives were originally hyped as hedging tools to protect the value of a portfolio. For example, if you own a bond, you can buy protection against the possibility of default by paying a protection premium, similar to the premium you pay on an insurance policy. The difference between insurance and the credit derivatives known as credit default swaps (CDS) is that you don't actually have to own the bond in order to "buy protection." But like an insurance policy, you have to negotiate the terms of the contract.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Russia Election Fraud, Czar Putin Elects Himself President of Corrupt Russian Mafia State / Politics / Russia
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Czar "Prime Minister" Putin in September 2011 decided they would swap jobs again with his President front Man Medvedev and today Vladimir Putin elects himself President for another 6 year term in a repeat smoke and mirrors bogus fraudulent election.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Planned Regime Change in Syria / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria had peace and calm until Washington intervened belligerently.
Strategies and tactics vary. Objectives are consistent. They involve replacing independent regimes with pro-Western ones by any means, including war.
Three unwinnable ones rage. Nonetheless, Obama plans more. Syria's target one. For the past year, US-instigated violence ravaged parts of the country. Thousands have been killed, many others injured.
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Saturday, March 03, 2012
Why Can’t Americans Have Democracy? / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the american invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi’ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.
When the american invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WW II, overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the american invasion. Nevertheless, enough Sunnis found time to fight the american occupiers of Iraq that the US was never able to occupy Bagdad, much less Iraq, no matter how violent and indiscriminate the US was in the application of force.
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Saturday, March 03, 2012
U.S. War on Terror is Government Fraud / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
The first thing to understand about terrorism against America is that it is negligible. Horrible as it was, the destruction of the Trade Towers was an outlier, that is, an event that lies way, way outside the main body of terrorist activity. It is no comfort to the dead, the injured and to their loved ones to point this out, but it is something that must be understood because failure to understand the realities of terrorism has led Americans to support aggressive war policies that are highly destructive of innocent lives and societies overseas and do not diminish the threat of terrorism. These immoral and unjust policies have increased the numbers of terrorists dedicated to destroying American life. As a negative bonus, they have undermined the economy and freedoms of America, thereby causing an untold increase in hardship among Americans now and in the future.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Iran Oil Trumps Iran Nuclear / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Andrew_McKillop
The US Energy Dept's 29 February report on world oil market trends carried baleful news for the gung-ho fraternity who want to turn Iran's nuclear installations into Dirty Bombs before Iran produces the Clean Bombs that other owner countries, like the US, Pakistan, France and Israel proudly possess.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Google and the Death of Privacy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeff_Berwick
You may or may not be surprised to hear this but I am not a big "privacy buff". You've probably noticed this as I've regularly detailed the minutiea of my personal life here for a number of years. I'm certainly not one of those who would protest against Google StreetView for taking photos of public locations. Take all the photos you want, Google.