Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
2012 End of Status Quo? Cumulative Effects of Self-Assembling Dynamic Networks / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
2012 arrives at a watershed moment in the history of humankind. The cumulative effects of SADNs or Self-Assembling Dynamic Networks are not only changing the very nature of our existence but also the perception of each other via our unprecedented super-connectivity. Does this herald the end of the status quo? No-thing appears to remain the same as this contagion spreads faster and faster: accelerating, assimilating and absorbing every aspect of our joint and inter-linked existence.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Social Crisis in America: Uniting Occupy and Labor Over Health Care / Politics / US Politics
By: Shamus_Cooke
Politicians are attacking Medicare and Medicaid on all sides--Democrats and Republicans alike. Obama's national health care bill will slash hundreds of billions from Medicare over the next decade, an act supported by so-called "progressive" Democrats. Soon after this "victory" Obama created the Super Committee to balance the budget, which included automatic "triggers"-- if no decision was reached -- that are now slated to cut $600 billion more from Medicare.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Crush Labor and Impose Economic Austerity, Draghi’s ECB Real Goal in the Eurozone / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Mike_Whitney
Imagine if your banker offered to lend you a $150,000 to make up for the money that you’d lost on your home since the housing bubble burst in 2006. And, let’s say, he agreed to lend you this money for 3 years at rock-bottom rates of 1 percent provided that you post the contents of your garage (ie. rusty bikes, a bent basketball hoop, an old dollhouse, and rodent-infested luggage) as collateral on the loan.
Friday, December 23, 2011
United States the Ununited Empire / Politics / US Politics
By: STRATFOR
The American president is the most important political leader in the world. The reason is simple: he governs a nation whose economic and military policies shape the lives of people in every country on every continent. The president can and does order invasions, embargos, and sanctions. The economic policies he shapes will resonate in billions of lives, perhaps over many generations. During the next decade, who the president is and what he (or she) chooses to do will often affect the lives of non-Americans more than the decisions of their own governments.
Friday, December 23, 2011
U.S. Congress Handing Out Stock Tips to Hedge Fund Managers / Politics / US Politics
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes:
As if trading on insider information gleaned from their legislative duties wasn't bad enough, now it turns out Congress has been passing that information on to hedge fund managers as well.
That's helped many hedge fund managers make the same sort of lucrative bets in the stock market that has enriched members of Congress.
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Friday, December 23, 2011
Occupy Wall Street, Consider This My Gift to You… / Politics / UK Politics
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: Out of far left field, I see something coming that I never expected.
It's more like the coming together of pieces of a puzzle that have eluded us for too long.
By the way, Occupy Wall Street, if you're listening, and I hope you are, and you're still floundering (which I know you are) without a cause that anybody can really wrap their heads around, drop your drums, chants, and wanderings, and make the coming together of this puzzle what you're protesting.
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Friday, December 23, 2011
Gold, Stocks or Bonds, What Would Ron Paul Own? / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
When looking for guidance in life people have been known to ask, "What would Jesus do?" After all, Jesus was an anarchist and very principled so it makes sense to look to someone like him after which to model their life.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Germany's Mindbending Green Energy Plan / Politics / Renewable Energy
By: Andrew_McKillop
PROLIFERATING PLANS
Germany's plans to abandon nuclear power includes worries about nuclear proliferation, but the nuclear exit plan itself only appeared on the radar screen as the Japanese Fukushima reactor complex went down under tsunami storm surges. Until December 2010, Angela Merkel's coalition government was handing out 10-year life extensions for nuclear plant operators like anywhere else in the world of "cheap clean and safe" low carbon nuclear energy. Fukushima only added another strand to Germany's mindbending plans and programmes for achieving huge cuts in CO2 emissions, with the percentage cuts from a 1990 baseline programmed right through to 2075-2085, when Germany should have almost totally quit using fossil fuels - or will have found ways of totally capturing and sequestering carbon emissions from fossil energy.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
U.S. Fed Lets Banks Off the Hook… Again / Politics / Central Banks
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes: We've told you before that the U.S. Federal Reserve puts Wall Street's interest above that of the American public. And yesterday (Wednesday) the central bank proved it... again.
Confronted with the opportunity to enact meaningful change to the regulatory system, the Fed punted on its responsibility to protect the public from the very banks that brought down the global economy.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Our Financial "Regulators" Just Let Us Down Again / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes:
The Dodd-Frank Act became law 18 months ago, and it may be hard to believe, but we still aren't any better off now than we were then.
Indeed, the regulators that are supposed to be protecting us from a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis can't - or refuse - to get the job done.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Collective Action to Prolong Economic Depression / Politics / Great Depression II
By: Bill_Bonner
Have yourself a merry little depression…
What’s this? Christine Lagarde, IMF chief, said last week that the world’s nations needed to work together to avoid a 1930s-style depression.
But seeing the way they work together…and where they seem to be headed…we’d prefer a depression.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The Arab Winter: Violence from a US-back Egyptian Military Junta / Politics / Middle East
By: Patrick_Henningsen
Now that the Arab Spring has come and gone, one of the features of the new Arab Winter is watching how a US/UK-backed brutal Egyptian military dictatorship has become increasingly more violent towards its own pro-reform, unarmed citizens.
There are still a few readers left out there who will understandably be a bit confused and ask, “Wait a minute, I thought Egypt’s military dictator President Hosni Mubarak was ousted during the famous Arab Spring? I thought we brought democracy to Egypt?”
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Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Ron Paul Warns: Beware the Coming Bailouts of Europe / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The economic establishment in this country has come to the conclusion that it is not a matter of "if" the United States must intervene in the bailout of the euro, but simply a question of "when" and "how". Newspaper articles and editorials are full of assertions that the breakup of the euro would result in a worldwide depression, and that economic assistance to Europe is the only way to stave off this calamity. These assertions are yet again more scare-mongering, just as we witnessed during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. After just a decade of the euro, people have forgotten that Europe functioned for centuries without a common currency.
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Tuesday, December 20, 2011
After Superscience We Get Superfinance / Politics / Credit Crisis 2011
By: Andrew_McKillop
Superfinance is already with us, since at latest 2008, but we can expect that so-called « Superscience » will be edging back to join it after its most recent place in the media limelight during the 1995-2000 period: Superscience was turfed out by climate change, peak oil, green energy and sustainability all of which are now themselves struggling to stay on the radar screen. Unlike Superfinance and the Big New Things of the past 5 years however, Superscience goes back a long way, in fact to the Great Exhibitions around Europe in the 19th century. At the time the populace was told to think railways, iron ships, electric lamps and machine guns would give them total power and make all the world their own. Like they say: Guns, germs and steel. Coming next, we have a big new slot for Superfinance operated just like the Superscience theme.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
What Kim Jong Il's Death Means for the Global Economy / Politics / Global Economy
By: Money_Morning
Kerri Shannon writes:
All eyes are on North Korea and its repressed economic system this week after the country announced early Monday that Kim Jong Il, the ruling dictator for 17 years, died Saturday. The political instability to follow Kim Jong Il's death could ripple through the global economy, weighing on confidence and growth.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
How Important is North Korea's Leadership Change? / Politics / North Korea
By: James_Pressler
This weekend, North Korean officials announced the passing of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il, supposedly from a heart attack. Not too surprisingly, the next day Pyongyang heralded Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as the new head of state along with the title of "Great Successor." While it is widely known that the elder Kim was in poor health and rushing the grooming process for his son's succession, the Supreme Leader's sudden death leaves plenty of reasons to speculate as to just how the transition will impact North Korea and its relations with the world.
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Monday, December 19, 2011
Thatcher's Last Stand Against Socialism / Politics / UK Politics
By: Mike_Shedlock
Please consider this humorous video of Margaret Thatcher's last House of Commons Speech on November 22, 1990. What Thatcher said then about the Euro, European politics, socialism and wealth creation makes as much sense today as it did then, when she made fools of the opposition in Parliament to much laughter from the conservatives.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Bankrupt MF Global's Fractional Reserves / Politics / Credit Crisis 2011
By: Douglas_French
Jon Corzine told the House Agriculture Committee, "I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date." The public is outraged that the former CEO of bankrupt global financial-derivatives broker and prime dealer in US Treasury securities MF Global doesn't know where the missing $1.2 billion in client funds went.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Is the United States Too Big to Succeed? / Politics / US Politics
By: MISES
Roman Skaskiw writes: Although European libertarians continue to produce great works of theory and activism, the United States has been, and seems to remain, the epicenter of the libertarian movement. There are no prominent protests in Europe calling for less governmental help as there are in the United States. Murray Rothbard's essay "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" refers to the United States as "the great home of radical liberalism."[1] In 1996, Dr. Yuri Maltsev presented a lecture at a Ludwig von Mises Institute summit entitled "Why America Must Be Saved," making the case for the United States as the greatest hope in the struggle for freedom.[2] Writing favorably of the tea-party movement, Peruvian writer and recent Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa distinguished the American individualist tradition as stronger than the European one:
Monday, December 19, 2011
Threat to Canada's National Sovereignty From North American Homeland Security Perimeter / Politics / Canada
By: Global_Research
Dana Gabriel writes: After months of negotiations, the U.S. and Canada have unveiled new trade, regulatory and security initiatives to speed up the flow of goods and people across the border. The joint action plans provide a framework that goes beyond NAFTA and continues where the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) left off. This will take U.S.-Canada integration to the next level and is the pretext for a North American Homeland Security perimeter.