Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Wednesday, November 02, 2016
Regardless of Who Wins the US Election, Confidence in Washington DC Is ALREADY Shattered / Politics / US Politics
It just doesn't matter much whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins the election, at least in terms of gold and silver market fundamentals. That said, the contest itself is signaling something important precious metals investors should be watching intently.
This campaign is dragging whatever prestige is still associated with the Office of President into the mud. Few voters on either side bother to spend much time arguing the greatness of their candidate. When both Trump and Clinton carry more baggage than American Airlines, it's easier to focus on their opponent's shortcomings.
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Tuesday, November 01, 2016
The Fight Against The North American Union And Globalism Is In Standing Rock / Politics / US Politics
If you are one of the few people left watching the mainstream media, you’d think that the only thing currently going on has to do with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
There is much more going on than that, however. Aside from the ongoing military tensions with Russia and the faltering economy, there is a stand-off currently happening that is barely being reported on in the mainstream.
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Monday, October 31, 2016
Blame Government, Not Markets for Monopoly / Politics / Government Intervention
When Time-Warner announced it planned to merge with another major communications firm, many feared the new company would exercise near-total monopoly power. These concerns led some to call for government action to block the merger in order to protect both Time-Warner's competitors and consumers.
No, I am not talking about Time-Warner's recent announced plan to merge with AT&T, but the reaction to Time-Warner's merger with (then) Internet giant AOL in 2000. Far from creating an untouchable leviathan crushing all competitors, the AOL-Time-Warner merger fell apart in under a decade.
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Monday, October 31, 2016
Divergent Themes in Late 2016 / Politics / GeoPolitics
Despite the arrogance, hubris, and lying (obviously – its election season!), we have never seen a cycle that has be more absent in terms of policy details worthy of analysis. Outrageous claims about job creation, making America strong, and so forth are issued, but there is no substance. We have tried on numerous occasions to find enough specifics to even perform cursory analysis and it is just not there. It is very reminiscent of Nancy Pelosi telling America in 2010 that if they wanted to read the healthcare bill they had to pass it first. This is what passes for economic jurisprudence in the Republic the founders gave us all those years ago.
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Saturday, October 29, 2016
Washington Prepares For EMP While Internet Under Attack Since Transfer to the UN / Politics / Internet
Remember how we pondered whether the internet would be shut off (or highly censored) upon being transferred to the UN on October 1st? Just a few weeks later, large swathes of the internet went down. Coincidence or trial run?
We’ll get into that below.
Beforehand, however, there have been a number of new “Executive Orders” straight from the e-pen of Barack O’Bomber in the last few months of a “very strange” variety.
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Thursday, October 27, 2016
Obamacare Is Draining Our Financial Reserves / Politics / Healthcare Sector
Barack Obama will stop being president on January 20. He will leave behind the signature accomplishment of his eight years in office: Obamacare. Some see it is a disaster, and others see it as a triumph. But I think everybody agrees that there needs to be changes.
Yes, millions more people now have access to health insurance. That’s a very good thing—but access to health insurance is not the same as access to healthcare. And access to healthcare is not the same as access to affordable healthcare.
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Thursday, October 27, 2016
The US Is an Island of Stability in a Destabilizing World / Politics / GeoPolitics
Yet more proof that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Despite Americans’ pessimism, world-famous strategic analyst George Friedman thinks that the US is in pretty good shape while “the entire Eurasian landmass is in a state of failure.”
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Wednesday, October 26, 2016
The US Sent a Warning Message to Putin / Politics / GeoPolitics
BY JACOB L. SHAPIRO : US Vice President Joe Biden went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” recently and said the US was sending a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Biden’s words come after the US released a statement that it was “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”
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Monday, October 24, 2016
The US Is NOT a Low-Tax Jurisdiction / Politics / Taxes
BY JARED DILLIAN : Trump has been running his mouth about how the US is one of the highest-taxed countries in the world. This really makes the journalists upset. They say that it’s false. Every time he says this, they have a conniption.
How can it be true? How can we have higher taxes than Sweden—where taxes are so high that everything is free, there are ponies everywhere, and everyone is happy?
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Monday, October 24, 2016
Obama's Pivot to Asia Hits a Roadblock in the Philippines / Politics / GeoPolitics
While the mainstream media continues its obsessive reporting on the mud-slinging campaign for the White House, a dramatic development in China last week brought President Obama's "pivot to Asia" to a sudden halt. Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, while in Beijing, announced his country's "separation" from the United States. He told his Chinese audience, "Your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States ... both in military, but also economics."
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Monday, October 24, 2016
Ungovernability / Politics / Social Issues
Over the summer I introduced a two-fold assertion: 1) global economic growth is over (and has been for years and won’t come back for many more years) and 2) the end of growth marks the end of all centralization, including globalization. You can read all about these themes in “Globalization Is Dead, But The Idea Is Not” and “Why There is Trump” There are also extensive quotes of the second essay in wicked former UK MI6 spymaster Alastair Crooke’s “‘End of Growth’ Sparks Wide Discontent”.
When I say ‘the end of growth’, I don’t mean that in a Limits to Growth kind of way, or peak oil or things like that. Not because I seek to invalidate such things, but because I mean economics, finance only. Our economies simply ceased growing, and quite a few years ago. The only reason that is not, and very widely, recognized is the $21 trillion and change that central banks have conjured up ostensibly to kickstart a recovery that always remains just around the corner.
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Monday, October 17, 2016
Iceland Today, the US Tomorrow? / Politics / US Politics
During the 2008 economic crisis, Iceland's government froze offshore accounts held by foreign investors in that country's currency, the krona. Recently, the government of Iceland announced it would unfreeze the accounts if the account holders paid a voluntary "departure tax," which could be as high as 58 percent. Investors who choose not to pay the departure tax would have their investment "segregated" into special funds that only invest in CDs issued by Iceland's central bank. These CDs are expected to only provide a rate of return of at most 0.5 percent a year. So investors in offshore accounts can thus choose between having their money directly seized via the departure tax or indirectly seized via the inflation tax.
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Monday, October 17, 2016
From Piety to Pride to Pity, America's Racial Divide / Politics / Social Issues
As a boy growing up in northern Iowa in the early 60’s, I truly sympathized with the plight of Negro people in the United States. As an altar boy, I knew from Catholic teachings that all men are created equal.
The violence of white racism in other parts of the nation was plain for Americans to see on their home television screens. The injustice of Jim Crow laws was disturbing and outrageous. The brave nonviolent marches of the time seeking racial justice were inspiring to me. I was appalled and angered by the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi and then by the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Seek Your Independence: Anything Else Will Destroy You / Politics / Social Issues
Many people think The Dollar Vigilante is a fear mongering, pessimistic blog.
If you only read our headlines, then I can see how you would feel that way. But things are getting so bad that all we are doing is acknowledging the current state of affairs. The truth hurts.
After we began to analyze Shemitah and then Jubilee timelines, we became even more pessimistic because it was clear that even the deepest economic and military disasters were planned in advance.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
World War III On The Brink: War Will Continue Until It Triggers Economic Collapse / Politics / Economic Collapse
One of the main Shemitah Trends of late 2016 is the emerging war in the Middle East. It has every indication of turning into a conflict resembling World War III and day-by-day is becoming more dangerous and extreme.
This could be the war that finally triggers the great economic collapse being planned. Certainly, the storm clouds of war are gathering, as we’ve been covering.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Hillary: Deceit, Debt, Delusions (Part Two) / Politics / US Debt
In Part One of this article I addressed the deceit of Hillary Clinton and politicians of all stripes as they promise goodies they can never pay for, in order to buy votes and expand their power and control over our lives.
I created the chart below for an article I wrote in 2011 when the national debt stood at $14.8 trillion, with my projection of its growth over the next eight years. I predicted the national debt would reach $20 trillion in 2016 and was ridiculed by arrogant Keynesians who guaranteed their “stimulus” (aka pork) would supercharge the economy and result in huge tax inflows and drastically reduced deficits. As of today, the national debt stands at $19.7 trillion and is poised to reach $20 trillion by the time “The Hope & Change Savior” leaves office on January 20, 2017. I guess I wasn’t really a crazed pessimist after all. I guarantee the debt will reach $25 trillion by the end of the next presidential term, unless the Ponzi scheme collapses into financial depression and World War 3 (a strong probability).
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Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Trump Support Crashes to New Low of 6.4 on Betfair Odds Betting Market / Politics / US Presidential Election 2016
Trump's 2nd debate bounce that had seen Trump rally on Betfair's betting market from a low of 6.2 just prior to the debate to a post debate high of 4.8 has already apparently evaporated with Trump support literally crashing to a new low of 6.4 (current 6.2) as punters pile into placing bets on Hillary Clinton to win who now stands at a Betfair market price of just 1.21, her highest standing ever, which translates into just a £21 potential profit on every £100 bet, against Trump where every £100 converts into a potential £520 profit!
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Monday, October 10, 2016
Fifteen Years Into the Afghan War, Do Americans Know the Truth? / Politics / War on Terror
Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. There weren't any victory parades or photo-ops with Afghanistan's post-liberation leaders. That is because the war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan's Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaeda, the US-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban.
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Sunday, October 09, 2016
Pentagon Begins Low-Intensity Stealth War in Syria / Politics / Syria
“Last Wednesday, at a Deputies Committee meeting at the White House, officials from the State Department, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed limited military strikes against the (Assad) regime … One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment.” – Washington Post
Call it stealth warfare, call it poking the bear, call it whatever you’d like. The fact is, the Syrian war has entered a new and more dangerous phase increasing the chances of a catastrophic confrontation between the US and Russia.
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Thursday, October 06, 2016
The West Is Playing a Zero-Sum Game with ISIS / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism are a threat to the Western world. And so far, we have not really developed any serious defense mechanisms to deal with it. Rather, we are mostly just reacting to seemingly random events.
My friend Dr. Woody Brock is one of the most brilliant game theory specialists that I know. He regularly applies game theory to economics and investing. Here, he analyzes the conflict between the West and ISIS. He says that because of our very values, we end up playing the “game” in a way that leads us to continual frustration.
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