Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, April 22, 2013
Ron Paul - How Congress Exploits Our Fears to Take Our Liberty / Politics / US Politics
This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of "safety." Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal "background checks" to gun show sales and other private transfers dominated the debate. While the background check amendment failed to pass, proponents of gun control have made it clear they will continue their efforts to enact new restrictions on gun ownership into law.
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Sunday, April 21, 2013
Cyprus Crisis Prompts Russia to Create its Own Tax Haven / Politics / Russia
Since the time of the financial disaster in Cyprus, Russia has been cherishing the idea of creating its own offshore. It was previously suggested the special tax area should be created on the territory of Russia's Far East. A new idea has appeared now - to create an offshore zone on the base of the International Investment Bank (IIB). Many analysts were left perplexed with such a suggestion.
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Saturday, April 20, 2013
How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession / Politics / Central Banks
I thank Fan Zhiqiang for his decision to translate Panderer to Power. His great attention to detail in asking me to explain dozens of phrases and terms for a Chinese audience reminded me of how the book concentrates on the United States. The influence of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's actions spread around the world. It would have been a much longer book, though, if I wrote of how United States' policy influenced China (for example), other than writing of it in reference to the United States.
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Friday, April 19, 2013
Obamacare's War on Full-Time Jobs Will Sucker Punch Economy / Politics / Employment
David Zeiler writes: Obamacare's rules regarding hours worked and employer-sponsored healthcare coverage have entire industries looking at cutting down on their number of full-time employees in favor of more part-time employees.
Large industries affected include hotels, restaurants and retailers, as well as small businesses of all stripes.
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Friday, April 19, 2013
Protect Your Wealth by Internationalizing Your Assets / Politics / US Politics
Since writing The International Man in 1976, I've had quite a bit to say about internationalizing yourself. The book's subtitle was Making the Most of Your Personal Freedom and Financial Opportunity Around the World; but in going over past editions of our newsletters, I find that most of what I've written in recent years has been about the financial aspects of expatriation. Now seems a good time to confront the rest of the subject head on – the reasons to very seriously consider leaving your home country, and to do so now, not next year.
The International Man is long out of print, of course, and only available through used bookstores and finders (including amazon.com). While I'm obviously biased, it's actually still an excellent read, although the world is a different place and I've learned a few things since 1976. The book was directed to Americans, but found a fairly broad international market – becoming, among other things, the biggest-selling book in the history of Rhodesia. That, in and of itself, provides a bit of an object lesson in how things can change, I think.
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Thursday, April 18, 2013
In CO2 We (Didnt) Trust / Politics / Climate Change
ALL THE PROOF WE NEED
Recent articles by myself have said the obvious - the view of any sane unbiased person - that the European Union's "faith in carbon" was as slippery, unsure and worthless as its "commitment' to the convertible go-anywhere euro. It is now not convertible if you are Cypriot or have a Cypriot bank account, in which case any amount above 100 000 euro in that account will be punitively taxed and any amount exceeding a few thousand euros (the amounts change, by decree, quite often) cannot be legally taken outside the country.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Taxation Is Theft / Politics / Taxes
Andrew P. Napolitano writes: With a tax code that exceeds 72,000 pages in length and consumes more than six billion person hours per year to determine taxpayers’ taxable income, with an IRS that has become a feared law unto itself, and with a government that continues to extract more wealth from every taxpaying American every year, is it any wonder that April 15th is a day of dread in America? Social Security taxes and income taxes have dogged us all since their institution during the last century, and few politicians have been willing to address these ploys for what they are: theft.
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Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Boston Massacre Theories / Politics / Social Issues
Hours after the tragic massacre at the Boston Marathon on April 15, web writers and bloggers filled the internet with "theories", and professional new organizations did likewise.
Alex Spillius of UK's The Telegraph summarized these theories the morning after: "The first is that domestic right-wing extremists were responsible. The second is that Islamists, either foreign or American, and linked to al-Qaeda spiritually or practically, were to blame. A third possibility is killers with no ideological agenda whatsoever." However, Mr. Spillius, sitting 4,800 km from Back Bay Boston, strikingly missed theory Number Four: the bombing was a "false flag attack" by the US Government. Clearly, he didn't have full insight into the American Right, especially the faction called "Truthers" who generally believe the U.S. government commits acts of terrorism against itself to justify public support for state repression, i.e., beginning with a "cover-up" of 9/11.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The Government Wants Your Money or Your Life / Politics / Taxes
April 15th is a horrible day, because it sums up all the wealth destruction called taxation that we are subjected to all year long.
As Murray Rothbard pointed out, taxation is the worst method of looting us. Inflation is destructive, of course, and it might make a loaf of bread cost $10. But at least you get a loaf of bread. With taxation, you get nothing—except theft and other violations of our civil liberties.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Cyprus Too Small To Fail / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
The political elites in Brussels can once again breathe a sigh of relief. Cyprus did not implode and take the euro with it. In many ways, the latest drama in Cyprus followed a familiar pattern: the so-called troika of European leadership (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) flew to a country on Europe’s periphery to rescue its failing banks, that country’s leadership balked, and then eventually caved to Brussels’s demands.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
China and North Korea: A Tangled Partnership / Politics / North Korea
China appears to be growing frustrated with North Korea's behavior, perhaps to the point of changing its long-standing support for Pyongyang. As North Korea's largest economic sponsor, Beijing has provided the North Korean regime with crucial aid for years and offered it diplomatic protection against the United States and other powers. To outsiders, China's alliance with North Korea seems like a Cold War relic with little reason for persisting into the 21st century. However, Beijing's continued support for Pyongyang is not rooted in shared ideology or past cooperation nearly as much as in China's own security calculations.
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Monday, April 15, 2013
Making Sense of U.S. Money / Politics / Fiat Currency
What possibly has happened to the finest invention in the long history of nation-states?
With the Greatest Depression grinding along the deepest of cliffs, with America’s Afghan wartime ally Harmid Karzai accusing US forces of homicide bombings to spread terror in his country and with our President no better able to stage-manage the federal sequester than he has accomplished with the general economy, the present state of affairs seems dire for the US monolith, a quite Soviesque look actually.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Ron Paul - Why Can't We All Travel To Cuba? / Politics / US Politics
Earlier this month, entertainers Jay-Z and Beyoncé were given a license by the US government to travel to Cuba. Because it is not otherwise legal for Americans to travel to Cuba, this trip was only permitted as a "cultural exchange" by the US Treasury Department. Many suspect that the permission was granted at least partly due to the fame, wealth, and political connections of the couple.
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Sunday, April 14, 2013
Europe's Thatcher Clones Reap What She Sowed / Politics / European Union
LAYER CAKE OF ILLUSION
The European press and media has given massive attention to the death of Thatcher, her funeral arrangements and who pays for them, the outbreak of a lot less than respect for her memory in Britain, and the supposed "like her or loathe her" game-change that Thatcher's brand of liberal economic policies produced in Britan and Europe. This past week, you could often tell the political slant of a newspaper from its treatment of the issue, and even the choice of Thatcher's picture that editors made for their front page. UK paper ommitted to exalting Thatcher, like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail carried pictures of Thatcher against a dark backdrop with what looked like a halo around her head.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
What if QE3 Money Actually had to be Printed? / Politics / Quantitative Easing
Richard Moyer writes: As we speak, the US Federal Reserve, led by Ben Bernanke and his Raiders, is printing a not-too-shabby $85 billion a month.
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Sunday, April 14, 2013
The Great U.S. Postal Fraud / Politics / US Politics
"One of the things the government can’t do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.” – Lee Iaccoca
You may have heard that the U.S. Post Office lost $16 BILLION last year. You may also have heard that Congress snuck a requirement into a bill that had nothing to do with the Post Office, mandating that they must deliver on Saturdays, even though eliminating Saturday delivery would save the Post Office $2 BILLION per year. Congress evidently can’t read a financial statement or interpret a chart. I’m sure the trends detailed on this chart will reverse themselves shortly.
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
Quantifornication and the American Spring / Politics / US Politics
Ironic isn't it? A record number of people on food stamps yet new highs for stock indices. Below is an interesting question posed by Michael Snyder. The answer is very important to your future.
Read full article... Read full article..."If the economy is getting better, then why does poverty in America continue to grow so rapidly? Yes, the stock market has been hitting all-time highs recently, but also the number of Americans living in poverty has now reached a level not seen since the 1960s. Yes, corporate profits are at levels never seen before, but so is the number of Americans on food stamps. Yes, housing prices have started to rebound a little bit (especially in wealthy areas), but there are also more than a million public school students in America that are homeless...should we measure our economic progress by the false stock market bubble that has been inflated by Ben Bernanke's reckless money printing, or should we measure our economic progress by how the poor and the middle class are doing?" - Michael Snyder, infowars.com
Friday, April 12, 2013
The Fleecing of Bank Depositors Has Only Just Begun / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
The story broke from nowhere and caught many off guard. To others it was the manifestation of previously unspoken fears. It was, and is, by far the biggest story of 2013, the decade, and quite possibly the millennium. It was the crossing of another Rubicon. For years and decades, the financial piranhas had wandered around the edges, nibbling a little here and a little there. Inflation, bailouts, and other monetary mischief had already eroded the value of most currencies. But never before had they actually made the boldest of moves – to steal what were always considered to be the most liquid and secure of funds – bank deposits. In a weekend, the liquid became the illiquid and the secure became the repossessed. Hey, let’s not split hairs here, the money was stolen. The media dutifully came up with another new buzzword – the ‘bail-in’. Talk about putting a positive spin on outright theft.
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Friday, April 12, 2013
North Korean Nuclear Threat Always Imminent / Politics / Propaganda
NUCLEAR ROULETTE
North Korea’s young president-for-life may be creating a crisis atmosphere, in a strategy to force the US and other Security Council "declared nuclear" nations to recognize his nation as a nuclear weapons power. Alternate reasons for the belligerant North Korean stance are not in short supply - and notably include internal or domestic political issues, ironically due to slowly growing, but nevertheless real economic improvement in this totally isolated country.
Friday, April 12, 2013
The Ugly Truth About Bank Bail-ins, Magic Wands and Con Men / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
Shah Gilani writes: Last week, I was emailed a link to Barry Ritholtz's "The Big Picture" site.
That's where David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Cumberland Advisors, posted a piece on the "bail-in" of Cypriot banks, versus the bailout fixes that we're used to seeing.
As it was an email, a lot of people were copied on it. And a lot of them hit "Reply All," and forwarded their reactions and comments.
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