Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Friday, May 04, 2012
Forget Global Warming And Move Up To Real Climate Change / Politics / Climate Change
Ambassador Richard H. Jones, deputy director of the IEA, opened the IEA's April conference by-lined 'Clean Energy Progress', by saying global temperatures are "probably" going to rise by "6 degrees celsius" by about 2050. The main problem, apart from this being totally impossible - barring massive meteorite attack or massive volcanic eruptions - is that fewer and fewer persons believe this story.
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Friday, May 04, 2012
The Fate of the Eurozone Hangs on Sunday's French Elections / Politics / Euro-Zone
Martin Hutchinson writes: It now looks as though Nicolas Sarkozy's days are numbered. In the balance lies the fate of the Eurozone itself.
It appears Socialist Francois Hollande will win the French election runoff on Sunday and that June's legislative elections will give the Socialists a powerful position in France's parliament.
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Thursday, May 03, 2012
Americans and Their Totalitarian Government / Politics / US Politics
Scott Lazarowitz writes: Morning in American - That was Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign slogan, which manipulated the voters to give Reagan a second term of deficit-spending, expanding the welfare/warfare state, and further enlarging Big Government.
Barack Obama will do similar manipulating of the masses.
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Thursday, May 03, 2012
The Gold Standard is the Pet Peeve of the Power Elite / Politics / Central Banks
Ben Bernanke journeyed across town to give a 4-part seminar to 30 undergraduates at George Washington University.
This was clearly a public relations stunt. Why would the head of the world's most powerful central bank lecture to 30 undergraduates? This was not quite the equivalent of George W. Bush reading "My Pet Goat" to third graders, but it was close. Think of it as "My Pet Peeve." His first speech was an overview of central banking. He used PowerPoint to create slides. The presentation had 49 slides.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Big vs Small Bank Loans / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
If your Main Street business needs capital and seeks a loan, your prospects are slim to none. It is evident that the real economy has never recovered from the collapse of the financial system. TARP was a temporary rescue of the large money center banks. For the local community banks, the massive give away has strings attached and penalties to be paid. Not much consolation for a small business endeavor that is desperate for cash and an improved business environment.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Swiss National Bank Loses 10% of GDP in Gold trade! / Politics / Gold and Silver 2012
We have heard this morning that the Swiss National Bank or SNB has almost doubled its reserves of pound sterling or British pounds to £14.52 billion in the first quarter of 2012 as they try to diversify away from the euro. With that in mind we dug a bit deeper into the activities of this central bank and especially their gold sales that took place between 1999 and 2008.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
A National Network for U.S. Manufacturing Innovation? / Politics / US Politics
It’s no secret American manufacturing is in crisis, and that its problems form a significant component of our present economic mess. I’ve written before about how the Obama administration may (may!) be starting to get serious about the problem.
Another small but significant data point on the question of whether the administration is serious took place this last week: the government’s new National Network for Manufacturing Innovation held its first conference, designed to elicit public input on how this program will be designed and run.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Economic Austerity Fires Voter Vengeance Against Euro / Politics / Economic Austerity
Over the last few years, as the debt crisis has engulfed Europe, the risk that has most concerned economists has been the possibility that the so-called 'olive growing countries' of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, joined by Ireland (and known as the PIIGS) might leave, or be forced out, of the Eurozone. The possibility that Germany may choose to leave, however, is something that has received far less consideration. Though there can be little doubt the euro would survive without the Greeks or the Spanish, there is greater doubt of the euro surviving without the Germans solidly behind it. As the world's second largest reserve currency, the collapse of the euro would precipitate a major international monetary crisis.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
The Inflation Lovers’ Spat / Politics / Inflation
Two lovers of the notion that inflation can cure everything that ails an economy recently squared off in a battle over who adores counterfeiting the most. Paul Krugman, who probably has a statue of Al Capone at his bedside, chided Ben Bernanke in a New York Times Magazine article for his unwillingness to raise the Fed’s inflation target in order to reduce the unemployment rate. The recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics penned an article titled “Earth to Ben Bernanke” on April 24th. In it he encouraged Bernanke to embrace the idea that more money printing can save the world by writing, “Higher expected inflation would aid an economy.”
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Britain's Strategy of Allying Closely With U.S. Whilst Hedging Bets in Europe / Politics / UK Politics
Britain controlled about one-fourth of the Earth's land surface and one-fifth of the world's population in 1939. Fifty years later, its holdings outside the British Isles had become trivial, and it even faced an insurgency in Northern Ireland.
Britain spent the intervening years developing strategies to cope with what poet Rudyard Kipling called its "recessional," or the transient nature of Britain's imperial power. It has spent the last 20 years defining its place not in the world in general but between continental Europe and the United States in particular.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
It Can't Happen America? It Already Did! / Politics / Fiat Currency
Tim Case writes: "Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
If there are two things that can be said with all confidence they are that throughout American history the American public has had and continues to have an enduring commitment to owning firearms. Second is the government’s unerring ability to be the sole cause of economic calamities, regardless of how vibrant the markets.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Is Europe Sailing on the Titanic? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Patrick J. Buchanan writes: U.S. growth in the first quarter fell to 2.2 percent, a disappointment. But in Europe, that news would have caused general rejoicing.
For consider the gathering crisis on the old continent.
With negative growth now for six months, Britain has fallen back into recession. "I don't think we're anywhere near halfway through the eurozone crisis," said Prime Minister David Cameron this weekend.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Brewing a Conflict with China, Military-Industrial Complex's Latest Dastardly Scheme / Politics / US Politics
Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China’s territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States’ national interests.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Economics Battle! Krugman vs. Ron Paul on Helicopters, Gold and More / Politics / Economic Theory
Sparks flew when Paul Krugman and Congressman Ron Paul faced off today on Bloomberg TV's "Street Smart" with Trish Regan and Adam Johnson....
Watch below to hear Ron Paul's ideas about staying in the Republican race...whether he would support Romney as nominee...how U.S. monetary policy is like the Roman Empire and why there should be legal competition to the U.S. dollar (yes, gold and silver).
Hear NYT columnist Krugman fire back on the role U.S. government should play in regulating the market economy...what economist Milton Friedman really thought about government stimulus...and what is the right level for debt for U.S. taxpayers (that's you).
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Monday, April 30, 2012
Sarkozy's Economic Austerity Gamble: The Failure Of Neoliberal Snakeoil / Politics / Economic Austerity
Outgoing president Sarkozy of France has only a few days to go before his come-uppance. Barring a miracle, pollsters say he is beaten by Parti Soialiste candidate Francois Hollande, but much more than a personal humiliation and a disaster for Sarkozy's fragile UMP party, a victory for Hollande will signal huge challenges for the "only possible policy" of austerity and mass unemployment, forced on the rest of Europe by German chancellor Merkel. In Greece and Spain, and other PIIGS countries this has already had disastrous economic and fiscal impacts - let alone the social damage. For sure and certain failure - either in growth or in recesssion - neoliberalism is above all reliable. Discussing and dissecting this flabby set of laisser-faire slogans and economic horse medecine has become daily fare in French media, throughout the long presidential compaign, almost certainly radicalizing the voting public and intensifying hostility to "Mrs Thatcher's purulent fantasies of 30 years ago", as one leading anti-Sarkozy candidate, Jean-Luc Melanchon has put it.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, April 30, 2012
Ron Paul on the Costs of War / Politics / US Politics
This month Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced the addition of some 1,900 mental health nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to its existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff in attempt to get a handle on the epidemic of suicides among combat veterans. Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale - and Congress lets them get away with it - the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members. In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths. According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40 percent over last year.
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Monday, April 30, 2012
Don't End the Fed, Mend the Fed / Politics / Central Banks
Congressman Ron Paul has written a book entitled End the Fed. I have to admit that I have not read his book. But I have read many of Congressman Paul's excellent (in my opinion) essays on monetary theory and policy. Based on the essays I have read, Congressman Paul likely argues in End the Fed that the Fed and other central banks have created monetary "mischief" in the past and are likely to continue to do so in the future. Because of this monetary mischief, I assume that Congressman Paul would like to replace the Fed and other central banks with some form of a gold standard.
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Monday, April 30, 2012
The Québec Student Strike: From ‘Maple Spring’ to Summer Rebellion? / Politics / Canada
In Montréal, where I live, and across the Canadian province of Québec, there is a growing and expanding student movement which emerged as a strike in February against the provincial government’s plan to increase the cost of university tuition by $325 per year for the next five years, for a total of $1,625. The students have been seeking and demanding a halt to the tuition hike in order to keep higher education accessible, a concept that the province of Québec alone has held onto with greater strength than any other province in Canada. The government continues to dismiss and deride the students, meeting their protests with batons, teargas bombs, and mass arrests. The universities in Québec are complicit with the government in their repression of students and the struggle for basic democratic rights, bringing in private security firms to patrol and harass students in the schools. While the university administrations claim they are ‘neutral’ on the issue of tuition hikes, privately, the boards of governors are made up of bankers and business executives who lobby the government to increase tuition. After all, in April of 2007 – five years ago – Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank Group), one of Canada’s ‘big five’ banks which dominate the economy, released a “plan for prosperity” for the province of Quebec, which recommended, among other things, raising the cost of tuition: “by raising tuition fees but focusing on increased financial assistance for those in need, post secondary education (PSE) institutions will be better-positioned to prosper and provide world-class education and research.”[1]
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Monday, April 30, 2012
Beyond Zero Emissions: What's Wrong with Big Green Tech / Politics / Renewable Energy
Ilargi: The following is a guest post by friend of TAE (and our kind present host) John Isaacs-Young, who is active in Transition Sunshine Coast, a region located about halfway up the eastern coast of Australia. There's a lot more wrong with Big Green Tech - and the Beyond Zero Emissions movement - than the specific points John addresses here (and he knows that too), but that's a story for another day.
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Sunday, April 29, 2012
Obama’s Veil Of Tears / Politics / US Politics
Has a new leader of a great nation ever held such unlimited potential for his country and for the world?
The celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night after the 2008 campaign was by far the highest milestone in the magical Barack Obama movement so far, full of hope and equality, across all boundaries of people, all aimed at ending the special interest blockades in Washington that have stopped effective solutions for far too long. It seemed the nation was united in a rolling tide this young family man had somehow created from pure passion and intellect. Barack Obama had crushed the Republicans and even the Clintons. He was the peace candidate for the world.