Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Understanding Money and War- Part I / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Robert_Bradshaw
In medieval times, the goldsmith business developed in much of Europe (with involvement of people whom had been known earlier as money changers). By the Middle Ages, goldsmithing was an established reality. As gold was physical, heavy and bulky to store, but yet of great value, many people found that they lacked the means to store and safeguard it. Goldsmiths provided this service. When gold was stored with the goldsmith, he would write a receipt for it which was given to the gold owner. Since the gold owner could get his gold upon surrender of the receipt, the receipt was as good as gold. Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, February 14, 2009
A Short History of U.S. Government Handouts / Politics / Economic Stimulus
By: Stephen_Lendman
Global economies are withering while Washington conceives "Financial Recovery Plan(s) from Hell," according to economist Michael Hudson in his latest February 11 article. Bankers demand more trillions, "or (they'll) plunge the economy into financial crisis." What they want they'll get, and here's where things now stand. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Obama's Opening Salvo Fails to Inspire Confidence in Financial Markets / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Peter_Schiff
There is nearly universal agreement that the opening salvo of the Obama Administration's campaign to restore health to the financial system, delivered this week by new Treasury Secretary Geithner, fell with a loud and ugly thud. The most common criticism is that the announcement was short on detail. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the new Administration intends to push spending back up to pre-crash levels and to fill the entire credit void that has disappeared into the black hole of the American financial system. Whether or not the prior levels of spending and lending were justified by market conditions then, or now, appears to be largely unexamined. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Geithners Bank Bailout Plan Gibberish "Not Ready for Prime Time" / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Mike_Whitney
Tuesday was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's coming out party. He was supposed to outline Obama's Financial Stability Plan to the Senate Banking Committee. Wall Street was looking for clarity, but it didn't get it. Instead, they got 25 minutes of political posturing and blather. The markets went into freefall. By the end of the day, the Dow was down 382 points. It was a complete fiasco. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Financial Markets Disappointment at Geithner’s Bank Bailout Plan / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
By: Money_and_Markets
Mike Larson writres: This was supposed to be a great week for Washington and Wall Street. The administration had leaked in advance that it was going to put a full-court press on for its stimulus and bailout programs. That led to intense anticipatory buying by the stock market bulls.
Monday night's primetime news conference with President Barack Obama only heightened anticipation ahead of the main events on Tuesday: A big speech from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and testimony before Congress by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
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Friday, February 13, 2009
Sociopaths Lacking Intellectual Capacity Bashing Banks / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
By: Oxbury_Research
The whole thing is ridiculous, all of it. I listened to Geithner release his “plan” to unfreeze lending markets. I watched some of the charades on Capital Hill involving the bank CEOs and their testimony. Lastly, I saw the vote and reaction of politicians on the most recent bit of financial socialism. What a mess… Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Davos and Debt Denial: The Last Gasp of Capitalism / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Darryl_R_Schoon
In an age of illusion, the guise of truth is often heresy - The gathering of the world's economic elites in Davos , Switzerland is a reflection of the reigning power dynamic of the modern world. Officially titled, the World Economic Forum, Davos is sponsored by the world's most powerful and wealthy corporations and presents itself as a “not-for-profit” entity. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Will the Economic Stimulus and TARP Banking System Rescue Work? / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Hans_Wagner
So far, the government has spent $350 billion of the TARP funds to shore up a number of financial institution's equity position. They also loaned money to GM and Chrysler. All this money to help stave off a worse condition. Now the U.S. Congress is about to pass legislation to help stimulate the economy amounting to more than $800 billion. The U.S. is encountering one of the worse recessions ever and the employment picture is getting worse by the week. Moreover, the Federal Reserve has lowered rates to zero to 0.25% range and they are buying securities of many types expanding their balance sheet dramatically. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Global Food Crisis as Technological Advances / Politics / Food Crisis
By: Oxbury_Research
By 2050, according to the World Bank (WB), global population is expected to increase by 3 billion people. The global population is always growing (I'm almost done being Captain Obvious), and a direct result of that growth comes the WB's expectation that food demand will double by 2030 from current levels. While more people are eating more food, farmland remains finite. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Geithner's Bailout Plan: Another Recipe for Financial Disaster / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: By relying on asset-backed securities, large amounts of leverage and unregulated hedge funds as its key elements, the U.S. Treasury Department's overhaul of the banking-system bailout plan is essentially relying on some of the same ingredients that caused the financial crisis in the first place.
This time around, someone should take the punch bowl away before the party even gets started. Otherwise, as Yogi Berra once said, it will be “ Déjà vu all over again.”
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Thursday, February 12, 2009
Why the Bank Bailouts are Not Working / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: MoneyWeek
800bn, 1trn, 2trn – just think of a number. Then double it. That seems to be the approach behind the latest batch of bail-outs.
To 'save' their economy, America 's politicians are churning out even more 'rescue' packages. All with more noughts attached. Now they've just "placed an eye-watering $2.3trn price tag on bailing out the US banking system", says The Independent's Stephen Foley , opening up "a second front in the battle to pull the country out of recession".
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama Continues Bush Foreign Policy on Europe, Iran and Russia / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
While the Munich Security Conference brought together senior leaders from most major countries and many minor ones last weekend, none was more significant than U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This is because Biden provided the first glimpse of U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama. Most conference attendees were looking forward to a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration . What was interesting about Biden's speech was how little change there has been in the U.S. position and how much the attendees and the media were cheered by it. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama's War on Terror / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
The language is softened and deceptive. The strategy and tactics are not. The "war on terror" continues. Promised change is talk, not policy. Just look at Obama's "war cabinet," discussed in an earlier article. It assures: -- the "strongest military on the planet" by outspending all other countries combined;
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
A Short History of the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict: Past Is Prologue / Politics / Middle East
By: Stephen_Lendman
Its roots are from the late 19th century when Theodor Herzl founded modern Zionism at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel writes: Zionism seeks "the restoration of tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militaralized and aggressive state. (It) cut Jews off from (their) history and led to a fateful identity of interests with antisemitism (becoming) the only thing that united them. (It) fell into the ways of imperialist expansion and militarism, and showed signs of the fascist malignancy."
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
U.S. $2trillion Borrowing Binge May Stop Foreigners Lending / Politics / US Debt
By: Submissions
Robert Freeman writes:
Fixing the Economy: Of Fences and Futures - A man calls a carpenter and says that his dog has been getting out. He instructs the carpenter to raise the fence in the back yard by a foot. The carpenter does the job. The next day, the man calls the carpenter back and says that the dog is still getting out. He tells the carpenter to add another foot to the top of the fence. The carpenter does so.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama-Geithner Financial Crisis Recovery Plan from Hell / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Submissions
Michael Hudson writes: Tuesday's announcement of the Obama-Geithner recovery plan is basically an extension of the Bush-Paulson plan – yet more giveaways to financial insiders, with a view to concentrating the U.S. banking system into a cartel of just a few large banks. This is not altogether bad news for the still relatively healthy part of the banking system (healthy in the sense of still avoiding negative equity). Smaller, less troubled banks will be bought out by the large “troubled” ones, to the personal financial benefit of their stockholders. This cannot solve today's financial problem: the fact that the debt overhead far exceeds the economy's ability to pay. In fact, it will spread the distortions that the large banks have introduced, until the entire system presumably looks like Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Will Obama Capping Executive Pay Create a Better Banking System? / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
By: Money_Morning
Martin Hutchinson writes: By revamping the banking sector's compensation system, and creating a salary cap of $500,000 for the top executives at institutions that accepted federal bailout money, new U.S. President Barack Obama could be launching a reform movement that helps make the American financial system worthwhile to invest in again. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
$550 Billion Electronic Run On U.S. Banks Nearly Triggered Financial Collapse / Politics / Credit Crisis 2008
By: Submissions
At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour and threatened a further $5 trillion to be drawn out triggering a total collapse of the Financial System, which prompted Hank Paulson's emergency $700 billion TARP bailout action.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Capitalism's Self-inflicted Financial Apocalypse / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
By: Submissions
Michael Parenti writes: After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.
The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Pelosi Economic Stimulus Casts Shadow Over Obama, America and World / Politics / Economic Stimulus
By: John_Browne
In a sign that may reveal much about the current deal-making environment in Washington, House speaker Nancy Pelosi has outmaneuvered the Obama Administration in the design of the massive $827 billion so-called Economic Stimulus Package. With the collusion of three moderate Republican Senators - Collins, Snowe and Specter - Pelosi may succeed in steering President Obama into supporting a package with which he may secretly disagree.Read full article... Read full article...
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