Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, April 02, 2013
The Technocracy Plague / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
CONFUSED ORIGINS
Theories about how Technocracy emerged - and became so powerful it is now a dominant theme in Europe's unraveling macrame player's nightmare mix of economic, financial and political crises - are as confused as its true origins. What we can be sure of is that defenders of what are basically unelected Old Boy administrators like to give their Technocrats a classic pedigree, claiming it can be traced back to Ancient Greece and Rome.
Tuesday, April 02, 2013
Fiat Currency Collapse / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Submissions
Lance Burnham writes: If all fiat currencies in history eventually collapse, how do we see it coming? Could it happen to the US dollar? How do you survive something like that?
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Tuesday, April 02, 2013
Cyprus Crisis the Story of All Western Nation-states / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Peter_Schiff
The news of the month comes from the large Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where Keynesian economic planning left the economy facing complete bankruptcy. The result was an unprecedented step forward in the financial collapse of the West: direct forfeiture of bank deposits.
Despite official protestations to the contrary, this fallout will spread to a bank near you.
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Monday, April 01, 2013
Canadian Bank Deposits As Safe As Cypriot Deposits / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Jeff_Berwick
Rest easy, Canadians, for your bank accounts are going to be made as safe as those bank accounts in Cyprus. Just take a look at the Canadian government's budget plan for 2013, particularly pages 144 and 145 of Economic Action Plan 2013. There the Canadian government promises to use Canadian deposits to save "systematicaly important" banks (emphasis ours).
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Monday, April 01, 2013
Cyprus Kills the Myth That European Monetary Union Is Benign / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: John_Mauldin
This piece from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is about as hard-hitting an analysis of Cyprus as I have read and really makes an interesting introduction to this week’s Outside the Box. No messing around:
Capital controls have shattered the monetary unity of EMU. A Cypriot euro is no longer a core euro….
The complicity of EU authorities in the original plan to violate insured bank savings – halted only by the revolt of the Cypriot parliament – leaves the suspicion that they will steal anybody’s money if leaders of the creditor states think it is in their immediate interest to do so.
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Monday, April 01, 2013
Solar Cycle Warnings / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
RECORD LOW SUNSPOT NUMBERS
For reasons including "pure politically correct", NASA has fought a losing battle - against reality - on the subject of Global Warming, which it feels obliged to believe in as a "scientifically correct" theory. Linked to this, quite directly, NASA has also battled against reality on the subject of sunspot frequency, size, location on the Sun's surface and other variables linked to sunspot cycles in this present Cycle 24 of approximately 11-year-long cycles. These have been accurately recorded since Cycle 1 set by convention between astronomers as starting in Feb 1755.
Monday, April 01, 2013
Ron Paul on the Great Cyprus Bank Robbery / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The dramatic recent events in Cyprus have highlighted the fundamental weakness in the European banking system and the extreme fragility of fractional reserve banking. Cypriot banks invested heavily in Greek sovereign debt, and last summer's Greek debt restructuring resulted in losses equivalent to more than 25 percent of Cyprus' GDP. These banks then took their bad investments to the government, demanding a bailout from an already beleaguered Cypriot treasury. The government of Cyprus then turned to the European Union (EU) for a bailout.
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Monday, April 01, 2013
What Have Central Bankers and Governments Learnt From Cyprus Crisis? / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: DK_Matai
Since 'The Great Unwind' began in 2007, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Yet, what is extremely important now is to focus attention on the most recent bank bail-ins by way of bailouts! No matter what the authorities say, what has been learnt cannot be unlearnt: the dangerous bail-in cat is now finally out of the bag! It remains to be seen how big and predatory this new cat can become.
Monday, April 01, 2013
Bedroom Tax - Coalition Government Attempts to Cure Britain of Benefits Disease Epidemic / Politics / UK Politics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Large swathes of the Britain are infected with the Benefits disease which results in wasted lives as instead of millions of people developing themselves to the best of their productive ability instead focus on a full time career of determining what needs to be done so as to engineer how to be in receipt of the most amount of benefits payments from the state, including not engaging in legal work, giving the impression that they are single parent families and not forgetting the diseases primary manifestation which is to churn out an near endless supply of children that many have little intention of properly looking after as countless mainstream media reports continue to illustrate.
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Sunday, March 31, 2013
Cyprus Bailout An 80% Wealth Confiscation Scheme? / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Graham_Summers
The news coming out of Cyprus only gets worse.
It was bad enough that the political class even promoted the idea of STEALING depositors’ savings. But now we’re finding out that they lied time and again about how much they’d take.
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Sunday, March 31, 2013
The Sword of Damocles Still Hangs Over Cyprus / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Patrick_Henningsen
PATHOS – While bureaucrats and technocrats in Nicosia have been busy trying agree on an even horrible haircut than the each of the previous Troika proposals, the EU’s deadly pathogen has begun to spread to the far corners of the country, hitting the southern seaside tourist town of Pathos.
Cyprus managed to avoid the initial danger of an all out bank run and the potential for mass rioting this week, which is probably down to the fact that no Cypriot wants to see their country become a lawless banana republic in the Mediterranean.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Forget too-big-to-fail Instead Kill the Fractional Reserve Banking System / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Colin_Twiggs
Interesting discussion on Bloomberg about currency-backed deposits and equity-funded loans.
The fractional reserve banking system is the primary cause of instability and asset bubbles in the global economy, allowing banks to create money out of thin air. Credit expansion above the rate of real GDP growth has only two possible consequences: inflation or asset bubbles. Both do serious long-term damage to the economy.
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Saturday, March 30, 2013
Bank Depositor “Haircuts”: Grand “Financial Theft” is the Money Market’s “New Normal” / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Stephen_Lendman
On March 29, Cyprus Mail said banks opened Thursday. They did so amid calm.
Long lines queued. People waited patiently. A feared stampede didn’t materialize. Whether it’s the calm before the storm remains to be seen.
Looting Cypriot bank accounts reflects the new normal. It set a precedent. It did so for Europe. More on that below.
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Saturday, March 30, 2013
Crony Government Is The Threat / Politics / Government Intervention
By: Andrew_McKillop
DOCTRINAL DEFAULT
Some, like Brandon Smith of Alt-market blog (http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1417-big-government-an-unnecessary-evil-that-should-be-abolished) claim the basic problem is as simple as the fundamental dichotomy, even schizophrenia of all persons who on the one hand will defend freedom of action and choice but want sure, reliable laws, order and authority. Smith says it is a split between those persons who value freedom regardless of risk or pain, and those who value slavish obedience in a desperate bid to avoid risk and pain.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Zombie Apocolypse By Ben Bernanke / Politics / US Politics
By: Submissions
Lance Burnham writes:
Is it a coincidence that the rise in popularity of zombie genre movies and shows( ie AMC Walking dead) is so high? In my opinion, it is a social manefestation of
what is happening economically in all the advanced economies of the west, led by the master of deception Ben Bernanke.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
As Cyprus Dust Settles, Talk of Reciprocity and Whispers of Retribution / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Patrick_Henningsen
On Friday at high noon the banks of Cyprus opened for the second day in a row and with minimal queues, and almost no trouble from a citizenry who have become the latest abused poster child for the global financial banking syndicate’s campaign of financial destruction through Europe.
The tension fueled by the fear of financial loss and hardship was palpable yesterday morning when the banks finally opened up after 15 days, but no major incidents took place in Nicosia. The Cypriots surprised the world again on Friday, re-enforcing their reputation as the most calm, cool and collected member of the European Union. This is probably down to the fact that this particular Mediterranean civilisation, in the words of one old resident, “has been occupied for 3,000 years”.
Friday, March 29, 2013
US and UK Depositors Bank Confiscation Scheme Imminent Risk / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Ellen_Brown
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The Natural Selection of American Citizens / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Fabian de Silva writes: Recently I read about a poll, which I believe was from Gallup, that asked if the president can target US citizens for assassination without due process on US soil. Seventy-eight percent of the respondents (all Americans) said, “Sure it’s fine with me if the president wants to murder me with a drone.” How nice to have nearly 8 out of 10 Americans be so altruistic, apparently believing that the president must have some valuable reason to murder them, so it’s okay with them to sacrifice their lives in the name of protection against terrorists, or something, I guess. It’s so noble for so many Americans to valiantly offer up their lives as martyrs to the president if their deaths will keep them safer, or something, I guess (72 virgins?).
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Follies of Higher-Ed - Universities provide circuses but no bread / Politics / Education
By: William_Anderson
Modern American Higher Education is a PR juggernaut; a knowledge juggernaut it is not, and watching universities trying to become "relevant" often can be entertaining – if it were not so pathetic. Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton is one of those places that started small and wants to be relevant, but instead has become pitiful.
The university itself is a place that rose from tiny beginnings but now is well-known because of a couple of things. The first is for something that recently occurred in a classroom. The second is for an inexcusable act in which the university has gained a corporate sponsor that would make Blackwater look like a good choice.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Let’s Get Cyprused! / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Andy_Sutton
There is little doubt that the past two weeks have brought about dramatic changes in most circles regarding the way people look at banks, bank deposits, and the monetary situation in general. This year’s ‘Ides of March’ will no doubt go down in history as a pivotal period where once again our world changed forever. One would be right in stating that there have been many such watershed events in the past decade and a half and that alone should be even more persuasive to those who believe we still live in the bull market of the 1980s. This is not your father’s market, nor his country, nor his world.