Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Impotence, Leverage and Central Banking / Politics / Central Banks
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Some of our readers have been wondering why we spend so much time covering the situation in Europe. The relevance of the European situation is not perhaps immediately obvious to those geographically far removed, with a temptation to ascribe the problems of the European periphery to locally-specific conditions.
However, the global economy is exceptionally integrated, and what happens in one location all too readily leads to financial contagion - the spread of fear, from one asset class to another, or from one country to another in the case of sovereign debt risk.
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Friday, December 14, 2012
Climate Change Policy - Heating Up, Melting Down / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
HOTTING UP THE STAKES
In January 2011, the USA's space agency NASA, which has become one of the world's most outspoken advocates of global warming crisis, and the US oceanic and atmopheric agency NOAA, which says that its mission is "to enrich life through science", jointly announced that current temperature readings show that 2010 tied with 2005 as the hottest year in recorded human history. Their conclusion in 2011, and today is that greater global warming and "related climate change" is unarguable and certain from a scientific perspective.
Friday, December 14, 2012
The Fiscal Spliff / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Redmond Weissenberger writes: “My stock answer was that medical marijuana would start to be legalized in 10 years and that marijuana would start to be legalized in 20 years, probably during an economic crisis.” — Mark Thornton
Drug laws are probably the most inane (well maybe a close second to environmentalism in today’s world: San Diego Residents Face 6 Years In Prison For Washing Their Car) expression of the power of the state. Typically, the average person rationalizes laws in this way: “I am law abiding, and I respect the law as it is just, therefore I am not worried about the law applying to me.” Also, they generally buy into the state’s justifications of why a particular law has been put in place.
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Friday, December 14, 2012
HSBC, the “favourite” Bank of Mexican Drug Cartel, Above-the-Law Global Banking Cartel / Politics / Banksters
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
In what the New York Times declared as a “dark day for the rule of law” on December 11, 2012, HSBC, the world’s second largest bank, failed to be indicted for extensive criminal activities in laundering money to and from regimes under sanctions, Mexican drug cartels, and terrorist organizations (including al-Qaeda). While admitting culpability, and with guilt assured, state and federal authorities in the United States decided not to indict the bank “over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system.” Instead, HSBC agreed to pay a $1.92 billion settlement.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Freedom of Conscience: To What Extent? / Politics / Religion
By: David_Gordon
In this very thoughtful book, Brian Leiter calls our attention to a paradox. In most liberal democracies, including the United States, religious believers often are exempt from laws that violate the tenets of their religion. By contrast, parallel claims of exemption on non-religious grounds tend to receive less consideration.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Scandalous Market Regulators Emerge After Every Economic Crisis / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Mark_Thornton
The Democratic Party had its message on the economy well-prepared for the recent election. From President Obama to his campaign directors to campaign advisor-hacks, all the way down to the local party patsies, the message was uniform and well rehearsed. “We do not want to return to the failed economic policies of four years ago. Those policies caused the economic crisis that almost put the country back in a great depression. We cannot return to the naïve policy that deregulation is good for the economy.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Mayan End of the World 2012 Prediction, Economy and Elite Use of Religion to Control / Politics / Religion
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The world will end on 21st December! Or so the Mayan calendar supposedly predicts, though is vague on what the actual mechanism for our extinction will be, with the hot money betting on being hit by a rogue planet called Nibiru, whilst many academics argue that the Mayan calendar actually does not predict that the end of world but the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. However these theories have not filtered through to the masses many thousands of miles away in places such as China where some are going so far as building arks to ride out the end of the world, in Russia selling doomsday kits, in France closing access to mountain passes to avoid panic amongst people fleeing to the mountains.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Pay Differential Between Private Sector and Government Workers / Politics / Government Spending
By: BATR
A dreadful warning arises, when public sector employment pay and benefits outstrips the remuneration earned by the private employment workers. Even the most hardened government proponent, must succumb to the reality that private business generates real wealth that finances government through taxes. The expenditures of government on all levels are linked to the profitability of enterprises and sufficient margin that affords the ability to pay revenue levies. Thus, the proportion of wages between private enterprises and public employees has significant consequences.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
TSA Tightening Grip on Internal U.S. Travel / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Wendy McElroy writes: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is tightening its grip on domestic travcel. I don't mean the random, unpredictable security checks at bus, subway and train stations which already exist. I mean a coordinated and systematic police control of internal travel within America. Groundwork is being laid.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Mish Mike Shedlock Exposed, the Deflation Great Pumpkin / Politics / Investing 2012
By: Peter_Schiff
In January 2009, just as the "Peter Schiff was Right" YouTube video that catalogued my previously derided predictions about a coming financial collapse was racking up views and attracting mainstream attention, a blogger and investment advisor named Mike Shedlock (aka "Mish") saw an opportunity to make an unethical grab at my current and prospective clients by breaking the nascent wave.
Shedlock put together a misleading marketing piece entitled "Peter Schiff was Wrong" which compared my recent investment performance with that of his little known firm, Sitka Pacific Investment Advisors. The piece, that circulated widely in the press and on the Internet, focused on how the foreign stocks and currencies I favored had fallen sharply in 2008 while the Sitka Pacific strategy prevented huge losses during the crash. By ignoring long-term data in favor of highly selective short-term performance, the piece tempted people to bail on positions that were poised to make sharp upward moves and lured them into a strategy that has been a long-term disaster for investors.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Truth About The Federal Reserve's Socialist Agenda / Politics / Central Banks
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes:
The top line story, according to the FDIC's latest Quarterly Banking Review, is that the majority of U.S. banks are in better shape today than they have been in years.
The untold story is that when the Federal Reserve is done transitioning the United States from capitalism to socialism, the few dozen banks that remain in America will all be profitable until they need bailing out again, but will never die and live on in infamy.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2012
U.S. Fiscal Cliff Budget Farce Suggests Term Limits Needed / Politics / US Politics
By: John_Browne
Put simply, the fiscal cliff debate is an illustration of staggering political cowardice. Politicians of both parties are unwilling to ask voters to pay for all of the big government promises that they made on the campaign trail. They would rather risk the country's long term future than risk losing the next election. As a former elected legislator, I can assure them that their offices are not worth the price they are asking us, the voters, to pay.
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Monday, December 10, 2012
Why the Fiscal Cliff Will Happen… For About a Week / Politics / Financial Markets 2013
By: Investment_U
Alexander Green , writes: A few weeks ago, The Oxford Club held its special Post-Election Conference at the luxurious Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C.
We were there to talk about the election results and how they are likely to impact your stock portfolio in the months ahead. Here is a brief re-cap of my analysis.
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Monday, December 10, 2012
Mayan Prophecy, Fiscal Cliff, End of the World – What, Me Worry / Politics / Social Issues
By: DeviantInvestor
(December 21, 2012)
The world will not end on December 21, 2012 or anytime soon. I think the Mayan calendar indicates the end of a very long-term cycle that has a gradual impact upon the world, just as other long-term cycles make significant but gradual changes. Increases and decreases in solar output (a long-term cycle) may create ice ages or droughts that slowly and gradually change the world.
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Monday, December 10, 2012
Obama's Climate Transition / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
TRANSITION CAN BE EASY
Returning from the lackluster climate conference in Doha, Qatar, the USA's main envoy Todd Stern said in interview with news agencies: “The president is completely committed to climate action,” but “It’s too early to say what the specifics of policy are going to be. We are still in the transition period.”
Monday, December 10, 2012
Ron Paul - Expanding Covert Warfare Makes Us Less Safe / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Earlier this month we learned that the Obama Administration is significantly expanding the number of covert Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents overseas. From just a few hundred DIA agents overseas today, the administration intends to eventually deploy some 1,600 covert agents. The nature of their work will also shift, away from intelligence collection and more toward covert actions. This move signals a major change in how the administration intends to conduct military and paramilitary operations overseas. Unfortunately it is not a shift toward peace, but rather to an even more deadly and disturbing phase in the "war on terror."
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Monday, December 10, 2012
Real U.S. Unemployment Rate is 22.9% / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”
There are a number of ongoing problems with the released numbers. For example, the concurrent-seasonal factor adjustments are unstable. The birth-death model adds non-existent jobs each month that are then taken out in the annual downward benchmark revisions. Williams calculates that the job overstatement through November averages 45,000 monthly. In other words, employment gains during 2012 have been overstated by about 500,000 jobs. Another problem is that each month’s jobs number is boosted by downside revision of the previous month’s jobs number. Williams reports that the 146,000 new jobs reported for November “was after a significant downside revision to October’s reporting. Net of prior-period revisions, November’s seasonally-adjusted monthly gain was 97,000.”
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Sunday, December 09, 2012
Fiscal Cliff, Why The Rich Will Not Abandon Dividend Stocks / Politics / US Politics
By: Richard_Shaw
WHO ARE THE RICH? First an apology for using the term “rich”. Because this is about pending tax policy, we are using the Washington D.C. working definition of rich. You know — the movement that began with soak Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, because billionaires don’t pay enough and actually want to pay more — the soak the billionaires movement that quietly became the soak the millionaires movement, that morphed into soak the rich, who we find are those couples who make $250,000 per year or more (and singles who make $200,000 per year or more).
Sunday, December 09, 2012
How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: MISES
Robert Higgs writes: Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only after its declarations of war against these nations in December 1941. In truth, the United States had been at war for a long time before making these declarations. Its war making took a variety of forms. For example, the U.S. navy conducted "shoot [Germans] on sight" convoys - convoys that might include British ships — in the North Atlantic along the greater part the shipping route from the United States to Great Britain, even though German U-boats had orders to refrain (and did refrain) from initiating attacks on U.S. shipping. The United States and Great Britain entered into arrangements to pool intelligence, combine weapons development, test military equipment jointly, and undertake other forms of war-related cooperation.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Public Bank Option for Scotland Independance, Ensuring Economic Sovereignty / Politics / Central Banks
By: Ellen_Brown
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the Bank of Scotland have been pillars of Scotland’s economy and culture for over three centuries. So when the RBS was nationalized by the London-based UK government following the 2008 banking crisis, and the Bank of Scotland was acquired by the London-based Lloyds Bank, it came as a shock to the Scots. They no longer owned their oldest and most venerable banks.