Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Washington Gridlock, No One Is Willing to Pay the Political Price to Cut Spending / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
The Editors of The Casey Report, Casey Research: The first session of this 112th Congress was spent with Democrats and Republicans at loggerheads over the debt ceiling, taxes, spending cuts, the deficit super committee, appropriations bills and finally the extension of unemployment compensation and a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. Standard and Poor's downgrade of the United States' federal debt was due in part to all the haggling over how, and actually whether, to reduce the debt.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Parasitic Behaviour of Goldman to Its Clients Sachs Prompts Resignation / Politics / Banking Stocks
By: Mike_Shedlock
Greg Smith's op-ed in the New York Times "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" is precisely the catalyst that will eventually bring reform to the securities industry.
Denial Coming Up
Unfortunately, neither the Fed nor the SEC has any inclination to do anything about industry-wide fraud and corruption, therefore immediate results are not forthcoming.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The End of Canada as a Sovereign Nation? / Politics / Canada
By: Global_Research
Dana Gabriel writes: Through a series of bilateral meetings, U.S. and Canadian officials are busy working out the details of the perimeter security action plan. This includes a recent joint crime forum which dealt with border and law enforcement issues. These various discussions are part of the implementation process which when finished would bring about the complete transformation of the northern border and another step closer in the creation of a fully integrated North American security perimeter.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wall Street Toxic Culture of Avarice and Fraud / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Barry_Grey
Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation Wednesday in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, denouncing the bank's “toxic” culture of avarice and fraud.
Smith headed the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In his column, entitled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” he describes a corporate environment that encourages and rewards big short-term returns gained through the bilking of clients and the general public. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” he writes.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
America Mortgaged at an Adjustable Interest Rate / Politics / US Interest Rates
By: Peter_Schiff
The Federal Reserve ran another "stress test" on major financial institutions and has determined that 15 of the 19 tested are safe, even in the most extreme circumstances: an unemployment rate of 13%, a 50% decline in stock prices, and a further 21% decline in housing prices. The problem is that the most important factor that will determine these banks' long-term viability was purposefully overlooked - interest rates.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
College Education Debt and Earnings Economics / Politics / Student Finances
By: BATR
For previous generations, the dream of a college education for their children was a primary motivation. Gaining access to the teachings of higher learning is certainly a laudable objective. While this goal still holds true, there is a systemic disconnect from attending institutions that cost a king’s ransom and having marketable skills to earn a generous income in the post industrial economy. When government employment becomes the most sought after occupation, the economic future of the country sinks into deep decline. The old correlation with the higher your education, the greater your income, is no more.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
European Zombie Banks and Vampire Governments / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Gary_North
The term "zombie banks" refers to banks that refuse to lend to the private sector. They are run by fearful bankers who do not trust other bankers. They do not trust many potential borrowers. According to legend, zombies survive by eating the brains of their victims. It seems to me that zombie bankers must be limiting their diet to brains of other bankers and investment fund managers.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Juking the Stats: Our Culture of Manipulation / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
A universal strategy of large institutions is the manipulation of their "books & records" in a positive direction - i.e. one suggesting high levels of current performance and future growth. We see this happen time and again across institutions in all sectors of developed societies, private and public. Large corporations, for example, extensively use off balance sheet vehicles riddled with leveraged products to hide their exposure to risk, or various other accounting tricks to over-state their revenues/profits and under-state their costs/liabilities.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Germany's Geopolitical Strategy / Politics / Germany
By: STRATFOR
The idea of Germany having an independent national strategy runs counter to everything that Germany has wanted to be since World War II and everything the world has wanted from Germany. In a way, the entire structure of modern Europe was created to take advantage of Germany's economic dynamism while avoiding the threat of German domination. In writing about German strategy, I am raising the possibility that the basic structure of Western Europe since World War II and of Europe as a whole since 1991 is coming to a close.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Ron Paul, Obama Administration Gone Rogue / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Have certain parts of the Constitution become irrelevant, as a former Republican leader once told me at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing? At the time, I was told that demanding a Congressional declaration of war before invading Iraq, as Article I Section 8 of the Constitution requires, was unnecessary and anachronistic. Congress and the president then proceeded without a Constitutional declaration and the disastrous Iraq invasion was the result.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 12, 2012
The New World Order Zeitgeist / Politics / New World Order
By: BATR
The "spirit of the times" for the New World Order worshipers is essentially anti-God sentiment. There is no longer an issue if the NWO is real. It operates as the dominant social matrix that engulfs the planet. Look around and the only cogent explanation for the absurdity that inflicts universal suffering rests upon an admission that humanity is evil to the core. Once religions recognized redemption and accepted that salvation as a divine gift. However, since the age of humanism and the supposed death of a supreme being, the planet has entered into an asylum of insanity and collective anguish. A detail examination of Humanism: Philosophy of the New World Order defines the parameters of the heterodoxy from all human history.
Monday, March 12, 2012
With Putin in Power It's Laughable Russia is One of the BRIC Economies / Politics / Russia
By: Money_Morning
Martin Hutchinson writes:
The re-election of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin last week means even more crony capitalism in Russia.
With Putin in power nothing will change.
In fact, it's laughable that Russia is still even considered among the group of the world's most glamorous emerging markets - otherwise known as the "BRICs."
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Collapse of American Democracy / Politics / US Politics
By: Barry_Grey
One week ago, US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech asserting the right of the president to secretly order the assassination of American citizens. Citing the so-called “war on terror,” he claimed that this never-before-asserted authority was lawful under the president’s war-making powers and was not subject to judicial review.
Monday, March 12, 2012
America's Afghanistan Legacy / Politics / Afghanistan
By: Stephen_Lendman
In his book titled, "Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire," John Pilger discussed Afghanistan, saying:
"Through all the humanitarian crises in living memory, no country has been abused and suffered more, and none has been helped less than Afghanistan."
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Global Financial Crisis is a Global Human Rights Crisis / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Danny_Schechter
Journalists for the most part report what they know and hope that someone pays attention. With so many media outlets, brands, bloggers and sloggers out there, it is rare for challenging ideas to touch a larger nerve or get visibility beyond fragmented followings.
The idea of winning global attention is a far off dream unless you break the biggest exclusive or win the first interview with, say, Jesus on his return to earth. (And that could be ignored if your name isn’t Oprah, etc.)
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, March 11, 2012
United States, Land of the Mega-rich, No Jobs For Americans / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that 227,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs were created by the economy during February. Is the government’s claim true?
No. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that 44,000 of these jobs or 19% consist of an add-on factor derived from the BLS’s estimate that 44,000 more unreported jobs from new business start-ups were created than were lost by unreported business failures. The BLS’s estimate comes from the bureau’s “birth-death model,” which works better during normal times, but delivers erroneous results during troubled times such as the economy has been experiencing during the past four years.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Western Collapse Slow Motion Suicide Moves To Fast Mode / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
WESTERN CIVILIZATION DECLINE - OR FALL ?
This was a great refreshing read, written by Niall Ferguson, making the point that civilizations tend to decline very fast at their end, like the value of a put/call option as it nears expiry. It is easy to agree with Niall Ferguson but its also easy to disagree, especially as we get down inside his article in MO:
Friday, March 09, 2012
How to Ruin Your Economy / Politics / US Debt
By: Bill_Bonner
We can learn a lot from the Argentines. When it comes to messing up an economy, they’re Numero Uno. They’re Olympians of financial legerdemain and masters of the old false shuffle.
In 2001, the country was deeply in debt. The government was out of money. And the currency was losing value fast. What did the Argentines do?
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, March 09, 2012
The Real Situation in Iraq / Politics / Iraq War
By: OilPrice_Com
A delegation from the International Energy Agency spent two days in Baghdad speaking with high-ranking officials in preparation for an end-of-year report on the country's oil sector. By some estimates, Iraq could hold some of the largest oil reserves in the world and an international auction for oil and natural gas blocks is planned for May. Without a hydrocarbon law, and considering the fractured political system, the IEA's report may be more about political obstacles than oil potential, however.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Gold, Silver and the Crisis of the Fractional Banking System / Politics / Gold and Silver 2012
By: Bob_Chapman
The Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE) – was to represent real price discovery and that is yet to happen. The first move to smother the exchange was by an increase of holdings in the endeavor. This move was to stop them from constructing their own platform rather than buying an existing platform. Due to that move shareholders rose from 10% to 25%. That brought in additional directors whose job it obviously was to stop the fully allocated spot contract. One of these directors was a US banker who has worked for the Federal Trade Commission, the Sloan Foundation at MIT and whose wife is a member of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations. Thus, nothing is going to happen to this venture until next year for a variety of reasons. Fortunately a new exchange is on the way to replace PAGE, which we will fill you in on in a few months.