Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Your Guide Through the Washington Debt Speak / Politics / US Debt
By: LewRockwell
Brian Wilson writes: Another "Al" once wrote: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Washington's Math Adds Up to the Debt Ceiling Deadlock / Politics / US Debt
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes:
If you've been wondering why your elected officials in Washington can't reach a basic compromise to break the debt-ceiling deadlock, consider this: They can't even get their numbers straight.
Not only do the competing Democratic and Republican plans differ on what counts as a spending cut, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has disputed numbers in both plans.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
$8.4 Trillion Hidden Profit For The Federal Reserve / Politics / Central Banks
By: Submissions
Liberty writes: The public is aware that deficit spending is the government's ability to spend money that it does not have. The image projected is the government borrows from the public, or the Federal Reserve, and the money that can be spent is above and beyond the funds collected in the form of taxes and fees.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Iran's Dream for a Middle East Gas Pipeline / Politics / Natural Gas
By: OilPrice_Com
Nothing gets oilmen more excited than the idea of building pipelines from exotic, hard to reach places to seaports where the product of their endeavors can be shipped to lucrative foreign markets.
These reveries have been most pronounced with the opening since 1991 the riches of the Caspian Sea basin.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Bailouts, Austerity and Rage: Calm Like A Bomb, Part I - The Greek & The Irish / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
"Stroll through the shanties, and the cities remain. Same bodies buried hungry, but with different last names. These vultures rob everything, leave nothing but chains. Pick a point on the globe; yes the picture's the same. There's a bank, a church, a myth and a hearse; a mall and a loan, a child dead at birth. There's a widow pig parrot, a rebel to tame, a whitehooded judge and a syringe and a vein. And the riot be the rhyme of the unheard..." Rage Against the Machine: Calm Like a Bomb
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Hidden Debt Risk That Could End the U.S. Empire / Politics / US Debt
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
The debt limit will be raised. Neither side will get its way.
The U.S. government always raises the debt limit. How else would the debt and the government have gotten so large?
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The U.S. Debt Ceiling Charade, $114.5 Trillion of Debt and Liabilities / Politics / US Debt
By: Jeff_Berwick
What a circus the debate over the raising of the US Government debt ceiling has become. It's fun to watch everyone involved wriggling around trying to ignore the blue whale in the room.
It used to be an elephant... perhaps around 1986. But now, after a decade of wars and trillion dollar deficits, the US Government debt has become like the largest mammal in the history of the world - the blue whale - and is perhaps so large now that it might be in everyone's best interest just to ignore it or their heads may explode from realizing the enormity of the problem.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Bernanke Secretly Gives away Sixteen Trillion Dollars / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Richard_Mills
The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the US Federal Reserve was recently carried out due to the Ron Paul/Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill passed in 2010. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, while leading the charge for an audit in the Senate, watered down the original language of house bill (HR1207) so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and others, opposed the audit.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
U.S. Debt Ceiling Intransigence: Unintended Consequences... / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Which party is responsible for intransigence on raising the debt ceiling? Republicans say the Democrats are, and Democrats say the Republicans are.
One could blame both parties equally, as both have their positions, but as I see it, it is the Republicans who are the most intransigent. The Democrats have shown more willingness to compromise, even offering cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Moreover, the Republicans started the fight, whereas the Democrats were willing to just raise the debt ceiling routinely, as in the past, and to get on with things.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2011
U.S. Debt Ceiling - What Now? / Politics / US Debt
By: Axel_Merk
William Poole writes: As I write it appears that the federal government is at the brink of default. The Republicans and Democrats have laid out irreconcilable positions on taxes. President Obama has said that he will not sign a bill that does not have some increases in tax rates on upper-income taxpayers. Republicans have said that they will not accept legislation that provides for such increases. In the negotiations, there has apparently been some progress in identifying spending cuts both sides can accept, but there no compromise is possible on the conflict over taxes.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Fascism to come, wearing a libertarian veneer / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_T_Bucci
I said to my homemaker when she arrived for her weekly visit, "I guess you are aware that Social Security checks might not arrive next week?" No, she didn't know that fact. "Well, you are aware of the Oslo gunman last Friday?" She couldn't place the word "Oslo" so I explained the tragedy in loose detail. No, she wasn't aware of it.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
10 Facts About The Financial Condition Of American Families / Politics / Social Issues
By: Submissions
Michael Snyder writes: The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families. For many Americans, "flat broke" has become a permanent condition. Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Obama Demagogues Default / Politics / US Debt
By: John_Browne
President Obama has continued and increased the reckless spending of the previous Administration. Now, as the federal debt reaches its statutory limit, he is spreading fear and panic in the hopes of having it raised.
Many of the key people responsible for America's historic mess, including the President, Treasury Secretary Geithner, former NEC Director Summers, and Fed Chairman Bernanke, have pronounced publicly that a failure to lift the debt ceiling will cause a catastrophic Treasury debt default.>
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Monday, July 25, 2011
The Pesky Neighbor and the U.S. Debt Ceiling / Politics / US Debt
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Imagine you had a pesky neighbor who somehow took out a mortgage on his house in your name and by some legal trickery you were obligated to pay for it. Imagine watching this neighbor throw drunken parties, buy expensive cars, add more rooms to the house, and hire dozens of people to wait on him hand and foot. Imagine that he also managed to take out several credit cards in your name. One by one, he would max them out and then use your good name and credit to obtain another credit card, then another and then another.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
U.S. Government Promoted Debtor Nation Making Americans Dependent, Dispirited, and Uncivilized / Politics / US Debt
By: Douglas_French
The debate in Washington over the nation's debt and debt ceiling has President Obama announcing to the White House press corps, "What we need to do is to do our jobs, and we have to do it the same way a family would do it. A family, if they get overextended and their credit card is too high, they don't just stop paying their bills."
Monday, July 25, 2011
Black Hole Finance Debt Slavery - Black Swan Events / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: Andrew_McKillop
To the political and corporate elite, debt is the route to Federal Europe. That sounds grand and sombre, calculated and organized, but in fact federalizing European debts and deficits is nothing more than repeating the circus act of the present financial and monetary crisis. Europe has a black hole of public debt, swallowing all and any assets, and can only only deliver Black Swan events, that by definition are strange, unpredicted and unprecedented.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Democrats, Republicans Push for Deeper U.S. Spending Cuts / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Patrick Martin writes: The latest turn in the bipartisan talks on the federal debt ceiling demonstrates that both Wall Street and its political representatives in Washington are making use of the debt ceiling deadline to push through historic cuts in social spending.
White House-led negotiations on a measure to lift the debt ceiling before the August 2 deadline set by the Treasury collapsed Friday after House Speaker John Boehner, the leading congressional Republican, pulled out.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
The Geopolitics of Water in the Nile River Basin / Politics / Water Sector
By: Global_Research
Prof. Majeed A. Rahman writes: In Africa, access to water is one of the most critical aspects of human survival. Today, about one third of the total population lack access to water. Constituting 300 million people and about 313 million people lack proper sanitation. (World Water Council 2006). As result, many riparian countries surrounding the Nile river basin have expressed direct stake in the water resources hitherto seldom expressed in the past. In this paper, I argue that due to the lack of consensus over the use of the Nile basin regarding whether or not “water sharing” or “benefit sharing” has a tendency to escalate the situation in to transboundary conflict involving emerging dominant states such as the tension between Ethiopia-Egypt over the Nile river basin. At the same time, this paper further contributes to the Collier- Hoeffler conflict model in order to analyze the transboundary challenges, and Egypt’s position as the hegemonic power in the horn of Africa contested by Ethiopia. Collier- Hoeffler model is used to predict the occurrence of conflicts as a result of empirical economic variables in African states given the sporadic civil strife in many parts of Africa. In order to simplify my argument and analysis, I focused on Ethiopia and Egypt to explicate the extent of water crisis in the North Eastern part of Africa.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Peacock Syndrome – America’s Fatal Disease / Politics / US Debt
By: James_Quinn
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." - Aldous Huxley
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Falling False Flags: The Norway Massacre and The Rise of Fascist Societies / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
One of Rupert Murdoch's remaining moneygrubbing, gutter filling recyclable fish and chip wrappers, the UK "Sun", was predictably lightning fast with the scoop, its headline screaming: "Al Qaeda's Massacre, Norway's 9/11".