Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, November 05, 2018
Is President Trump Right About the Fed? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Harry_Dent
While Larry Kudlow (Treasury Secretary and Chief Economic Cheerleader) assures us that Trump is NOT interfering with the Fed, our dear president has proclaimed that our Central Bank is “crazy” for raising rates.From his, ahem, unique world view, he believes they’re trying to wreck his new gravy train economy… the one he created with major tax cuts ($1.5 trillion), major repatriations from overseas ($2 trillion), deregulation, and a lot of positive talk about 4% to 5% growth again…
But, with no fear of sounding like a broken record: sustaining growth rates at that level are demographically IMPOSSIBLE!
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Sunday, November 04, 2018
The USMCA Quest for ‘America First' World Trade / Politics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
The era of post-1945 multilateralism is fading. After the revised NAFTA, Trump's dream is U.S.-dominated world trade and the ‘America First’ Asian Century, says Dan Steinbock. President Trump seeks to redefine all major free trade agreements on the basis of U.S. economic and geopolitical leverage.
In these efforts, the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) is likely to serve as a blueprint.
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Saturday, November 03, 2018
Saudis Might Embrace A 'Take-The-Money-And-Run' Strategy Post Khashoggi / Politics / Saudi Arabia
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, oil prices have plunged by 11.92%. Just today, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) shed 4.56%. At present, WTI is trading at $66.05/bbl. That’s well below the high for the past year of $76.90. It’s also well below my forecast for the year’s end price of $75/bbl.
To shed some light on what might be driving the crude oil market, let’s use the flickering candle of the economics of production. The economic production rate for oil is determined by the following equation: P - V = MC, where P is the current market price of a barrel of oil, V is the present value of a barrel of reserves, and MC is the marginal recovery cost of a barrel of oil.
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Thursday, November 01, 2018
Trump Is America’s National Piñata / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
It’s been quite a while since I first wrote that I resented the MSM (New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC etc etc) for effectively monopolizing the entire discussion about Donald Trump. Don’t remember exactly when I wrote that, do remember Jim Kunstler sent a mail and thanked me for saying it. Because he felt- and feels- the same way.
The 24/7 daily Trump bashing machine that was unleashed in late 2015/early 2016 meant that people like us had a choice of criticizing Trump where he needed to be criticized, but that would put us in the MSM camp, where we don’t want to be. And we don’t want to not criticize him either, because there’s so much that needs scrutiny.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2018
US 2018 Midterm Elections / Politics / US Congressional Elections
By: BATR
Conventional political wisdom would have the public believe that the electorate is poised for the Democrats to take a majority in the House of Representatives while the Republicans hold the edge in the Senate. Seldom is the question raised just what empirical evidence, where and how is it arrived at for such a conclusion to become valid. The polls in 2016 were entirely bogus and undoubtedly meant to defeat Donald Trump. Nothing has changed in the 2018 midterms. The establishment is committed to defeat GOP candidates and ensure that the Deep State regains their former power and influence. The distortion of reality is their major tactic to confuse, discourage and suppress Trump supporters from casting their ballots.
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Friday, October 26, 2018
The USMCA Quest for ‘America First' World Trade / Politics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
The era of post-1945 multilateralism is fading. After the revised NAFTA, Trump's dream is U.S.-dominated world trade and the ‘America First’ Asian Century, says Dan Steinbock.President Trump seeks to redefine all major free trade agreements on the basis of U.S. economic and geopolitical leverage.
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Friday, October 19, 2018
Israel’s 50-Year Time Bomb, Pushing Palestinians to the Edge / Politics / Israel
By: Dan_Steinbock
Why Is the Trump Administration Compounding Palestinian Distress?
In the quest to change Israel's very nature, the Netanyahu government is pushing Palestinians to an edge - with the support of the Trump White House.
Recently, a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that “deepening rifts between key stakeholders and surging violence in Gaza further imperil prospects for peace.” That should not come as a surprise anymore.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Savings – Not Tariffs Will Make America Great Again / Politics / US Politics
By: Antonius_Aquinas
While the farcical Kavanaugh confirmation hearings dominated the news cycle for the past couple of weeks, little mention was made of a disturbing economic headline – the August US trade deficit. Despite all the bluster from the Trump Administration about “winning trade wars” and “trade wars are easy,” America’s trade imbalances for August were the highest ever and its deficit with its most contentious partner – China – reached an all-time high.
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Saturday, October 13, 2018
Ban Saudi Oil! / Politics / Saudi Arabia
By: Raul_I_Meijer
According to Middle East Eye, Richard Branson, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Economist editor-In-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, New York Times, Financial Times, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshah, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish and AOL founder Steve Case have all withdrawn from Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative conference, to be held this month in Riyadh. Branson also put a $1 billion investment plan on hold.
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Thursday, October 11, 2018
The First Casualty of Trade War Is Truth / Politics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
As Trump tariffs continue to spread, an ideological war of words is redressing harsh protectionist realities. What is the state of Chinese growth amid the US tariffs? And what is the impact of the trade wars on global economic prospects?Recently, US academic Yasheng Huang argued on Wall Street Journal that “Jack Ma is retiring. Is China’s economy losing steam?” By the same logic, Elon Musk’s forced resignation from Tesla would mean US slowdown.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018
IPCC Reports a Climate Fit For a Groundhog / Politics / Climate Change
By: Raul_I_Meijer
And there we go again. Another IPCC report, and they all keep getting more alarming than the previous one. And then nothing substantial happens. Until the next report is issued and makes everybody’s headlines for a day, or two. Rinse, spin and repeat. “Now we really have to do something!”. “World leaders have a moral obligation to act!”.
Oh boy. To start with that last bit, world leaders don’t act because of moral obligations. They act to stay in, or get in, power. And they all know that to achieve that goal they must keep their people happy, even if dictators do this differently from ‘democratically elected’ leaders.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Society Trends To Keep in Mind in the USA / Politics / Demographics
By: Dylan_Moran
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Google's Dragonfly Serves their Chinese Master / Politics / Google
By: BATR
If there was ever any doubt that Google is committed to the destruction of freedom of speech, just examine their enthusiastic efforts to censor, track and restrict the Chinese use of the internet. Ryan Gallagher reports in The Intercept on a project – code-named Dragonfly.
"Following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
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Wednesday, October 03, 2018
U.S.- Mexico - Canada Trade Agreement / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
Now that the most disastrous aspects of NAFTA have been removed from the new U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement; traders, business managers and the public will get to see the true sentiments of the globalists, who will feel the pain of losing their special commercial protections. Restricting genuine free trade has always been the main objective of the corporatists and internationalists. The basic question: has President Trump bucked the financial monopolists and transformed commerce with a dose of business reciprocity or is USMCA just a back door to establish a North American Union?
Wednesday, October 03, 2018
How America Can Free Itself From Wall Street / Politics / Banksters
By: Ellen_Brown
Wall Street owns the country. That was the opening line of a fiery speech that populist leader Mary Ellen Lease delivered around 1890. Franklin Roosevelt said it again in a letter to Colonel House in 1933, and Sen. Dick Durbin was still saying it in 2009. “The banks—hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” Durbin said in an interview. “And they frankly own the place.”
Monday, September 24, 2018
Destroy America with Information Warfare / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
The populace has been misled for decades by the information that comes from the establishment. Most people believe that foreign powers are the primary providers of disinformation. Few are willing to confront the reality that the most destructive culprits are the international monopolists who dominate the global economy. These plutocrats may be part of boards of public companies that are listed in the U.S. but their allegiance is with the globalist model of transnational economic hegemony. This commercial pattern supersedes any nationalistic obligation to accept President Trump's goal of making America great again.
Saturday, September 22, 2018
The News Just Ain’t The News No More / Politics / Social Media
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Two thirds of Americans get at least some of their news on social media. Google and Facebook receive well over 70% of US digital advertising revenues. The average daily time spent on social media is 2 hours. Just a few factoids that have at least one thing in common: nothing like them was around 10 years ago, let alone 20. And they depict a change, or set of changes, in our world that will take a long time yet to understand and absorb. Some things just move too fast for us to keep track of, let alone process.
Those of us who were alive before the meteoric rise of the hardware and software of ‘social’ media may be able to relate a little more and better than those who were not, but even that is not a given. There are plenty people over 20, over 30, that make one think: what did you do before you had that magic machine? When you walk down the street talking to some friend, or looking at what your friends wrote on Facebook, do you ever think about what you did in such situations before the machine came into your life?
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Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Trump’s Backdoor Power Play to Rein In the Fed / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: MoneyMetals
“Just run the presses – print money.”
That’s what President Donald Trump supposedly instructed his former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn to do in response to the budget deficit. The quote appears in Bob Woodward’s controversial book Fear: Trump in the White House.
Trump disputes many of the anecdotes Woodward assembled. But regardless of whether the President used those exact words, they do reflect an “easy money” philosophy that he has expressed many times before.
Saturday, September 15, 2018
Central Banks Have Gone Rogue, Putting Us All at Risk / Politics / Central Banks
By: Ellen_Brown
Excluding institutions such as Blackrock and Vanguard, which are composed of multiple investors, the largest single players in global equity markets are now thought to be central banks themselves. An estimated 30 to 40 central banks are invested in the stock market, either directly or through their investment vehicles (sovereign wealth funds). According to David Haggith at Zero Hedge:
Read full article... Read full article...Central banks buying stocks are effectively nationalizing U.S. corporations just to maintain the illusion that their “recovery” plan is working. … At first, their novel entry into the stock market was only intended to rescue imperiled corporations, such as General Motors during the first plunge into the Great Recession, but recently their efforts have shifted to propping up the entire stock market via major purchases of the most healthy companies on the market.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
The Ritual Burial of the US Constitution / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
In the wake of a number of the Lehman and 9/11 commemorations in America, and as a monster storm is once again threatening to cause outsize damage, we find ourselves at a pivotal point in time, which will decide how the country interacts with its own laws, its legal system, its Constitution, its freedom of speech, and indeed if it has sufficient willpower left to adhere to the Constitution as its no. 1 guiding principle.
The main problem is that it all seems to slip slide straight by the people, who are -kept- busy with completely different issues. That is convenient for those who would like less focus on the Constitution, but it’s also very dangerous for everyone else. Americans should today stand up for freedom of speech, or it will be gone, likely forever.
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