Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, October 22, 2010
U.S. China Currency War Drifting towards Military Conflict / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Mike_Whitney
The United States conducts monetary policy the same way it conducts foreign policy; unilaterally. When Fed chairman Ben Bernanke signaled last week that he was planning to restart his bond purchasing program (Quantitative Easing) he didn't consult with allies at the IMF, the G-20 or the WTO. He simply issued his edict, and that was that. The fact that the Fed's policy will flood emerging markets with cheap capital, pushing up the value of their currencies and igniting inflation, is of no concern to Bernanke. He operates on the same theory as former Treasury Secretary John Connally who breezily quipped to a group of euro finance ministers, “The dollar is our currency, but your problem.”
Friday, October 22, 2010
How the U.S. and U.K. Lost the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Global_Research
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja writes: Wars are planned, financed and fought by governments, not by groups or ordinary people. Wars are based on political agendas bent on complete control over resources, people and territory. Most wars have multiple reasons, domestic, foreign and global outreach. The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought to maintain US domination worldwide, to occupy the untapped natural resources of the Middle East, in particular oil and gas, and to protect the value of U.S. dollar as a stable international reserve currency.
Friday, October 22, 2010
U.S. Wars Are Bankrupting the World / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
David Swanson writes: The endless and infinite "war on terra" is bankrupting the planet. I don't mean moral bankruptcy; that goes without saying. I mean financial bankruptcy. And don't take my word for it. This is the argument made in a new book called "Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror Is Bankrupting the World," by Loretta Napoleoni, a financial reporter for Internazionale, l'Unita, il Caffe, Mondo e Missione, El Pais, Vanity Fair Spain, and Vanity Fair Italy.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
China's Naval Ambitions Spur New Regional Strategic Planning / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Global_Intel_Report
SITUATION: Defense planning efforts in East Asia have been markedly influenced by China's bellicose response to the detention of a Chinese fisherman for ramming a Japanese naval boat in disputed waters.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Orwell Targets Bernanke: An Unteachable Hole in the Air / Politics / US Politics
By: Fred_Sheehan
Friday, October 15, 2010, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered a dishonest speech: "Monetary Policy Tools and Objectives in a Low-Inflation Environment." What follows is not a critique of the talk, since that would be redundant. Please see one of my recent articles "Exploiting Bernanke" (September 21, 2010), which discussed the anticipated speech of October 15, 2010. Also see, "Central Bankers are Paid to Lie - Buy Corn" (October 5, 2010), which showed how Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns fibbed his way through the 1970s. Investors who either believed him or were not adept at translating signals from the real world suffered.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Speculators getting rich at your expense / Politics / Social Issues
By: Akhil_Khanna
Speculators are individuals or organizations who place bets on outcomes of certain events likely to take place within a defined time period and earn huge profits on their occurrence. A simple speculation transaction would be to place bets on the results of a sports match. Team A and Team B are playing a football match. 10 people place a bet of $10,000 each that Team A will win and 20 people place a bet of $10,000 each on Team B winning the match. So we have bets of $1,00,000/- on Team A winning and $ 2,00,000/- on Team B winning. If Team A wins, the 10 people who won the bet would get $20,000/- each ($2,00,000 / 10) and the people who bet on Team B would loose all their money. Similarly if Team B wins, the 20 people who won the bet would get $5,000/- ($1,00,000 / 20) each and those who bet on Team A winning will loose all their money.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Atomised Americans / Politics / Social Issues
By: Christopher_Quigley
“This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power, in its final stages, results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomised individuals.
The fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010
U.S. Policies Intensifying Currency War and Trade Conflicts / Politics / US Dollar
By: Barry_Grey
In the wake of the fractious International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting held October 9-10 in Washington, the descent into global currency and trade war has accelerated, with the United States playing the role of instigator-in-chief.
The US is deliberately encouraging a sell-off of dollars on international currency markets in order to raise the relative exchange rates of its major trade rivals, increasing the effective price of their exports to the US while cheapening US exports to their markets.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Public Sector Spending Cuts, George Osbourne Speech Full Text Transcript / Politics / UK Tax & Budget
By: Submissions
Mr Speaker. Today's the day when Britain steps back from the brink. When we confront the bills from a decade of debt. A day of rebuilding when we set out a four-year plan to put our public services and welfare state on a sustainable footing - for the long term. So that they can do their job - providing for families, protecting the vulnerable and underpinning a competitive economy. It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future. We are going to bring the years of ever-rising borrowing to an end. We are going to ensure, like every solvent household in the country: that what we buy, we can afford; that the bills we incur, we have the income to meet; and that we do not saddle our children with the interest on the interest on the interest of the debts we were not ourselves prepared to pay. Tackling this budget deficit is unavoidable. The decisions about how we do it are not. There are choices. And today we make them. Investment in the future rather than the bills of past failure. That is our choice.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
U.S. Government Confiscating Retirement Accounts / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
By: Gary_North
The Social Security System went into red ink mode this year. I predicted last January that this would happen. My video is here.
More money is now flowing out of the Social Security Administration to recipients than is flowing in through FICA taxes and interest payments to the SSA Trust Fund from the U.S. Treasury's general fund.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Why is the World Rushing Headlong into Environmental Armageddon? / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Dr_Tom_Termotto
Is there any doubt that planet Earth has been undergoing an environmental armageddon for decades? We are not just referring to the spate of oil spills all over the world such as the BP Gulf Oil Spill, or the many other toxic deluges which go unreported unlike the Hungary Toxic Sludge Disaster, or the ongoing destruction of the world’s rainforests like those being systematically wiped out in the Amazon Basin. We are also alluding to the “unseen” worldwide chemical apocalypse, the global proliferation of electro-pollution (EMR), the major uptick in man-made geopathic stress events on both the micro and macro levels, as well as the relentless contamination of living environments throughout the planet with radioactivity.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
New Challenges to the U.S. Employment Problem / Politics / Employment
By: Hans_Wagner
The view of the employment numbers for September gives the impression that the economy is improving. The private sector is adding jobs even as the government reduces employment as census workers end their assignments. Looking deeper, the employment situation faces new challenges from state and local governments dealing with their revenue short falls.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Has the Coalition Government Sunk the British Navy? / Politics / UK Politics
By: LewRockwell
Eric Margolis writes: PARIS – Britain’s mighty Royal Navy ruled the waves until World War II, fully 25% of the earth’s surface. There are few greater epochs in history than the stirring saga the Royal Navy, Britain’s famed "wooden walls."
As a boy, I thrilled to the glorious adventures of Britain’s sailors, such as Sir Francis Drake, the renowned admirals Anson and Howe, and the great Sir Horatio Nelson, whose name will live forever in naval glory.
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Monday, October 18, 2010
U.S. Economic Recovery, Tax Cuts Won't Cut It / Politics / US Politics
By: Peter_Schiff
Congressional Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a heated debate over which Americans deserve not to have their taxes raised, with both claiming that some form of tax cut will stimulate the economy. The primary point of divergence is what type of cuts will be most likely to get Americans spending, and whether the wealthy will wastefully save their extra cash or use it to create jobs. This debate is academic. If a stronger economy (rather than pre-election posturing) is really the goal, then tax cuts alone will fail. Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Wall Street and White House Blame Homeowners For Foreclosure Crisis / Politics / US Housing
By: Global_Research
Tom Eley writes: Wall Street has raised its voice against any government moratorium on foreclosures, even as evidence mounts that banks systematically and illegally falsified documents in order to expedite hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of foreclosures.
Documented examples of abuse include banks hiring contractors and what one Goldman Sachs executive referred to as “Burger King kids” to process thousands of foreclosure documents per week, all the while declaring to courts they were familiar with the cases. Lenders also falsified signatures, notary stamps, and tossed legal documents into the garbage. Every major bank is implicated in the widening scandal.
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Sunday, October 17, 2010
Report from the Epicentre of Foreclosures Fraud / Politics / US Housing
By: Danny_Schechter
WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: In all of the economic issues we are dealing with, there is always a “back story, a deeper context” that is usually missing, “disappeared” like those Allende supporters in Chile in the l970’s who wanted to empower workers, not just rescue them when they get buried in a deep hole.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Nobel Prize for Capitalism Awarded to Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo / Politics / China
By: Global_Research
Stephen Gowans writes: Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has been hailed as a champion of human rights and democracy. His jailing by Chinese authorities for inciting subversion of the state is widely regarded as an unjust stifling of advocacy rights by a Chinese state intolerant of dissent and hostile to ”universal values”. But what Western accounts have failed to mention is that Charter 08, the manifesto Liu had a hand in writing and whose signing led to his arrest, is more than a demand for political and civil liberties. It is a blueprint for making over China into a replica of US society and eliminating the last vestiges of the country’s socialism.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Foreclosuregate: Time to Break Up the Too-Big-to-Fail Banks? / Politics / US Housing
By: Ellen_Brown
Looming losses from the mortgage scandal dubbed “foreclosuregate” may qualify as the sort of systemic risk that, under the new financial reform bill, warrants the breakup of the too-big-to-fail banks. The Kanjorski amendment allows federal regulators to pre-emptively break up large financial institutions that—for any reason—pose a threat to U.S. financial or economic stability.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal War Rumour / Politics / Pakistan
By: Rick_Rozoff
Two recent news items emanating from the United States have begun to reverberate in Pakistan and give rise to speculation that growing American drone strikes and NATO helicopter attacks in that country may be the harbingers of far broader actions: Nothing less than the expansion of the West’s war in Afghanistan into Pakistan with the ultimate goal of seizing the nation’s nuclear weapons.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
End The FED and Get The Gold / Politics / Central Banks
By: Gary_North
How can we end the Federal Reserve System? Prior to 2008, this question would have been entirely hypothetical. It is still entirely hypothetical, because the Federal Reserve System is in charge of monetary policy; the Congress of the United States is not. Certainly, the voters of the United States are not. Nevertheless, I wish to indulge myself in a completely hypothetical speculation. I wish it were less hypothetical than it is, but things are better than they were before 2008. "All hypothetical possibilities are equal, but some are more equal than others."