Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Rating Agencies Hold SEC Hostage / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Brady_Willett
Less than 24-hours after President Obama signed the historic Wall Street Reform bill into law the SEC suspended the rule that makes the rating agencies more accountable for their ratings. According to the Wall Street Journal, as recently as June 30 the rating agencies thought that the provision for increased accountability had been omitted. They were wrong:
Friday, July 23, 2010
Signing Financial Reform Is Signing Up For A New Struggle To Make It Real / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Danny_Schechter
With eleven pens for souvenirs, President Obama signed the financial reform bill in a rare celebratory moment. Significantly, the ceremony did not take place in the Oval Office but up the block at the Ronald Reagan building perhaps to signal recalcitrant Republicans that this is a cause they should sign on to.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Death of the Postindustrial Dream / Politics / Economic Theory
By: Ian_Fletcher
Remember postindustrialism? Not long ago, this catchphrase was supposed to define America’s future: no more grubby hard industries, just a clean bright world of services and high technology. Its most succinct formulation is as follows:
Manufacturing is old hat and America is moving on to better things.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Dean Baker: Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Was Doomed From the Start / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Jesse
I thought this interview with Dean Baker was interesting. I obviously do not agree with everything that he says, especially regarding the deficits and the attitude of the markets towards them. The US markets are far removed from being efficient mechanisms of capital allocation these days, and as such are unreliable indicators of just about everything except the latest trading fads and speculative excess.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Securing Uganda’s Oil Industry From Terrorist Attacks / Politics / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
Although the Ugandan government can boost the security of its fledgling oil industry from future terrorist attacks that may scare away certain investors, Africa analysts doubt violence replicating the twin bombs that struck during the World Cup final is likely.
Somali militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for explosions that tore through the capital Kampala July 11 and killed more than 70 people.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Cutting the Budget Deficit Undermines Social Security, Medicare and Depresses Purchasing Power / Politics / Economic Austerity
By: Global_Research
Kevin Zeese writes: The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is sounding the alarm around deficit spending. It is using exaggerated rhetoric to heighten deficit fear at a time when more spending is needed.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Russia’s Geo-political Natural Gas Game in Iran / Politics / Natural Gas
By: Submissions
Maninder Singh Batra writes: Since the reignition of the Great Game in Central Asia,Caspian sea and the middle east for control over oil and gas reserves,Russia and USA have been jockeying for control in these zones ,by any means whether covert or overt means such as bribery, colored revolutions, false flag operations and even outright war .
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Puzzling Collapse Of Earth's Upper Atmosphere / Politics / Climate Change
By: Global_Research
Dr. Tony Phillips writes: NASA-funded researchers are monitoring a big event in our planet's atmosphere. High above Earth's surface where the atmosphere meets space, a rarefied layer of gas called "the thermosphere" recently collapsed and now is rebounding again.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
BP's Scheme to Swindle the "Small People" / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Dahr Jamail writes: Clint Guidry, the Louisiana shrimp harvester representative on the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force created by executive order of Gov. Bobby Jindal, has called BP "liars" and "killers."
Gulf Coast fishermen and others with lost income claims against BP are outraged by a recent announcement that the $20 billion government-administered claim fund will subtract money they earn by working on the cleanup effort from any future damage claims against BP. This move, according to lawyers in Louisiana working on behalf of Louisiana fishermen and others affected by the BP oil disaster, contradicts an earlier BP statement in which the company promised it would do no such thing.
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Soviet NY Times Our Own Lying Pravda / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: William_Anderson
There are many myths about the current political scene, although one never would know it from reading the New York Times, and especially its editorial pages. For example, Paul Krugman continues to insist that Herbert Hoover followed the "liquidationist" advice of his treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, and followed an "austerity" path. However, as Murray N. Rothbard noted in his classic America’s Great Depression, Hoover intervened in the economy at levels never seen before in U.S. History.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
2010 Mid-year forecast by David Urban / Politics / US Politics
By: David_Urban
Political and Economic Commentary - Six months into 2010 and everything is unfolding much as planned. That is not a lack of confidence but rather this unpredictable market is acting as it should act given the economic and political crosscurrents pulling the markets in a volatile and sideways pattern.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Large Scale Government Economic Stimulus, Why Not Another World War? / Politics / Economic Stimulus
By: Peter_Schiff
There is overwhelming agreement among economists that the Second World War was responsible for decisively ending the Great Depression. When asked why the wars in Iran and Afghanistan are failing to make the same impact today, they often claim that the current conflicts are simply too small to be economically significant.
Monday, July 19, 2010
When There is No Rule of Law / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week ended with some promising news on finally stopping the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, the administration still seems to believe that shutting down working oil wells is a higher priority than effectively dealing with the broken one. They are again issuing a moratorium on off-shore drilling, while maintaining a de facto ban on new permits even for shallow water drilling, which they previously stated would be unaffected. The courts have twice declared this unconstitutional, over 70 percent of the people see this as unreasonable, yet the administration seems determined to simply end off-shore drilling, at least for those producers that cannot afford to sit idle for an unknown period of time until the ban is lifted.
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Monday, July 19, 2010
Welfare and Warfare, Paying the Price for the Baby Boomers Generation / Politics / US Politics
By: James_Quinn
Most people in America associate the Democratic Party with spending on welfare programs and the Republican Party with spending on warfare. Until reading Niall Ferguson’s brilliant The Ascent of Money, I never realized that welfare and warfare have gone hand in hand for over a century. The immortal German warmonger Otto von Bismarck was the first politician to introduce social insurance legislation in the 1880s. His reasoning was not strictly humanitarian. According to Bismarck, “A man who has a pension for his old age is much easier to deal with than a man without that prospect.” Bismarck was a shrewd politician who realized that when you provide people something for nothing, they will vote for you. Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Trouble With the Tea Parties / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Brian Wilson writes: Doesn’t look as if I’ll be invited to be the Featured Speaker at any more Tea Parties.
Not that I ever had been – but there was a time I was high on the TP Invite List as someone who knew a thing or three about Media Stuff and was willing to share with the Newly Interested at their "learning meet-ups." Many of those "cut-out" sessions were – and continue to be – quite good. Fresh faces, yearning to learn free all the things they were never taught (or forgot) about the Constitution, the vision of the Founding Dads as well other stuff they never knew about broadcast and print media, promotion, advertising and assorted "mass com" things.
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Monday, July 19, 2010
Robustness and Fragility, A Lecture by Dr. Nassim Taleb / Politics / Resources & Reviews
By: Daniel_Bruno
He starts the sold-out presentation with a tale of two readers on a business trip. Settled in for a long flight, Dr. Taleb pulls a book out of his bag while the fellow next to him pulls out the fashionable,expensive, razor thin, 500 book capacity Kindle to pass the time. A conversation ensues and comparisons are made. Common sense and marketing tell us that the Kindle is far more efficient, But Dr. Taleb is not so sure. He has reams of work on 1990s era floppy discs that he can no longer access. But books, the product of technology essentially unchanged in 500 years, present no such problem and will outlast the Kindle when it too becomes obsolete.
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Monday, July 19, 2010
Is the War on Wall Street Over? / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Danny_Schechter
An unusual word crept into the lexicon of the New York Times op-ed page, the arbiter of approved thought in the age of economic collapse. The new conservative columnist Ross Douthat dusted off a key phrase associated with Marxism, “class war.”
Sunday, July 18, 2010
BP Gulf Oil Well Cap, Pressure At The Wellhead And What It Really Means / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Dr_Tom_Termotto
BP and the Coast Guard are watching the pressure at the wellhead very, very closely because of what it will mean for the future prospects of this well. Pressure readings under a critical threshold usually mean that there may be leaking elsewhere in the system. If there is a single leak, it will be more easily diagnosed and remedied depending on where it is. If there is more than one leak present, a whole set of different challenges emerges. Most importantly, keeping the system under pressure, when leaks exist anywhere, will inevitably increase the potential for those leaks to worsen.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Time for UK to Quit U.S. Afghan War? / Politics / Afghanistan
By: Andrew_Butter
This Killing Season 100 Brits Will Die In USA’s Afghan War. It’s Time UK Walks Away.
Hamish from the farm up the road where my mum lives in Scotland did three tours in Helmand. Now he’s out of it for good and he won’t be going back. He talked about it once (when he had legs), that’s when he told me about the Killing Season.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Theft of the American Dream / Politics / US Politics
By: Jesse
America must decide what type of country it wishes to be, and then conform public and foreign policy to those ends, and not the other way around. Politicians have no right to subjugate the constitutional process of government to any foreign organization.
Secrecy, except in very select military matters, is repugnant to the health of a democratic government, and is almost always a means to conceal a fraud. Corporations are not people, and do not have the rights of individuals as such.
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