Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Making Sure Your Young Adult Emerges on Time / Politics / Educating Children
By: Don_Miller
My youngest son, who is now in his 50s, asked me what it felt like when all the children left the nest. I thought for a moment and said:
For my entire adult life, I’d driven a boat down a clearly marked narrow channel. I had to stay between the markers in order to provide for my family. Then, when you and your siblings left, I came to a vast ocean with no markers and no land in sight. It was exciting and overwhelming; I had all these options, and I wasn’t sure what to do. But it sure was nice my money was finally freed up to make that last push toward retirement.
He told me that was exactly how he felt after graduating college—minus that bit about retirement: flat broke with no real job on the horizon.
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Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Janet Yellen Is A Religious Nutcase / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Janet Yellen is a religious nutcase. She may not appear like one at first glance, but take a look at her picture again and you may find that instead that’s exactly what she looks like. She may have that nice little grandma façade, but then those are often the worst cases. I realize this is not a nice thing to say, but there are limits to what even nice little grandmas can say and do, especially when they run a central bank where an embroidery class would seem like a much better fit.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Higher Education: The Biggest Scam Going / Politics / Education
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: Here’s a question for you: Has higher education become another great American scam?
I’m not talking about the rich getting scammed. They get what they pay for. They can afford to be scammed – they know what’s up.
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Monday, July 14, 2014
How the Drug War Drives Child Migrants to the US Border / Politics / Immigration
By: Mark_Thornton
Most attentive parents today rarely allow their children to go unsupervised, particularly in public. It starts with the wireless baby monitor for the crib and ends with the ever-present cell phone at college graduation.
This is what makes reports from the US-Mexican border so perplexing to most Americans. It is hard to believe that parents would send their children, even young children, to travel many hundreds of miles, up to 1,600 miles without guardianship, or under the control of “mules” who guide the children with the hope of a safe voyage to the United States.
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Monday, July 14, 2014
Ron Paul on What's Missing in The Current Immigration 'Crisis' Debate / Politics / Immigration
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Over the past several weeks we have seen a significant increase in illegal immigration, as thousands of unaccompanied minors pour across what seems an invisible southern border into the United States. The mass immigration has, as to be expected, put an enormous strain on local resources, and it has heated up the immigration debate in the US.
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Sunday, July 13, 2014
Washington Pushing Ukraine to the Brink / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Mike_Whitney
What does a pipeline in Afghanistan have to do with the crisis in Ukraine?
Everything. It reveals the commercial interests that drive US policy. Just as the War in Afghanistan was largely fought to facilitate the transfer of natural gas from Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea, so too, Washington engineered the bloody coup in Kiev to cut off energy supplies from Russia to Europe to facilitate the US pivot to Asia.
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Saturday, July 12, 2014
Is The ISIS Movement A New Intifada? / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Crusade Against Terror
In the tense and hectic days following the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, then-president George W. Bush on several occasions committed a serious error, which was soon corrected by his advisers and speechwriters. He said the US would react and respond to the attacks with a Crusade Against Terror.
Friday, July 11, 2014
The Impacts of US Supremacy in West Asia and India / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Submissions
Srinivasan Rangaraj writes: The effect of the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East countries is to such an extent that it erodes the global economy in the larger fashion. Since most of the global land, whether they may be developing or developed nations, import oil barrels from the west Asian countries for the most of their oil requirements, any break out of war, in this region, lead the economies of these countries to a devastating state of affairs.
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Thursday, July 10, 2014
Ukraine II - Why Moldova Urgently Matters / Politics / Eastern Europe
By: STRATFOR
Robert D. Kaplan writes: "NATO's Article 5 offers little protection against Vladimir Putin's Russia," Iulian Fota, Romania's presidential national security adviser, told me on a recent visit to Bucharest. "Article 5 protects Romania and other Eastern European countries against a military invasion. But it does not protect them against subversion," that is, intelligence activities, the running of criminal networks, the buying-up of banks and other strategic assets, and indirect control of media organs to undermine public opinion. Moreover, Article 5 does not protect Eastern Europe against reliance on Russian energy. As Romanian President Traian Basescu told me, Romania is a somewhat energy-rich island surrounded by a Gazprom empire.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
U.S. Federal Reserve June 2014 - Noise / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Fred_Sheehan
On June 18, 2014, and July 2, 2014, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen announced her bureaucracy will let inflation do its own thing. She is steadfast in her determination to meet the Fed's dual mandates under the Bernanke-Yellen dispensation, that is, she will not interfere with either the central bank-induced asset or price inflations.
A discussion of asset inflation will follow, with a quick note first about the June 18 press conference. Yellen stated: "Let me just say inflation continues to run well below our objective." This was not true. The Fed's measurement for inflation (Personal Consumption Expenditure) was 1.6% in May (1.8% in June, announced after this press conference.) By every other measure, inflation is above 2.0%. The all-items, PCE price index, published by the Dallas Fed, rose at a 2.8% annual pace in May.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
UK Public Sector on Strike, Schools Closed - Silverdale Sheffield Example / Politics / UK Politics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
An estimated 1 million public sector workers that includes most teachers have gone on strike today to protest against the sub-inflation 1% pay cap and for some even ZERO pay increases of the past few years that the Labour union movement has labeled as the 'cost of living crisis' as inflation each year erodes the purchasing power of earnings.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Persecution of the Jewish Race Continues, Israel's Dark DNA Secret Revealed / Politics / Israel
By: Nadeem_Walayat
As I write the descendants of the Jewish race in Israel / Palestine are once more suffering ritual slaughter with the number of dead at this time inevitably soon to escalate into the hundreds, a blood letting that is periodically unleashed on an near annual basis in Palestine in response to the Jewish races quest for freedom from persecution of that which has claimed more than 60,000 lives since the year 2000 alone.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Central Bank Smackdown / Politics / Central Banks
By: John_Mauldin
Smackdown: smack·down, ˈsmakˌdoun/, noun, US informal
1. a bitter contest or confrontation.
"the age-old man versus Nature smackdown"
2. a decisive or humiliating defeat or setback.
The term “smackdown” was first used by professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson (AKA The Rock) in 1997. Ten years later its use had become so ubiquitous that Merriam-Webster felt compelled to add it to their lexicon. It may be Dwayne Johnson’s enduring contribution to Western civilization, notwithstanding and apart from his roles in The Fast and The Furious movie series. All that said, it is quite the useful word for talking about confrontations that are more for show than actual physical altercations.
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Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Impact of IMF SDRs on Commercial Trade / Politics / Global Financial System
By: BATR
The global corporatist economy works differently from business transactions at your neighborhood convenience store. Ostensibly, the International Monetary Fund was set up to allow the G20 nations to umpire the ground rules to play nice in macro trade. Platitudes about promoting job growth or third world development are the realm of public relations for the central banks. The impact of the IMF on virtually all countries, vividly seen in every crisis whether real or contrived, always has a political objective that underpins the economic functions. As confidence in national currencies falter, the big sugar daddy loves to intervene, provided they pull the strings.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
ISIS And The New Crusade / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
From Jakarta to Madrid
Shown on hundreds of blogs and used by newswires like Reuters for extracted images, video footage of speakers from ISIS shows them proclaiming the World Jihad as the forerunner to the Global Caliphate. In related ISIS group videos posted to Web sites in June, British ISIS members appealed in English for Muslims across the world to join their cause.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
The Inevitability of U.S. Foreign Entanglements / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
George Friedman writes: The Fourth of July weekend gave me time to consider events in Iraq and Ukraine, U.S.-German relations and the Mexican borderland and immigration. I did so in the context of the founding of the United States, asking myself if America has strayed from the founders' intent with regard to foreign policy. Many people note Thomas Jefferson's warning that the United States should pursue "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none," taking that as the defining strategy of the founders. I think it is better to say that was the defining wish of the founders but not one that they practiced to extremes.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Why I’m Grateful to Live in America / Politics / Social Issues
By: Frank_Holmes
An important principle of our investment process at U.S. Global Investors is a belief that government policies are a precursor to change. As a result, we closely monitor the fiscal, monetary and other impactful governmental policies of the world’s largest countries, both in terms of economic stature and population. We’re always listening for the proverbial shot heard around the world. As we celebrated America’s Independence Day over the weekend, this belief rings especially true.
Monday, July 07, 2014
America Has Ceased to Exist - Video / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
By Doug Casey, Chairman
“America is a marvelous idea, a unique idea, fantastic idea. I’m extremely pro-American. But America has ceased to exist,” says Doug Casey. Watch him in this fascinating interview with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie discuss the political, social, and economic challenges the US must conquer as well as lessons we can learn from failed states.
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Monday, July 07, 2014
Ron Paul - Hobby Lobby Decision Creates Small Island of Freedom in Ocean of Statism / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
This week, supporters of religious freedom cheered the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. The Court was correct to protect business owners from being forced to violate their religious beliefs by paying for contraceptives. However, the decision was very limited in scope and application.
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Monday, July 07, 2014
The Chilling Threat Of Nuclear Civil War In Ukraine / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Playing With Fire
The WNA-World Nuclear Association which tirelessly promotes nuclear power presents Ukraine as a poster child of civil nuclear power. It says that after construction of Ukraine's first-ever civil nuclear power complex – at Chernobyl in 1970 – Ukraine's present 15 NPPs (nuclear reactors) grouped into 4 major complexes operated by State monopoly NNEGC Energoatom had a combined capacity of about 13 900 MW and were all VVER-type reactors (mostly VVER-320s) of Soviet design. Using 2009 data, they produced about 48% of Ukraine's total electricity output of 177 billion kWh of which 4 billion kWh was exported.