Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
U.S. Iran Nuclear Deal Regional Reverberations / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
What was unthinkable for many people over many years happened in the early hours of Nov. 24 in Geneva: The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran struck a deal. After a decadelong struggle, the two reached an accord that seeks to ensure that Iran's nuclear program remains a civilian one. It is a preliminary deal, and both sides face months of work to batten down domestic opposition, build convincing mechanisms to assure compliance and unthread complicated global sanctions.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
A Thanksgiving Reality / Politics / Social Issues
By: Walter_Brasch
Segued into a 10-second afterthought, smothered by 60-second Christmas commercials, is the media acknowledgement of Thanksgiving, which nudges us into a realization of all we are thankful for.
But the usual litany, even with the omnipresent pictures of the less fortunate being fed by the more fortunate, doesn’t list well this year. Our thanks seem to be at best half-hearted or at least insensitive and shallow.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
TEDDY ROOSEVELT: US Statism’s Seductive Founder / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Merrill
A recent work sought to identify and rank in a way the few US Presidents over the past century plus whose policies led to greater freedom in the economy. That list did not include, Theodore Roosevelt, TR, the trust-busting lion and hero of San Juan Hill.
To the consternation of many, the work ranked two Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman, as possibly the greatest presidential freedom fighters for the economy since 1900. Supporters of several presidents claim other names should have been included, Teddy Roosevelt for one, Ronald Reagan for another and even Bill Clinton.
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Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Zombie Government Armed with Accounting Tricks Bailed out Zombie Banking Industry / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Casey_Research
By Doug French, Contributing Editor
On March 16, 2009, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), a private-sector organization that establishes financial accounting and reporting standards in the US, turned the stock market around and at the same time motivated banks to become the worst slumlords and neighbors imaginable.
Most people believe accounting is conservative, the rules cut and dried. Accountants make economists look frivolous. But accountants are people too, and FASB succumbed to pressure from Capitol Hill in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Understanding the Rise of China / Politics / China Economy
By: Frank_Holmes
If the sweeping economic reforms planned by Chinese leaders during the Third Plenum can be our guide, it looks to be a promising decade for global investors. Details released recently confirmed President Xi Jinping’s concerted efforts to move China toward a market-based economy that mirrors the West.The plan’s comprehensive nature and the level of clarity evidently pleased investors, as many Chinese stocks experienced a pop.
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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Israelis, Saudis and the U.S. Iranian Nuclear Agreement / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
A deal between Iran and the P-5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) was reached Saturday night. The Iranians agreed to certain limitations on their nuclear program while the P-5+1 agreed to remove certain economic sanctions. The next negotiation, scheduled for six months from now depending on both sides' adherence to the current agreement, will seek a more permanent resolution. The key players in this were the United States and Iran. The mere fact that the U.S. secretary of state would meet openly with the Iranian foreign minister would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago, and unthinkable at the beginning of the Islamic republic.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
American Denial, Desperation and Despotism / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
With the death of the American Republic, the headstone sums up the epitaph - stuck on stupid. People celebrate a "Politically Correct" mixed-race president as leader for a society of multiracial special interest groups as the maturing of the country. Very few writers describe the ways diverse and culturally conflicting factions clash with traditional values and tested institutions because any serious discussion, automatically presumes to be racist. Such an adolescent and narrow-minded attitude, surrenders to the forces of anti-intellectualism. It is time to liberate the fabricated guilt and face up to the certainty that our nation is a declared SOS zone.
Monday, November 25, 2013
The Latest from RBS, the Royal Bank of Crooks / Politics / Banksters
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: The Royal Bank of Scotland, a huge lender to small- and medium-sized businesses in the U.K. and Europe, is being accused of undermining the businesses it lends to.
Not that this would ever happen in the United States…
Apparently, the too-big-to-fail British bank further stresses borrowers by layering on fees when businesses can least afford them. This can trigger covenants that allow the bank to actually dismantle the borrower, to the benefit of advisors who have less than an arm’s length relationship with the bank.
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Monday, November 25, 2013
Quantitative Easing is Ben's Rocket to Nowhere / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Peter_Schiff
Herd mentality can be as frustrating as it is inexplicable. Once a crowd starts moving, momentum can be all that matters and clear signs and warnings are often totally ignored. Financial markets are currently following this pattern with respect to the unshakable belief that the Federal Reserve is ready, willing, and most importantly, able, to immediately execute a wind down of its quantitative easing program. How this notion became so deeply entrenched is a mystery, but the stampede it has sparked is getting more violent, and irrational, by the day.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Iran Nuclear Disaster – For Overpriced Crude Oil / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: Andrew_McKillop
IRAN NUCLEAR – ISRAEL NUCLEAR
Alongside Gulf state leaderships and their official news outlets, Israel's Benyamin Netanyahu reacted with fury to the Iran nuclear sanctions-unwinding deal made in Geneva, 24 November. He fulminated: "What was concluded in Geneva last night is not a historic agreement, it's a historic mistake," adding "It's not made the world a safer place. Like the agreement with North Korea in 2005, this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place".
Monday, November 25, 2013
Can Karzai Save America from Afghanistan? / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
After a year of talks over the post-2014 US military presence in Afghanistan, the US administration announced last week that a new agreement had finally been reached. Under the deal worked out with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the US would keep thousands of troops on nine military bases for at least the next ten years.
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Monday, November 25, 2013
Pay Day Loans Judgement Day - Could Interest Rate Cap Trigger Ponzi Debt Industry Collapse? / Politics / Debt & Loans
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The government and FCA regulator are finally starting to get their act together concerning the legalised loan sharks that comes perhaps as long as a decade too late for many victims of the Pay Day Loans industry that entices usually inexperienced and desperate borrowers to get into debt at rates of interest that ensure that rolled over debts will soon multiply to many times the original sum borrowed.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Euro-zone Bashing Germany For Successful Economy, Game of Thrones – European Style / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: John_Mauldin
In 2009-10 it seemed like this letter was all Europe all the time. There was a never-ending crisis from one corner of the Continent to the other. That time seems to have slowly faded from our collective consciousness, but the Eurozone crisis is not over, and it will not end quickly or soon. Even if it seems to unfold in slow motion – like the slow build-up in a Game of Thrones storyline to violent internecine clashes followed by more slow plot developments but never any real resolution, the Eurozone debacle has never really gone away. The structural imbalances have still not been fixed; politicians and central bankers have still not agreed to solve major fiscal problems; the overall economy still disintegrates; unemployment is staggeringly high in some countries and still rising; and the people are growing restless.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Social Security - The Most Successful Ponzi Scheme in History / Politics / Social Issues
By: MISES
Gary Galles writes: “We paid our Social Security and Medicare taxes; we earned our benefits.” It is that belief among senior citizens that President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he claimed that those programs “strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers.”
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Iran Nuclear Deal in Geneva: Uranium Enrichment Halted or Continuing? / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: Stephen_Lendman
A previous article asked if it matters? Longstanding hardline US/Israeli policy won't change.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The JFK Conspiracy Theory Paradox / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: Robert_Singer
The assassination of the President of the United States on national television by the “lone” assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald—who according to authorities used an obsolete bolt-action WWI rifle that was not capable of firing bullets fast enough to wound John F. Kennedy—who is then assassinated the next day by another “lone” assassin, is so stupid that whoever is behind the assassination didn’t expect you to believe it.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Iran Nuclear Deal Details - Will NOT Stop Iranian Nuclear Weapons Programme / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Whilst many politicians can be seen busily congratulating themselves in the mainstream press over the interim Iran nuclear deal, which first seeks to freeze and then dismantle parts of Iran's nuclear weapons programme, which if true would amount to great news as it would ultimately imply one less nation with its finger on the trigger of armageddon.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The Money Changers Serenade: Bankers New Plot to Steal Your Deposits / Politics / Banksters
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a protege of Treasury Secretaries Rubin and Summers, has received his reward for continuing the Rubin-Summers-Paulson policy of supporting the “banks too big to fail” at the expense of the economy and American people. For his service to the handful of gigantic banks, whose existence attests to the fact that the Anti-Trust Act is a dead-letter law, Geithner has been appointed president and managing director of the private equity firm, Warburg Pincus and is on his way to his fortune.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The 1961 JFK Speech that Kicked the American Dream into High Gear / Politics / US Politics
By: Submissions
Katherine Smith writes: Our American dream of shopping for useless toxic stuff, an environmental nightmare, went into high gear after JFK was killed in 1963.
Would the planet be at serious risk, according to a massive United Nations Environmental Report, due to “the dangers of climate change, water scarcity, dwindling fish stocks and the pressures on the land and the extinction of species,” had John F. Kennedy not been assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963.
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Saturday, November 23, 2013
Drone Wars, Nuclear Weapons and the End Time Prophecy Triggering Armageddon - Video / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The middle east is soaked in blood, religious End Time prophecies and is fast gathering the means to bring about Armageddon as several more states are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities.
The Drone war over Pakistan is encouraging stronger alliances with fellow Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia that is reported to have several Pakistani nuclear weapons on order and ready to be dispatched on request to counter both Israeli and Iranian threats, that itself despite much propaganda is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme to rival that of both Pakistan and Israel (120 nuclear weapons each). The region appears to be counting down towards Armageddon when the region and its prophecies will be vaporised for eternity.
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