Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, March 23, 2012
The Natural Gas Act: Another Washington Boondoggle / Politics / Natural Gas
By: Money_Morning
James Baldwin writes:
With gasoline fast approaching $4 a gallon and heading toward $5 this summer, it's no surprise that politicians are panicking.
In Washington D.C., everything is an emergency. Legislation is always the antidote.
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Friday, March 23, 2012
To Where Our Oppositonal Culture Takes Us / Politics / US Politics
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
"On approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for this primitive consciousness does not regard the other as essentially real but sees its own self in the other." –Hegel
Thursday, March 22, 2012
WALL STREET CONFIDENCE TRICK: How "Interest Rate Swaps" Are Bankrupting Local Governments / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Ellen_Brown
Far from reducing risk, derivatives increase risk, often with catastrophic results. — Derivatives expert Satyajit Das, Extreme Money (2011)
The “toxic culture of greed” on Wall Street was highlighted again last week, when Greg Smith went public with his resignation from Goldman Sachs in a scathing oped published in the New York Times. In other recent eyebrow-raisers, LIBOR rates—the benchmark interest rates involved in interest rate swaps—were shown to be manipulated by the banks that would have to pay up; and the objectivity of the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) was called into question, when a 50% haircut for creditors was not declared a “default” requiring counterparties to pay on credit default swaps on Greek sovereign debt.
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Thursday, March 22, 2012
Government Lobster Trap: 'Why Congress Invented Tax-Deferred IRA Accounts' / Politics / US Politics
By: Gary_North
I hope you're tucked in. Get used to the feeling of being tucked in. Don't you feel safer now? Settle down. I'll tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there were two United States Senators. One was a Democrat. The other was a Republican.
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Thursday, March 22, 2012
Apple Stock and U.S. Income Inequality / Politics / US Politics
By: EconMatters
Apple stock price rallied to $602.50 on March 21 partly due to the the company's decision to spread some of its huge pile of cash ($97.6 billion in cash equivalent with no outstanding debt at the end of 2011) in the form of dividend and a share buyback program.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The Crazy World Of Smart Grids And Carbon Capture / Politics / Electricity
By: Andrew_McKillop
While the oil-intensive but deindustrialized countries of the West show mounting signs of stress at the prospect of more and further oil price rises, and China moves ever onward on its oil-intensive industrial path racking up huge trade surpluses while paying for all the oil it wants, the twin sideshow of smart grids and carbon capture still has some headroom, in some countries. The main problem, however, is that CCS is almost certainly impossible, and smart grids will be fantastically expensive.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The Ascendence of Sociopaths in US Governance, How to Surive What's to Come / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
Doug Casey, Casey Research An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He's diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions and his residence in yet another. He doesn't depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Republicans and Democrats Both Want to Kill You! / Politics / US Politics
By: PhilStockWorld
What is happening to this country?
Robert Reich points out that, in announcing the Republicans’ new budget and tax plan Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said “We are sharpening the contrast between the path that we’re proposing and the path of debt and decline the president has placed us upon.” But the plan doesn’t do much to reduce the debt. Even by its own estimate the deficit would drop to $166 billion in 2018 and then begin growing again.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Saudi Arabia Hires Super Tankers to Flood U.S. With Oil for Election Year / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Mike_Shedlock
... Oil Minister Says "High Oil Prices Unjustified"; Highest March Price in History; Republicans Say Obama Not Doing Enough
Wall of Supertankers Heads For US
Brent crude at $125, US Crude at $110, and soaring gasoline prices everywhere have caused quite a stir. See Highest Price Ever of Gasoline in March; State-by-State Gas Price and Gas Tax Comparison for a discussion.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Occupy Wall Street Spring Offensive / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
For years, in the last century, when I was in School and learning about the early days of journalism, we were taught that author Horace Greeley who founded the New York Herald Tribune, was famous for saying, “Go West Young Man And Grow Up With The Country.”
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
U.S. Trade Deficit Rains on the Jobs Parade / Politics / US Economy
By: Peter_Schiff
Earlier this month the Labor Department reported that 227,000 new jobs were added to the economy in February, marking the third consecutive month of positive jobs growth. Many observers took the news as evidence that the recovery has taken hold in earnest, helping send the S&P 500 index to the highest level in nearly five years. However the very same day the Commerce Department reported that, after surging for much of the last year, the U.S. trade deficit increased to $52.6 billion for January, the largest monthly trade gap since October 2008. This second data set should dampen enthusiasm for the first.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
European Central Bank Watch, Group of 30 not your dream team / Politics / Central Banks
By: ECB_Watch
In November 2011, a Brussels based lobby watchdog asked Mario Draghi to withdraw from the group of G30 because it conflicts with his duties as ECB President. In February 2012 they addressed a complaint to the ethics officer of the ECB claiming it had dodged their earlier criticism. This referral comes as it is uncovered that Draghi stated in writing that there were no relevant personal factors to be taken into account in considering his nomination in June 2011. It is misleading because it fails to disclose a conflict of interest, that is, his son working as an interest trader at Morgan Stanley (ECB-Watch). While the watchdog's criticism is purely based on principle, we point out a variety reasons why the Group of 30 does not inspire us very much. Among them, Mario Draghi is one of four members of the G30 who are connected to the Goldman-Greece (off-market currency swaps) affair.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Revolution, Its All About China, Weeks When Decades Can Happen / Politics / China
By: John_Mauldin
My friends at GaveKal are uniquely positioned to help us think about where we have been in the past decade and where we are going in the next one. Their perch in Hong Kong lets them keep their fingers on China’s pulse, but they also have profound roots in Europe – the Gave family is French – as well as a thorough grasp of the US economy and culture. (Louis Gave, the author of today’s Outside the Box, is a Duke grad.)
We can all second Louis when he notes “the discomfort and uncertainty we find in most meetings with clients” – we’re treading on uncertain turf here and moving into unexplored territory. We sense that the potential, in the next few years, for both creation and destruction (so yes, creative destruction) is greater than at any time in our lives – and greater perhaps than at any time in the history of the human race.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Afghanistan, the Long War / Politics / Afghanistan
By: STRATFOR
The war in Afghanistan has been under way for more than 10 years. It has not been the only war fought during this time; for seven of those years another, larger war was waged in Iraq, and smaller conflicts were under way in a number of other countries as well. But the Afghanistan War is still the longest large-scale, multi-divisional war fought in American history. An American soldier's killing of 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, on March 11 represents only a moment in this long war, but it is an important moment.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
What The End Result of Fed’s Cancerous Policies Will Be / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Graham_Summers
Yesterday I noted that the “addict/ dealer” metaphor for the Fed’s intervention in the markets was in fact not accurate and that the Fed’s actions would be more appropriately described as permitted cancerous beliefs to spread throughout the financial system, thereby killing Democratic Capitalism which is the basis of the capital markets.
Today I’m going to explain what the “final outcome” for this process will be. The short version is what happens to a cancer patient who allows the disease to spread unchecked (death).
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Monday, March 19, 2012
The Greeks, the Fed, And Sovereignty / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2012
By: Andy_Sutton
The financial woes of Greece have been fairly well documented over the past year and a half that is for sure. The deduction many analysts, myself included, that the country would end up defaulting on the majority of its debt was a foregone conclusion. For the technocrats to pull a default, and then call it a bond swap, was an exercise in semantics that even Roget himself would have been proud of. The very idea of calling it a swap presents the idea that the bondholders got something other than an empty bag, when an empty bag is exactly what they got.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Ron Paul on Demolishing Due Process / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
It is ironic but perhaps sadly appropriate that Attorney General Eric Holder would choose a law school, Northwestern University, to deliver a speech earlier this month in which he demolished what was left of the rule of law in America.
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Monday, March 19, 2012
What Do Customers Really Think About Goldman Sachs? / Politics / Banking Stocks
By: Janet_Tavakoli
Last week a Goldman Sachs former employee Greg Smith wrote an op-ed for the New York Times explaining why he was resigning from Goldman Sachs. He alleged Goldman's culture had recently deteriorated and that Goldman's "toxic and destructive" culture isn't doing right by its clients.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Mounting Political Dissent in the Land of the Sheeple / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
The long and sometime turbulent drama of political dissent in America is a continued theme in history of the country. Born out of a revolution and based on social principles of self-determination, the nation rustles with the internal conflict between individual liberty and the power of tyrannical elites. This struggle is the natural condition in any nation. How a society treats dissenters is a primary test for any government. Most states fail this assessment miserably. America's tolerance for peaceful dissent is in jeopardy, not solely from the current despotic regime in power, but from the flock of hungry government parasites that graze upon the public benefit programs that herd citizens into a crowd controlled environment.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Obama: U.S. Energy Future Depends on Rare Earth Metals / Politics / Metals & Mining
By: Money_Morning
Don Miller writes:
Will a near-monopoly in rare earth metals do for China what oil did for Saudi Arabia?
Not if the U.S. government has anything to say about it.
President Barack Obama made that clear last week when he joined the European Union and the Japanese government in filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) about China's manipulation of the global market in rare earth metals.
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