Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, April 23, 2012
Dutch Government on Verge of Collapse After Economic Austerity Torpedoed / Politics / Euro-Zone
... Caretaker Government and New Elections Coming Up
The Netherlands has been one of the staunchest proponents of forced austerity on Greece. However, now that Brussels has demanded the Netherlands hit its fiscal targets, Dutch politicians can't get the task done and the government is poised to collapse. New elections are coming up.
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Monday, April 23, 2012
Sun Solar Maximum Ramps Up Earth Cataclysms / Politics / Environmental Issues
How is the SUN triggering many earth changes?
More than any other major co-factor, the unprecedented, meteoric and relentless changes taking place throughout Planet Earth are the direct result of exceedingly powerful influences emanating from the presiding star of our solar system. The sun, and especially its recent and extraordinary activity, is at the very heart of every major geophysical and meteorological event taking place around the globe today.
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Sunday, April 22, 2012
Did Bernanke Prevent Another Great Depression? / Politics / US Economy
In a lecture given at George Washington University on March 27, 2012, the chairman of the Fed said that the US central bank's aggressive response to the 2007–2009 financial crisis and recession helped prevent a worldwide catastrophe. Various economic indicators were showing ominous signs at the time. After closing at 3.1 percent in September 2007, the yearly rate of growth of industrial production fell to minus 14.8 percent by June 2009. The yearly rate of growth of housing starts fell from 20.5 percent in January 2005 to minus 54.8 percent in January 2009.
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Sunday, April 22, 2012
More Americans Are Sneaking Out of the Subprime State / Politics / US Debt
Memories take time. Like history. Or wine. Or cement.
At first, they are loose, fluid…and watery. Then, over time, they dry up…and develop more body…more shape…more substance.
Our recollections from our trip to Argentina are still congealing…setting up like a stone wall. We’ll show it to you in the days ahead.
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Sunday, April 22, 2012
Government Bonds and Debt Bondage / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2012
The phrase "his word is his bond" is not heard as much these days as it was in my youth, back when Eisenhower was President. The phrase relied on a concept of "bond" that meant reliability. This reliability was based on predictability.
The other use of the word refers to bondage. The person who is in bonds is tied up. That also relates to the ides of a bond. A person is restricted by whatever it was that he promised to do. He is therefore predictable. The essence of "bond" is predictability.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
U.S. Economic Recovery Debate, Still on the Fence? / Politics / Economic Recovery
Lost among never-ending talk in the mainstream media about the ‘modest recovery’ being experienced in America have been some rather poignant headlines that are telling a completely different story. I’ve used up many weeks to outline the flaws regarding how our economic growth is measured and suggest more responsible alternatives. I don’t expect Washington to change, however. Those suggestions are for ‘We the People’ as we navigate our own individual situations and seek to do the things necessary in order that we are better prepared to deal with the undeniable consequences of gross mismanagement by our government.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
Fiat Currency, Nixon, Gold and Crude Oil / Politics / Fiat Currency
In July 1944, delegates from 44 nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire - the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference - and agreed to "peg" their currencies to the U.S. dollar, the only currency strong enough to meet the rising demands for international currency transactions.
Member nations were required to establish a parity of their national currencies in terms of the US dollar, the "peg", and to maintain exchange rates within plus or minus one percent of parity, the "band."
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
The JOBS Act: Washington Takes One Step Back Toward Capitalism / Politics / US Politics
I know my editorial credibility and reader confidence will suddenly collapse when this goes to print but I have some good news out of Washington and Congress. Yes, I know what you are getting ready to do but don't hit the delete button just yet!
The JOBS Act is actually good news for start-up and private company investors that will provide more liquidity, create an IPO boom and may be the beginning of a trend by Washington away from more regulatory and bureaucratic solutions holding down a nation and economy that simply can't compete with the rest of the world.
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Friday, April 20, 2012
What President Obama Doesn't Understand About Crude Oil Price Manipulation / Politics / Crude Oil
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: If you think gasoline prices are volatile now, stay tuned. President Obama's plan to clamp down on oil speculators is going to make things worse.
I'm sure you've seen the news by now.
The president wants to clamp down on so-called "oil price manipulation" and has proposed a $52 billion plan to increase federal supervision of oil markets.
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Friday, April 20, 2012
LME Considering Settling Metals Contracts in Renminbi / Politics / Metals & Mining
According to a report last week in the Financial Times, the London Metals Exchange or LME is currently considering allowing members to settle their contracts in Chinese renminbi.
In a survey of its members aimed at aiding the design of a new clearing house, the metals exchange reportedly asked if they would like to include the renminbi among its current roster of other currencies for the settling and clearing of trades, and if dropping the pound sterling would be problematic.
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Friday, April 20, 2012
Unplugging Americans From The Matrix / Politics / US Politics
Americans, the British, and Western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the representatives of freedom, democracy, and morality in the world. The West passes judgment on the rest of the world as if the West is God and the rest of the world are barbarians in need of chastisement, invasion, and occupation. As readers know, from time to time I raise questions about the validity of the West’s extreme hubris. (See for example, the following articles: Washington’s Insouciance Has No Rival and Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade? ). China is often a country about which Washington’s moralists get on their high horse. However, China’s “authoritarian” government is actually more responsive to its people than America’s “elected democratic” government. Moreover, however incomplete on paper the civil liberties of China’s people, the Chinese government has not declared that it can violate with impunity whatever rights Chinese citizens have. And it is not China that is running torture prisons all over the globe.
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Friday, April 20, 2012
Top Individual Income Tax Rates and the GDP Growth: Exposing the Lies of Rush Limbaugh and Right-Wing Republicans / Politics / US Politics
I am sick and tired of propagandist Rush Limbaugh claim, almost on a daily basis, that lower taxes, and he means the rate on the top individual income tax bracket, or marginal tax rate, leads to higher growth. Most right-wing Republicans believe in his lies and never bother to check the facts with the benefit of the hindsight. There is no subject related to the economy in America that has more propaganda than taxes because over time trillions are at stake.
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Friday, April 20, 2012
Lagarde says IMF Would Be There 'For All Members' In Debt Crisis / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Bloomberg Exclusive: IMF managing director Christine Lagarde spoke with Bloomberg Television's Margaret Brennan and said that she expects more contributions on top of the $320 billion raised and "I look at this pot of money as an umbrella...there are clouds on the horizon." In reference to Spain, Lagarde said that, "if there's a need, the IMF has to be there for all members."
Lagarde also said that the U.S. must address housing issues "forcefully" to help the American economy and that whatever can be done to help households "is going to be of help to the entire U.S. economy."
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Friday, April 20, 2012
Currency Wars: Gambling With Other Peoples’ Money / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2012
If running out of your own money wasn’t bad enough, policy makers are increasingly spending other peoples’ money to bail their country out. At the upcoming G-20 meeting, finance ministers from around the world will contemplate an increase to the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At stake for politicians is whether they can continue to do what they know best – to play politics. In contrast, at stake for investors may be whether currencies will retain their function as a store of value.
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
How Goldman Sachs Captured Europe / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress. But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair. Paulson’s plea for a permanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
European Stability Mechanism Needs Direct Access to Europe's Banks / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
Jose Vinals, director of the IMF's monetary and capital markets department, spoke with Bloomberg Television's Margaret Brennan today and said that the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) should be able to put capital into banks without going through national governments to "de-link the sovereign and banking risk at the national level."
Vinals also warned against getting "caught into a wave of pessimism by recent market data" even if the "situation is uncertain" in countries like Spain and Italy.
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Fearful, Anti-Social Cash Hoarding / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
How much longer will companies be allowed to run themselves for cash...?
HOARDING stuff until your home is a health hazard and your family and neighbors hate you isn't only a TV "reality". Perhaps 1 million US citizens are prey to the hoarding compulsion on one estimate, fighting the urge to let everything just keep piling up.
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Spain, the Land of Magical Financial Realism / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
These days when I read about Spain I'm wondering more and more how and why it is that the country has any access at all left to international finance markets. The bond auction this week was even sort of bearable, even as yields rose. I'm guessing that either investors have a hard time reading the news or they're going double or nothing in a risk-on bet that Germany and the IMF (China?!) will come to the rescue.
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Federal Reserve Money Printing Inflation Pushed U.S. Economy to the Wall / Politics / Central Banks
Terry Coxon, Casey Research : Decades of manipulation by the Federal Reserve (through its creation of paper money) and by Congress (through its taxing and spending) have pushed the US economy into a circumstance that can't be sustained but from which there is no graceful exit.
With few exceptions, all of the noble souls who chose a career in "public service" and who've advanced to be voting members of Congress are committed to chronic deficits, though they deny it. For political purposes, deficits work. The people whose wishes come true through the spending side of the deficit are happy and vote to reelect. The people on the borrowing side of the deficit aren't complaining, since they willingly buy the Treasury bonds and Treasury bills that fund the deficit. And taxpayers generally tolerate deficits as a lesser evil than a tax hike.
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Salvaging Your Retirement Savings from the U.S. Government Ponzi Scheme / Politics / US Politics
"It is unbelievable. Goldman Sachs? No one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme." - Bernie Madoff
What is your average person to do? The governments who purport to own them and take half of their production every year also borrow on "their behalf" and have put not only them, but their children and grandchildren into levels of debt that can only be described as slavery. Meanwhile, the entire economy is so distorted by government regulations, taxes, tariffs, laws and legislation that calling it a "free market" is like calling Shaquille O'Neal a petite, pretty white girl. And, to top it off, the monetary system forced upon us by legal tender laws is a system based, at its core, on counterfeiting and price (interest rate) fixing.
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