Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
We Don't Need Free Trade Agreements with Panama, Colombia, and Korea / Politics / US Politics
By: Ian_Fletcher
Obama is still pushing for free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and Korea, albeit with the thin fig leaf of demanding they be accompanied by money for so-called Trade Adjustment Assistance, a "painkiller" program designed to blunt the harm to laid-off workers.
The Republicans don't like TAA, which has held up passage of these agreements momentarily, but both sides are still gunning to pass these agreements some time soon.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
U.S. Debt Ceiling Political Theater Diverting Attention from Theft of Americans Wealth / Politics / US Politics
By: Submissions
Dennis Kucinich writes: The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few. Let me give you some examples.
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Friday, July 15, 2011
Lower the U.S. Debt Ceiling / Politics / US Debt
By: Mark_Thornton
Currently, the big show in Washington, DC, centers around raising the debt ceiling. Congress began setting this ceiling in 1917 so that the Treasury could independently issue debt. The debt ceiling is like the limit on your credit card, except the federal government sets the limit on itself. When President Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971, the national debt was $400 billion. The increase in the national debt last year alone was four times the entire debt in 1971.
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Friday, July 15, 2011
Mandela's Contested South Africa Legacy / Politics / Africa
By: Danny_Schechter
At 94, Nelson Mandela is still kicking, inspiring an international day of community service on July 18th in his name. This seems to be an idea that Barack Obama borrowed for similar events in the USA.
While activists and athletes and entertainers, are honoring him by responding to his call for engagement, journalists in the obit departments of the world’s news networks are quietly, even secretly, combing their archives for footage and tributes that will air when he moves on to the next world. They are getting ready and seem to think it will happen sooner rather than later.
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Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Intellectual Legacy of the Federal Reserve / Politics / Central Banks
By: Aftab_Singh
Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke had an amusing exchange of words yesterday about whether or not gold is money. Needless to say, Ben answered in the negative and appealed to tradition during the conversation. Now, although I hesitantly agree with his conclusion (as in, strictly speaking, gold isn’t a widely used medium of exchange right now), I can scarcely agree with his modes of reasoning. Here, I consider the Federal Reserve’s intellectual legacy and outline a few possible reasons as to why central bankers generally fail to think and act prudently.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Beware, Taxpayers: The Days of U.S. Bank Bailouts Might Not Be Over / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Money_Morning
Kerri Shannon writes: The U.S. government has spent more than $12 trillion to prop up large financial institutions since the 2008 financial meltdown, but more taxpayer money could still be used for U.S. bank bailouts.
A Standard & Poor's report Tuesday said that despite the government's efforts at financial reform through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the U.S. Treasury, U.S. Federal Reserve and Congress could still bail out a "too-big-to-fail" bank if it felt it necessary to contain risk.
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Thursday, July 14, 2011
What Congress Doesn’t Want You to Know About the Debt Ceiling Debate / Politics / US Debt
By: Money_Morning
Martin Hutchinson writes:
At this point, there can't be anyone left who truly believes that the debt ceiling debate taking place in Washington is really about what's good for America.
The truth is it's about the 2012 election - and the party that wins the debt ceiling debate will be the party that comes out on top next year.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Europe and America are Financially Burning / Politics / Credit Crisis 2011
By: Bob_Chapman
Markets are what they are today because that is the way government wants them. The stock market has stayed up for quite some time, but the best earnings are fading. The Street is well aware of what has been happening for a number of years. They just do not say anything and go along with the program. They have come to overlook situations worldwide as well as in America, because they believe that, “The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets” won’t let the market fall.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Memo to Obama: "Create More Jobs or Resign" / Politics / Employment
By: Mike_Whitney
"Abysmal".
That's the only way to describe Friday's job's report. The whole thing stunk. And, on top of that, the unemployment rate has been heading higher for the last 3 months. It's now at 9.2 percent a full two years into the recovery. That's unprecedented. Where are the jobs, that's what everyone wants to know.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Politicians Repeating Public Proclamations & Denouncements of Early-1930s / Politics / Economic Depression
By: Aftab_Singh
In light of the monetary woes that have spread across the globe, I thought I’d demonstrate that the continuing montage of oratory acrobatics coming from our politicians are not a new thing. Here, I show a few examples of the demagogic proclamations that emerged during the early-1930s.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Big Banks Waging Warfare Against the People of the World / Politics / Credit Crisis 2011
By: Washingtons_Blog
Michael Hudson is a highly-regarded economist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. He is a former Wall Street economist at Chase Manhattan Bank who also helped establish the world’s first sovereign debt fund.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Run on U.S. Government is Coming / Politics / US Debt
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
A run is a mass withdrawal of cash funds from a borrower. We are in the midst of a continuing worldwide credit crisis, punctuated by "runs" of varying prominence and publicity.
These runs are rational, not panics and not due to quirks of psychology. They occur when investors realize that their funds are endangered in an institution. They try to get them out before they lose them.
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Monday, July 11, 2011
Competing Currencies - A Defense Against Profligate Government Spending / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The end of June marked what is hopefully the end of the Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing. For months the Fed has purchased hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury debt, enabling the government to fund its profligate deficit spending, push the national debt to its limit, and further devalue the dollar. Confidence in the dollar is plummeting, confidence in the euro has been shattered by the European bond crisis, and beleaguered consumers and investors are slowly but surely awakening to the fact that government-issued currencies do not hold their value.
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Monday, July 11, 2011
Could Energy Resources Cause Russia to Spark a Naval War in the Caspian Sea? / Politics / Russia
By: OilPrice_Com
In the past three decades the Islamic Republic of Iran has developed a well-earned sense of paranoia. First, in September 1980 Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in what he thought would be a quick military victory, but which quickly turned into an eight-year bloody slugfest, leaving an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 dead before the guns fell silent.
Monday, July 11, 2011
South Africa’s Cancer Of Corruption And ‘Culture Of Concealment’ / Politics / Africa
By: Danny_Schechter
DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA: Twenty one years after Nelson Mandela walked free, corruption has become the issue du jour in South Africa.
Even president Jacob Zuma who narrowly slithered out of a corruption trial before his election is blasting corruption in the ranks of the African National Congress which came to power as the morally superior alternative to an apartheid regime that shamelessly used the wealth it controlled to benefit Afrikaners and deprive the black majority of services.
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
Mounting U.S. Public Debt Prompting Looting of Pensions, Social Security and Medicare / Politics / US Debt
By: Bob_Chapman
Government debt will be in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion this year. Ever since May 16th short-term debt has been frozen at about $14.3 trillion. Up until May 16th the year-to-debt fiscal debt was $783.135 billion. That means if no August 2nd agreement is reach, $275 billion will be needed up to August 2nd, a total of about $700 billion will be needed by 9/30/11, the end of the fiscal year.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
U.S. Committing Imperial Suicide / Politics / US Politics
By: Bill_Bonner
We always take my car ‘cause it’s never been beat.
And we ain’t missed yet with the girls we meet. ~ The Beach Boys
We are sitting in our favorite café in Paris…listening to the Beach Boys and reflecting on the decline of the US Empire. Back in the ’60s, the Beach Boys celebrated a country that was young, growing, optimistic…and a winner. Now, what we see is the whole kit-and-kaboodle of life in the US giving way to desperation, delusion and an irresistible impulse to commit imperial suicide. The economy turns sour. The military becomes malignant. Households are corrupt, bankrupt and dependent. Even the churches sing their hallelujahs to Caesar now.
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Coming U.S. Federal Collapse / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
As Gary North has noted, the great 21st century default of the U.S. government has already started, with the raiding of federal pension funds to stay solvent a few months ago. We may recall the 2000 presidential election, when Al Gore spoke favorably about creating a social security "lockbox," even as Social Security "taxes" had been treated for years as a core part of the federal budget, simple annual "income" for the state.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Murdoch Heads for a Fall / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: Mike_Whitney
Boy, this is about as sleazy as it gets....
Imagine that your 13-year old daughter has been kidnapped and you have no idea where she is. So you frantically call her cell phone over and over clinging to the faint hope that she might still be alive. And, then, a miracle happens; you notice that messages on her phone have been deleted signalling that she's still alive but unable to call back.
Friday, July 08, 2011
U.S. Debt Ceiling Negotiations, Don't be Fooled by Political Posturing / Politics / US Debt
By: Peter_Schiff
As attention focuses intently on the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling, House Republicans have made a great show of drawing a line in the fiscal sand. They claim that they will not vote for any deal that includes tax increases to narrow the budget deficit. But we all know how the game works in Washington. With the 2012 elections looming the Republican bluster is merely a bargaining chip that they will quickly toss into the pot when they sense a political victory. In fact there are signs that such a compromise is already underway.