Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, May 30, 2008
The Next American Revolution and Long-term Stock Market Cycles / Politics / Cycles Analysis
By: Clif_Droke
In the aftermath of the credit crisis, real estate deflation and stock market correction, there has been a startling rise in the talk of revolution among many Internet chat rooms and message boards.
This is no idle chit-chat, mind you. It's part of a serious discussion about the alarming possibility of a militant uprising should the economic situation deteriorate further. “Typical bombast from the lunatic fringe,” is how some have responded to the sudden appearance of revolutionary furor. In view of the market cycles, however, the longer-term implications behind this kind of talk can't be so easily dismissed.
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Friday, May 30, 2008
Britain's North Sea Crude Oil Revenue Bonanza / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The surge in the crude oil price has greatly benefited the major oil exporters such as the gulf states, Russia, Venezuela, and Norway. Despite Britains consumption of crude oil roughly matching production, the rise in crude oil has resulted in a huge continuing revenue bonanza for the British government through profit share on production, taxes on oil company profits and from tax revenues on domestic consumption, which has lead to protests amongst hauliers and motorists.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 30, 2008
History is Moving- The Geopolitics of Crude Oil $130 / Politics / Crude Oil
By: John_Mauldin
The greyhairs among us remember the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 and that economists of the time called it an "exogenous" shock to the system. For the first time, geopolitical events had a huge impact on world energy markets. All the financial models in the world got thrown out the window when OPEC simply said, "We won't sell at any price."
Since then, of course, geopolitics has been an integral topic for everybody that follows energy markets. And other commodities. And currencies. And debt and equity. In other words, the economists' distinction between "market factors" and "geopolitical events" has blurred into meaninglessness.
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil / Politics / US Politics
By: Alex_Epstein
With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First. Several prominent senators have once again summoned industry leaders to Capitol Hill, subjecting them to yet another barrage of rhetorical questions, interruptions, accusations, and sermons. The lawmakers' goal, claims Sen. Patrick Leahy, is to identify "causes of the rising price of oil on which Congress can act." But the foregone conclusion is that "price gouging," "collusion," and "market manipulation" by Big Oil, or speculation by financiers, is responsible.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Will We See the End of Empire in Our Time? / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Richard_C_Cook
The following is based on a talk given by the author at the “End of Empire” session of the “Building a New World” Conference of the Prout World Assembly at Radford University, Radford, Virginia, on May 22, 2008.
I believe we have had two Americas. One started with the imperialist state which Alexander Hamilton tried to put into place in the 1790s with the First Bank of the United States. Thomas Jefferson overthrew this early expression of empire in the Civic Revolution of 1800 and created a strong and free America which lasted until 1913 in spite of the convulsion of the Civil War.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008
Government Aims to Axe 2000 Incompetent NHS GP Surgeries / Politics / NHS
By: N_Walayat
In an attempt to provide competent GP healthcare services, the government is planning to proceed with the first phase of the creation of 150 super surgeries across Britain.
Currently the NHS and GP Surgeries discriminate against men and those living within deprived wards, which comprises more than 60% of the UK population. Therefore barely 40% of the UK population is receiving competent GP surgery services and NHS hospital healthcare. This despite a tripling in the NHS budget which is increasingly seen by the voters as money wasted.
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Friday, May 23, 2008
UK House Values Have Fallen by 25%, Contributing to Labour Vote Meltdown / Politics / UK Politics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Whilst the mandarins of the Labour government scratch their collective heads as to why the voters have lost total confidence in Gordon Browns government, one of the key reasons for the meltdown in the Labour vote in the
Crewe and Nantwich
by-election is the housing bear market.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, May 19, 2008
Britains Incapacity Benefits Culture Costs Tax Payers £16 Billion Annually- BBC One 8.30pm / Politics / Social Issues
By: BBC
The Government will need to make big reductions in the numbers "on the sick" in Britain's former industrial heartlands if it is to get anywhere near its ambitious UK-wide target of a million off Incapacity Benefit by 2015, according to Professor Steve Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam University.
He tells BBC One 's Panorama that in the Incapacity Benefit hotspot of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales – where nearly one in five of working age population is on the sick – around 3,000 new jobs would have to be created.
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Friday, May 16, 2008
The Geopolitics Of Israel: Historic and Modern / Politics / Israel
By: John_Mauldin
This week we step outside the box of conventional geopolitical analysis to hear the thinking of George Friedman, founder and chief executive officer of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), on the geopolitics of Israel. George makes the key point that Israel's geography has been fundamentally important to its geopolitical successes and limitations, and has lent a surprising continuity to its foreign policy from the Biblical era forward to the present day.
This is the first in a series of monographs by George on the geopolitics of countries that are currently critical in world affairs, and he has kindly let us have a preview.
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Ratcheting Up For US War On Iran / Politics / Iran
By: Stephen_Lendman
Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn't mean they'll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent events increase the possibility and must be closely watched.Recall George Bush's January 10, 2007 address to the nation. He announced the 20,000 troop "surge" and more. "Succeeding in Iraq," he said, "also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing 'terrorists' and 'insurgents' to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt (those) attacks....we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Battle for America Has Begun- Strategic Forecasts / Politics / New World Order
By: Richard_C_Cook
This article contains several forecasts, including the possible start of a major war with unforeseeable consequences, if the U.S. should happen to attack Iran .
Of course it is in the nature of forecasts to be speculative. There are also forecasts that are intended to serve as warnings and thereby contribute to preventing the events under analysis from ever taking place. The world's financial elite, long having made their homes in the metropolises of Western Europe, also with a major branch in New York City , may be the party that is really behind what could be an attempt to start World War III by pitting the U.S. against the Asiatic land powers, most notably Russia
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
After Hillary, Voting for Obama's Slick Rhetoric? / Politics / US Politics
By: Joel_S_Hirschhorn
This general election more than most will test the courage of voters to avoid lesser-evil strategic voting that has propped up our two-party plutocracy. People with intelligence and conscience must resist peer pressure and the temptation to vote against John McCain by voting for Barack Obama. Of course, a McCain presidency that pursues much of the same policies and values of the totally inept and morally bankrupt Bush administration is something to loathe. But lesser-evil voting sustains our corrupt political system.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
US Government Responsible for the Housing Boom and Bust / Politics / US Housing
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The House passed two bills attempting to rehabilitate the housing and mortgage market this week. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of criticism and blame for the bad decisions, and rightly so. Lenders and banks do share much of the blame for the overheated market. Lending standards were relaxed, or even abandoned altogether, creating an exaggerated pool of homebuyers that led to ballooning home prices that many, especially real estate investors, expected to continue forever. Now that the bubble has burst, the losses are staggering.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
UK Tax U-turn Rebates to Buy Votes- Personal Allowances Up by £600 / Politics / UK Tax & Budget
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Gordon Browns Darling today made clear of how he will perform the Tax U-turn alluded to in recent weeks. The U-turn will take the form of an across the board increase in the personal allowances of every tax payer by £600, thus those on the standard tax code of 543L will see their tax allowance rise from 5435 to 6035. This has the effect of handing very tax payer a tax cut of £120 at the basic rate of 20%. The estimated cost of this measure is put at some £2.7 billion which is substantially more than the £700 million of the original extra tax burden placed on the 5 million low paid workers that were hit by the abolition of the 10% tax band.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Government Energy Plan Political Pandering / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Mike_Shedlock
Whenever Congress puts together a bill attempting to find a solution to some sort of real or imagined problem, my immediate thought is that the bill do one of four things:
- It will worsen the problem at hand
- It will do nothing to solve the problem but instead create a new problem somewhere else
- It will worsen the original problem and create new problems
- In the very best case it will do nothing at all
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Russia's New Direction Under President Medvedev / Politics / Russia
By: Saleem_Khan
Which way Russia is going to go now that Medvedev has taken office as the President of the Russian Federation? Would it be Putin's way or a new course friendly to the west? Pundits and the media in the west are engaged in guessing game and heavily involved in the art of misinformation. Russian people are optimistic about their future and are anxious to demonstrate to the international community their capacity of teamwork in global affairs.Nevertheless, they are aware of the conflicts in the World and leadership deficit. This, I have concluded in over a decade of contacts and conversations with the leading educators in the former Soviet Union. This desire for an optimistic future and a more peaceful world has emerged as the dominant theme. Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Extraordinary Times, Intentional Collapse, and Takedown of the USA - Part 2 / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Richard_C_Cook
Part 1“End Times”
Can it be that the last stage of the U.S. takedown is “The Project for the New American Century”? Is this ambitious plan for “global leadership” through military might that was seemingly invented by the “neocons”—many with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship—a Trojan Horse?
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Sunday, May 04, 2008
Extraordinary Times, Intentional Collapse, and Takedown of the USA - Part 1 / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Richard_C_Cook
Much has been written about whether a worldwide plan exists to control events and steer them in the direction profitable to an elite of the rich and powerful. Is this a “conspiracy theory”? While it is difficult to be specific about who exactly may be behind such a conspiracy, if it exists, it is at least clear that the privately-managed system of global financial capitalism gives ample opportunity for the world’s richest people to combine for their mutual benefit. Further, global financial capitalism itself is based on the monopolization of money-creation by a world banking system that is largely privately owned, even while working through the central banks of the largest and most prosperous nations.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Gordon Brown is New Labour's Grim Reaper / Politics / UK Politics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Gordon Brown the formerly smart and intellectual chancellor who was thought to have carried a grinning and increasingly shallow Tony Blair to three election victories. Now past events are increasingly being seen in a new light of who carried whom.
Gordon Brown's Labour party was delivered a near knockout punch in the Local elections where the natural party of local government is fast being pushed out of political power. The final Labour scalp to go was its biggest, Ken Livingston the London Mayor replaced by the Tory comedian Boris Johnson.
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Friday, May 02, 2008
Barack Obama Buckles Under Media Pressure / Politics / US Politics
By: Mike_Whitney
Obama is "outraged" - After weeks of blistering attacks by the media, Barak Obama held a press conference yesterday and made it official; his friendship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is over, terminated, kaput. He would no longer associate with a man who believed that the United States of America could do horrible things to its people or that 9-11 might have been the result of US foreign policy. As Obama said, that's just "outrageous".Read full article... Read full article...