Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Venezuela: On the Death of Chávez and the Ailing Bolivar / Politics / Fiat Currency
Although Hugo Chávez, the socialist presidente of Venezuela, has finally met his maker, the grim reaper is still lingering in Caracas. As it turns out, Chávez was not the only important Venezuelan whose health began to fail in recent weeks. The country's currency, the Venezuelan bolivar fuerte (VEF) may soon need to be put on life support. Indeed, in the past month the bolivar has lost 21.72 percent of its value against the greenback on the black market (read: free market).
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013
EU Passes Law Forcing Countries to Take Bailout; Spain First Target? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Want a bailout? Need a bailout? Actually, it does not matter what your country wants or needs.
By a 526 to 86 vote, the nannycrats in Brussels just passed a regulation that will require a country to accept a bailout if offered.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Americans Can't Afford the Future - Unemployment, Taxes and Unfunded Retirement are Squeezing Generation's / Politics / Social Issues
Adam Taggart writes: The American spirit is rooted in the belief of a better tomorrow. Its success has been due to generations of men and women who toiled, through both hardship and boom times, to make that dream a reality.
But at some point over the past several decades, that hope for a better tomorrow became an expectation. Or perhaps a perceived entitlement is more accurate.
It became assumed that the future would be more prosperous than today, irrespective of the actual steps being taken in the here and now.
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013
SMI Labour Benefit's Culture Catastrophe - Come to Britain and We Will Pay Your Mortgage! / Politics / UK Politics
You want a FREE £200k+ House? Then come to Britain, and we will give this and much more, only thing you need to do in return is to vote Labour. Britain continues to suffer the consequences of rampant Labour government bribery of the electorate in terms of expanding the width and breadth of the benefits culture that has resulted in enticing approx 1/5th of those of working age that could work ( 8 million) to instead park themselves onto benefits for life where the name of the game is how to maximise benefit receipts rather than engage in productive activity.
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Fed's Bubbles to Slaughter Middle Class / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
When central bankers dedicate their existence to re-inflating asset bubbles, it shouldn't at all be a surprise to investors that they eventually achieve success. Ben Bernanke has aggressively attempted to prop up the real estate and equity markets since 2008. His efforts to increase the broader money supply and create inflation have finally supported home prices, sent the Dow Jones Industrial average to a record nominal high and propelled the bond bubble to dizzying heights.
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
An Orwellian America, Unsound Money Leads To Statism / Politics / US Politics
Macro Insights - March 2013
As a young man, I voraciously read George Orwell's "1984", Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and Alvin Toffler's trilogy which included "Future Shock", "The Third Wave" and "Power Shift". During the era of the Vietnam War, I wondered seriously about the future and how it was destined to unfold. Now being considerably older, I have the vantage point to reflect back on my early ruminations and expectations. Unfortunately, I am too old to alter the lessons that are now so painfully obvious. Instead, I pass the gauntlet to those who can understand and take action on what I have unavoidably come to expect for America.
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
North Korea's Strategy - Ferocious, Weak and Crazy / Politics / North Korea
On Jan. 29, I wrote a piece that described North Korea's strategy as a combination of ferocious, weak and crazy. In the weeks since then, three events have exemplified each facet of that strategy. Pyongyang showed its ferocity Feb. 12, when it detonated a nuclear device underground. The country's only significant ally, China, voted against Pyongyang in the U.N. Security Council on March 7, demonstrating North Korea's weakness. Finally, Pyongyang announced it would suspend the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953, implying that that war would resume and that U.S. cities would be turned into "seas of fire." To me, that fulfills the crazy element.
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Economic Zombie Apocalypse, End of Civilisation is Here! / Politics / US Politics
Gary Gibson writes: The end of civilization is already here. Most of humanity has been turned into an unthinking mass of economic zombies that are looking to feast on the still living flesh of the few survivors. This may explain the increasing popularity or obsession with all things zombie. From fiction to pub crawls, the zombie apocalypse seems to be on a lot of minds, probably as an unconcious manifestation of economic reality.
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Bank of England Governor's Last Cunning Plan to Transfer RBS Bad Debts onto Tax Payers / Politics / Banksters
In a Black Adder Baldrick-esk moment the soon to be pensioned off Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King announced his last cunning plan to help his bankster brethren by suggesting that all of the bad debts at the bankrupt tax payer bailed out RBS should be transferred to a tax payer owned bad bank (i.e. added to UK national debt) so that RBS can then be floated onto the stock market and that the politicians can thus announce that they made a profit for the tax payers.
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Monday, March 11, 2013
Vatican's Next GodFather - What's More Important To You, Italy or the Dow? / Politics / Italy
During the Italian election weekend two weeks ago, I watched all three Godfather films on a local station. Very convenient, since they can teach you quite a bit about Italy, even if you've seen them a dozen times already in the past. The abdication of the pope sort of rounded off the history lesson, and I was thinking: OK, now I'm good to go.
After the results came in and Beppe Grillo and the Five Star movement (M5S) became the single biggest "party", I was going to simply repost my February 10 article Beppe Grillo Wants To Give Italy Democracy, in which I wrote about my meeting with Beppe and the ideas we talked about which I took away from that. He had won big, but it was clear that most people still had no idea who he is.
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
Ron Paul on Congress, Drones, and The Imperial Presidency / Politics / US Politics
Last week the US Senate took a break from debating the phony cuts known as "sequestration," for Senator Rand Paul to hold a 13-hour filibuster to force the Obama administration to state whether it believes the President has the right to kill American citizens with drones on US soil. I find it tragic that there has to be a discussion on an issue that should be so self-evident.
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
US Unemployment Figures Camouflage, Corporate Profits Boom From Collapsing Wages / Politics / Social Issues
Andre Damon writes: The number of jobs in the US grew by 236,000 in February, and the official unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 2008, according to the Labor Department’s latest jobs report released Friday.
The media jumped on the jobs total—significantly higher than the 165,000 that had been predicted—to proclaim an economic turnaround, while the Obama White House said the report indicated that “the recovery that began in mid-2009 is gaining traction.”
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
Eating the Fed for Lunch / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
The lack of interest regarding just how the Federal Reserve will extricate itself and the rest of us may be a matter of self-preservation. There is no way out from its loony, money hypothesis.
It is not ironic that the man responsible for extrication is in a trance. Only such a fuzzy-headed, tweedy thinker would have created the greatest moral hazard in the history of the world.
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
UKIP - The Good, The Bad And The Dumb / Politics / UK Politics
After recently beating the leading party in UK's shaky coalition government, the Conservative party (called 'the Tories' in the 18th century) in a by-election triumph, and making even more solid gains in opinion poll scores, the UKIP party headed by Nigel Farage is succeeding its strategy to woo Britain's "rejectionist voters". These are voters who reject all existing Me Too parties, what the UKIP calls the Lib-Con-Lab alliance of the Liberal, Conservative and Labour parties, which have almost identikit mix-and-mingle, one size fits all policies for mitigating national debt, relaunching the economy, accelerating European integration, fighting climate change, raising immigration, building multiculturalism - and taxing average persons and smaller companies into the grave.
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Saturday, March 09, 2013
Spoiling the Great U.S. Employment News / Politics / Employment
This article originally appeared on MarketWatch under the title Jobs numbers are far worse than they look.
I selected my title from a humorous comment on MarketWatch by reader "Homer Price" who writes "Mike, What are you doing ? Trying to spoil the GREAT EMPLOYMENT news. Just wait until next year when the Unaffordable Care Act kicks in. THE BEST IS YET TO COME ............................. "
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Friday, March 08, 2013
Rearview Mirror Economics: Mutant Markets And Crony Capitalism / Politics / Global Economy
The well known British economist the late Joan Robinson once observed that the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism, is not being exploited by capitalism. This whimsical English humour was fine in her day, but questions she treated like generations of economists before her, have never been settled. More important, today's reason for asking questions like - Why are markets not working? - is that western society and its economic model or models now faces a critical, life-or-death struggle.
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Friday, March 08, 2013
Advice to the Poor- Fix Your Attitude! / Politics / Social Issues
Thomas Sowell writes: Most people are not even surprised any more when they hear about someone who came here from Korea or Vietnam with very little money, and very little knowledge of English, who nevertheless persevered and rose in American society. Nor are we surprised when their children excel in school and go on to professional careers.
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Thursday, March 07, 2013
Big Privacy Risk That Could Cost You Your Job / Politics / Scams
Dr. David Eifrig writes: Major Zane Purdy's life imploded in just three months...
Purdy, a defense contractor and Air National Guard officer, used to earn a six-figure salary. Then, according to the Montgomery Advertiser, thieves stole his identity. They decimated his credit rating.
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Who Profits From the Fed? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
We recently looked at the Federal Reserve’s 2012 results. In particular, we pointed to some positive and negative developments. On a positive note, the Fed managed to shrink down the size of its balance sheet by approximately one-third of a percent. (Hey, it’s a start.) On a negative note, this decrease occurred because banks shifted their holdings of reserves into cash, thus forcing the Fed to sell off some of its assets. I explained that this is a potentially negative result, as the shift into cash brings with it inflationary pressure on prices.
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Thursday, March 07, 2013
Bernanke the Crony Bureaucrat / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
The bureaucrat is similar to the cockroach. Both "species adapt readily to a variety of environments, but prefer warm conditions found within buildings." Both "are among the hardiest insects." (Wikipedia's descriptions, for interested entomologists) Madonna (the exhibitionist) captured the nexus: "I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach, you just can't get rid of me."
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