Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Ben Bernanke Pledges To Screw Your Grandmother For At Least Two More Years / Politics / Quantitative Easing
By: James_Quinn
"A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank." - Ron Paul
Sunday, August 14, 2011
U.S. Debt Classification Game is Over / Politics / US Debt
By: Fred_Sheehan
Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States Treasury Department is a harbinger of changing times. The institutional mind has been trained to operate within the framework of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The CAPM is a formula, designed by professors, that assigns assets to distinct and simple categories. It filled a need when the investment management industry drew in the masses. Not, in this case, the mass of investors, but the mass of so-called investment professionals, that include consultants to pension plans, endowments, and foundations. Most of the well-compensated consultants have little understanding of investing, so substitute vocabulary for thought. The same is true of the professors who hand each other Nobel Prizes and collect seven-figure consulting fees for pontificating.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Are British Police to Blame for Extent of London Riots and Looting? / Politics / UK Politics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Whilst The US was being stripped of its AAA credit rating London high streets were being stripped of their consumer goods. Many thousands of residents and business owners were all saying the same thing, "Where is the Police?"
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Death Star Washington Mulls The U.S. Dollar's End / Politics / US Dollar
By: Andrew_McKillop
What is is not in doubt is that the world's single reserve currency is nearing the end of its viability at
least in its current form. The only other two options, the euro and the yen, are in as bad or worse shape
regarding the fundamentals of the economies they are based on. The end game has arrived for the
current monetary system which began for the US in the 1930s, and for the world with Bretton Woods in
1944. The US sub prime crisis, Japan's Fukushima disaster, and Europe's PIIGS rout are the final nails
in the coffin of the dollar reserve system, which in "gold money" terms already died a long time ago - in
1971 - when Nixon pulled the plug on official and fixed dollar convertibility with gold. This system
was far from ancient and only dated from 1933, with Roosevelt (who pegged the dollar to .888 grams of
gold, or $35 per ounce). This was therefore at maximum a 38-year "gold money interlude", suspended
during the war years and only covering, in fact, about 33 years.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The World's Money Is Draining Away ... Where's It Going? / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: Washingtons_Blog
Spiegel asks:
"Is The World Going Bankrupt?"
That is an odd question.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Fiat Money and the British Riots / Politics / UK Politics
By: MISES
Andy Duncan writes: This is going to be tricky to do from a hillside in Cornwall, with a flaky mobile connection and an iPad with a one-letter-at-a-time keyboard. However, it's pouring down with rain this August morning, so let's examine the real sickness at the heart of British society, which is the constant-inflation policy of the British government.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
U.S. Debt Crisis Built on Kindness of Strangers and a Broken Promise / Politics / US Debt
By: Richard_Mills
The public debt is the money borrowed by the US federal government. The government borrows the money through the issue of securities by the Treasury and other federal government agencies.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Ukraine to Cut Gazprom's Umbilical Cord? / Politics / Natural Gas
By: OilPrice_Com
Sometimes it's not easy being Russia's neighbor - just ask Ukraine. Ever since the 1991 implosion of the USSR, Ukraine's relations with Russia have appeared between coldly formal and outright hostility, with a major irritant being the increasingly high prices Gazprom charges for natural gas.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Debt Crisis Solutions Getting Dumb and Dumber / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: HRA_Advisory
Europeans came up with a Band-Aid for the Greek crisis, and the markets applauded. Markets were buoyed by the fact the facilities set up for Greece were clearly designed to be used for some of the other Euro area basket cases if need be. Core country leadership reiterated their unwillingness to force default or push peripheral countries out of the Eurozone. This is admirable perhaps, but it does narrow the options for future arm twisting quite a bit.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Federal Economic Stimulus Solution, Mint a Few $1 Trillion Coins? / Politics / Economic Stimulus
By: Gary_North
Ellen Brown in late November, 2010, became Bernanke's cheerleader. She loved QE2. She wants more of the same. Way more.
She wants more government spending. Way more spending. Gigantically more spending. She wants it NOW.
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Friday, August 12, 2011
Brazil’s Geopolitical Imperatives / Politics / Brazil
By: John_Mauldin
Continued from Part 1 here.
Geopolitical imperatives are broad, strategic goals a country must pursue if it is to achieve security and success. These are non-ideological paths determined by the geography of a given country and by the geography of its neighbors. Geopolitical imperatives typically nest: The second imperative is dependent upon the first imperative, the third upon the second, and so on. This is not the case for Brazil, however.
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Friday, August 12, 2011
Brazil Geopolitics, An Emergent Economic Power’s Struggle with Geography / Politics / Brazil
By: John_Mauldin
Just last week in Thoughts from the Frontline, we discussed the relative valuations of emerging markets. Any discussion of an emerging market is incomplete without understanding the underlying geopolitical forces that guide behaviors of countries and often predetermine the outcome of events. Today I’m sending you STRATFOR’s geopolitical analysis of Brazil, a much-discussed emerging market. This is a long read, but it’s the most thorough and enlightening analysis I’ve seen thus far on how the continent’s geography has shaped Brazil’s history to date, and the major challenges the the country faces today. Hint: Brazil’s biggest problems are an overvalued "real," Mercosur, and an Asian giant (you guess which one…).
Friday, August 12, 2011
There is No Education in American Colleges / Politics / Education
By: Walter_Brasch
With the nation's unemployment rate hovering about 10 percent, recent high school graduates are escaping reality by going to college, and college grads are avoiding reality by entering grad school. The result is that it now takes an M.A. to become a shift manager at a fast food restaurant.
Friday, August 12, 2011
UK Insurance Giants Will Use Taxpayers To Bailout Costs From Riots / Politics / UK Politics
By: Patrick_Henningsen
Following any disaster, be it man-made, or ‘Act of God’, there will be many losers, but there will also be some big winners. Some people might be surprised by who is who in this story.
First, let’s look at the losers. This past week, a series of riots ravaged London and other parts of the UK. Costs to businesses is estimated so far at GBP £100 million.
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Thursday, August 11, 2011
Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America, Economic Elite Make Off With $46 Trillion / Politics / US Debt
By: David_DeGraw
Abstract: Welcome to World War III
Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People [18]. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far. However, as we have seen throughout the world in recent months, the people are beginning to fight back. The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
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Thursday, August 11, 2011
A Free-Market Sovereign Debt Manifesto / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: Ron_Holland
Reporting from Greece -- There is an eerie disconnect involved with analyzing the frightening financial and economic consequences of the ongoing 2011 Sovereign Debt and Equity Market Crash while sailing around the Greek Islands. But taking a look at Greek history clearly shows some parallels and solutions to what the nations of the West are facing today. For the last couple of days we’ve been in Spetses, the first Greek island to have raised the flag of insurrection and secession from an already crumbling Ottoman Empire on April 3, 1821.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
It's the Free Trade, Stupid / Politics / US Politics
By: Ian_Fletcher
One point seems largely to have been missed in recent weeks, amid all the excitement over the Federal budget and the sovereign-debt crises in Europe: free trade is largely the root cause of all these problems. So let's trace the causation for a minute.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
U.S. Budget Battles Ahead / Politics / Government Spending
By: Axel_Merk
My most recent Merk commentary, published July 25, was motivated by the possibility of an impasse on the federal debt ceiling. Now that President Obama has signed a bill raising the ceiling, I am motivated to write once again. Standard and Poor’s has registered its concern by lowering its long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States from AAA to AA+.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
The ‘International Cities’ of the Developed World – Hotspots of Social Discontent for the West, Playgrounds for the East / Politics / Social Issues
By: Aftab_Singh
The ongoing chaos in London has been widely covered by the press over the past few days. Unfortunately, the lenses with which the consensus views the world have muddled the reality of the situation. Rather than considering this to be another development in a long story of souring social mood, commentators have reported it as random violence — to be likened to a strike of lightening… To be sure, we don’t think that the specifics of the last few days could have been predicted with any precision, but we scarcely consider the ordeal to be a ‘surprise’ as such! Here, I consider the decline in social mood in the developed world and outline the implications for its great ‘international’ cities.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Reality Finally Hits The Morbidly Obese US Government / Politics / Government Spending
By: Jeff_Berwick
You know when someone is really fat but no one in their family has said anything and they've lived for years without even realizing it? And this state of non-reality led to eating more and more McDonald's and coca-cola and chips... which just led to the person being fatter and fatter?