Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Saturday, April 19, 2014
E.U. Officially Adopts the Bank Depositors Bail-In / Politics / Credit Crisis 2014
It has now been more than a year since that fateful weekend in the Mediterranean when everything changed. However, like most of the big changes we’ve seen lately, there is a subtlety afoot that somehow results in few noticing. This should surprise no one really. How the world can change in such dramatic ways without any type of mass awakening is a topic more for the psychologists who help pull the strings and the evil they represent than for anyone involved in the analysis of economics and events, but I say the above so that you know you’re not kidding anyone.
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Saturday, April 19, 2014
Ukraine - The Trouble With Natural Gas / Politics / Natural Gas
Cinderella Gas at the Thieves Ball
Simple questions can have complicated answers, but for Cinderella Gas the clock has a habit of chiming 12-midnight all too often. The simple question is how come natural gas in the USA has grave problems to even attain $27.50 per barrel of oil equivalent – but in Japan it can fetch about $100 per barrel equivalent? Do Japanese like expensive things, or what?
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Friday, April 18, 2014
The Obama Game - Is Putin Being Lured Into a Trap? / Politics / GeoPolitics
“Russia … is now recognized as the center of the global ‘mutiny’ against global dictatorship of the US and EU. Its generally peaceful .. approach is in direct contrast to brutal and destabilizing methods used by the US and EU…. The world is waking up to reality that there actually is, suddenly, some strong and determined resistance to Western imperialism. After decades of darkness, hope is emerging.” – Andre Vltchek, Ukraine: Lies and Realities, CounterPunch
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Friday, April 18, 2014
The Growing Threat to Capitalism / Politics / Social Issues
Shah Gilani writes: American exceptionalism, the country's qualitatively demonstrable advantage over other nations, used to be characterized by individualism.
Not to mention egalitarianism, republicanism, and populism.
All of this was supported by the government's laissez-faire approach to America's capitalist economic system.
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Friday, April 18, 2014
From Monroe to the Bush-Obama Doctrines, American KARMA is Long Overdue / Politics / US Politics
I wait for the first domino to fall on Empire. Will it be a bond collapse? Another total market meltdown? A right-wing/NRA/neo-Confederate fight to the finish against "central government" (Washington) and subsequent martial law? A cathartic race war in New York or Chicago or Detroit or LA against police violence, corrupt politicians, angry white men, phony liberals and decades of exploitation by the middle and upper classes who salute themselves for electing the first African-American president while continuing to institutionalize racism and poverty?
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Chicago, the Windy City has a $26.5 Billion Pension Problem / Politics / US Debt
Rodney Johnson writes: The Windy City has a $26.5 billion problem — it is short of that amount.
That’s a lot of dough for one town.
Overseers of the city’s finances haven’t kept up with their payments to the city pension funds, while the investment gurus running the funds haven’t been able to make their projected returns.
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
SitComs Not Always a Laughing Matter / Politics / Social Issues
My favorite new TV comedy is “Growing Up Fisher.”
It’s the story of a blind lawyer, his 12-year-old son, a mid-teen daughter, and an ex-wife who is trying to return to her adolescent years. The show is based upon the experiences of D.J. Nash.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Old World Order New World Order, Chaos And Change / Politics / New World Order
Geopolitical Harbingers
Certainly by the closing decades of the 19th century, geopolitical theory was splitting into two camps, that we can call the global seaborne Hegemon theory of US admiral Albert Thayer Mahan, and the pan-Asian landward Hegemon theory of British academic and director of the London School of Economics, Sir Halford Mackinder. In both cases however, whether the coming single global superpower attained that status by sea wars or land wars, military and political-economic conflict was certain as the power blocs collided and the seats of global power shifted. In both cases, either or both land areas and seas or oceans – pivot or shatterbelt zones, and blue water seas and oceans - would remain disputed.
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Even The US Government Will Abandon the U.S. Dollar / Politics / US Debt
For millions it is already too late.
They won't realize the geopolitical winds which are now blowing. Off in their own lala land, the average American will be focused on sports, celebrities, what the right amount of stealing (taxes) in society is, gay rights, which foreign countries "we" should bomb next, the first woman president, and so on and so forth, while their livelihoods are sacrificed in the name of the US government.
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Overpopulation Is Not A Problem For Us / Politics / Demographics
On a day like this, when Bloomberg runs the hilarious and preposterous headline “Euro Periphery Emerges as Haven as Bonds Rise”, and markets are up because the Chinese government announces a 7.4% GDP growth number, which might as well be 4.7% for all we know given the opaqueness and rosy bubbly with which Beijing is known to “calculate” these numbers, let’s talk about something entirely different. And what better to talk about than a topic I know beforehand will antagonize a substantial part of my readership? And add a title to match that?
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Climate Change, Central Banking And The Faustian Bargain / Politics / Climate Change
Gunther Schwab's Dance With Death
A safe interval after World War II, in the 1950s, the former Nazi intelligence officer Gunther Schwab published his massive-selling book “Dance With the Devil”. In it, he fine-tuned what Nazi propagandists found to be the “interesting bits” of CO2 global warming theory first developed by Svante Arrhenius at the end of the 19th century, which is essentially unchanged today. By a massive irony, Arrhenius welcomed human emissions of CO2 from industry, and the possible climate warming they produce because he thought they could fend off – but not prevent – the next and coming Ice Age.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Every Central Bank for Itself / Politics / Central Banks
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson
For the last 25 days I’ve been traveling in Argentina and South Africa, two countries whose economies can only be described as fragile, though for very different reasons. Emerging-market countries face a significantly different set of challenges than the developed world does. These challenges are compounded by the rather indifferent policies of developed-world central banks, which are (even if somewhat understandably) entirely self-centered. Argentina has brought its problems upon itself, but South Africa can somewhat justifiably express frustration at the developed world, which, as one emerging-market central bank leader suggests, is engaged in a covert currency war, one where the casualties are the result of unintended consequences. But the effects are nonetheless real if you’re an emerging-market country.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Social Security, U.S. Treasury Stealing Every Last Penny From Americans / Politics / Taxes
All of a sudden the government lays claims to your savings. They can't prove you owe them a dime, but you're deprived due process. The legal bills become overwhelming, and so you let your money be stolen. You simply have no choice.
Sound outlandish? It's not. Not in the "Land of the Free" at least.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Ukraine Falling to Economic Warfare and Its Own Missteps / Politics / Eastern Europe
As protests in Ukraine's eastern region turned violent on Sunday leading to the death of a Ukrainian security officer in a shootout with pro-Russian militia, Kiev threatens military action while Moscow flexes its geo-economic warfare muscles.Pro-Russian militia groups have seized government buildings and police headquarters in Ukraine's eastern city of Donetsk and Slovyanks--where the shoot-out took place--and despite a Monday morning ultimatum by the Ukrainian government, these groups have shown no sign of giving in.
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Tuesday, April 15, 2014
France Wakes Up To The Multicultural Multi-Threat / Politics / France
Manuel Valls the Immigrant
With total predictability, new French prime minister Manuel Valls almost immediately waded into the ever-rising rejection of multiculturalism in France. He made sure to play the Good Immigrant himself, peppering his talk with references to his Spanish origins as a second-generation immigrant to France, working his way up the “social elevator” or greasy pole, by learning all the tics and foibles of French national identity, and copying them perfectly. But the day he moved into office, March 31, the government watchdog on human rights in France, the Commission nationale des Droits de l'Homme, produced another in a long series of reports, from organizations across the political spectrum, that underlines how racism, segregation, economic inequality and religious discrimination are now squarely part of French society. For Valls and the political elite, to be sure, this is just a “decline of tolerance” and more laws and repression, and more government propaganda will smother the glowing embers of riot and rebellion. But as in other European states, his predictable elite kneejerk is not working.
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Monday, April 14, 2014
Spanish Style Riots Coming to a Country Near You / Politics / Social Issues
James Guzman writes: Screams and sirens pierce the air as rocks, firecrackers, and sharp glass go flying in every direction. Police try to beat back the hordes of protesters by smashing indiscriminately into the crowd with their billy clubs.
This was the scene recently in Madrid, Spain, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to fight against the budget cuts and tax increases put into place by Mariano Rajoy, the current Prime Minister of Spain. The protesters chanted “no more cuts” as they demolished storefronts and threw firecrackers at police.
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Monday, April 14, 2014
Another Phony U.S. Budget Debate / Politics / US Politics
Anyone watching last week's debate over the Republican budget resolution would have experienced déjà vu, as the debate bore a depressing similarity to those of previous years. Once again, the Republicans claimed their budget would cut spending in a responsible manner, while Democratic opponents claimed the plan's spending cuts would shred the safety net and leave vital programs unfunded. Of course, neither claim is true.
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Sunday, April 13, 2014
Four Horsemen - Top Economists Explain the Source of Our Economic Crisis - Video / Politics / Social Issues
FOUR HORSEMEN is an award winning independent feature documentary which lifts the lid on how the world really works.
As we will never return to 'business as usual' 23 international thinkers, government advisors and Wall Street money-men break their silence and explain how to establish a moral and just society.
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Sunday, April 13, 2014
Peak Oil And Global Warming – A Question Of Culture / Politics / Crude Oil
In The Beginning Was the Word
Certainly for the last 20 years these two themes have tunneled into political consciousness, but there are huge differences. Peak Oil was never “official”, but Global Warming or at least anthropogenic global warming quickly became official, in the UN system, EU28 countries, the US, Japan, Canada and Australia, and some other developed countries. Today, in the cases of Japan, Canada and Australia the political commitment has already gone, and the downstream financial spinoff from the global warming theme, which enabled market operators to concoct and play with climate credit default swaps and a host of other all-new paper assets, has seriously ebbed. Outside of these countries, in the G20 and Russia, global warming always had a much tougher ride. Yet another stark Russia-versus-the West split occurred on this issue. Russia has a long and tortuous politically-charged obsession with a coming Ice Age – not the swamping of all coastal cities by global warming melting the planet's ice caps.
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Sunday, April 13, 2014
The Global Banking Game Is Rigged, and the FDIC Is Suing / Politics / Banksters
Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it. According to an SEIU report:
Read full article... Read full article...Derivatives . . . have turned into a windfall for banks and a nightmare for taxpayers. . . . While banks are still collecting fixed rates of 3 to 6 percent, they are now regularly paying public entities as little as a tenth of one percent on the outstanding bonds, with rates expected to remain low in the future. Over the life of the deals, banks are now projected to collect billions more than they pay state and local governments – an outcome which amounts to a second bailout for banks, this one paid directly out of state and local budgets.