Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Totalitarianism is the New Normal / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Wendy McElroy writes: First it was a secret “kill list” on which Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama names those he wishes to be assassinated. The names included American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan who died in a drone strike in Yemen on September 30th, 2011. Neither was indicted or charged with a crime. They were killed as 'terrorists' at the discretion of one man whose signature now constitutes due process.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Euro-zone Cyprus Theft of Bank Deposits Serious Unintended Consquences / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: John_Mauldin
I admit to being surprised by Cyprus. Oh, not the banking crisis or the sovereign debt crisis or the fact that its banks were eight times larger than the country itself or even the fact that the banks were bloated with Greek debt that had been written down. I wrote about all that a long time ago. What surprised me was that all the above was apparently a surprise to European leaders.
While there is much to not like about what European leaders have done since the onset of their crisis some five years ago, they have demonstrated a prodigious ability to kick, poke, and massage the can down the road, to defuse crisis after crisis, and to indefinitely postpone the inevitable. They have demonstrated a remarkable ability to spend taxpayers’ and others’ money in order to keep Europe and the euro more or less in one piece. At every step they have been keenly intent on maintaining trust in the system. That they have been successful in keeping a majority of citizens in favor of the Eurozone and the euro, even in countries forced to endure serious austerity, must be recognized.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Will Your Bank Account Be 'Cyprused' Next? / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Bill_Bonner
U.S. stocks continued mostly going up last week. But European markets fell. Gold bounced up and down... but held above $1,600.
Most people would much rather own stocks than gold. Most of the time, they are probably right. Gold pays no dividends. Nor does it invent new things or open up new markets... or any of the other things that make stocks go up.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
America the Great Global Arms Dealer / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
The American imperial system incorporates much more than supporting the occasional coup or undertaking the occasional war. Coups, wars, assassinations and other forms of overt and covert violence and destabilization, while relatively common and consistent for the United States – compared to other major powers – are secondary to the general maintenance of a system of imperial patronage. A “stable” system is what is desired most by strategic planners and policy-makers, but this has a technical definition. Stability means that the populations of subject nations and regions are under “control” – whether crushed by force or made passive by consent, while Western corporate and financial interests have and maintain unhindered access to the “markets” and resources of those nations and regions. Since the 19th century development of America’s overseas empire, this has been referred to as the “Open Door” policy: as in, the door opens for American and other Western economic interests to have access to and undertake exploitation of resources and labour.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The Central Bank Lullaby / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Brady_Willett
Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Why is a song about a severely injured baby and smashed cradle sung to children at night to lull them to sleep? Apparently, because If you sing this popular lullaby often enough the nonsensical violence in the storyline fades and the rhythmically appealing sounds endure.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Climate Crisis Apocalypse - But Not Quite Yet / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
REAL AND FAKE THREATS
Cocktails of real, partly real, mostly false and entirely false threats and menaces support a business niche for self-proclaimed Salvation Artists, usually modestly calling themselves unrecognized geniuses. Importantly, these geniuses only operate with entirely fake threats. Al Gore was a classic in this genre and his line of business - global warming and climate change - is still being given life support despite it being clinically dead, but only because "we ain't yet thought of anything else".
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The Lesson From Cyprus: Europe Is Politically Bankrupt / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Over the past week, Europe, or rather the present EU leadership, has done damage to itself it will never be able to repair.
It seems to escape everbody, but that doesn't make it any less true: people from Portugal to Spain to Italy to Greece to Cyprus and Ireland are worse off today than they were when they first adopted the euro. Moreover, their economies are all getting worse as we speak and projected to plunge further. The once highly touted blessings of the common currency are by now lost on most of southern Europe; for them, the euro has been a shortcut to disaster.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Don't Bother Raising The Minimum Wage / Politics / Employment
By: Jeff_Berwick
Gary Gibson writes: Elizabeth Warren just realized that the minimum wage should be $22 if it had kept up with economic growth. She suspects in her tender, socially conscious heart that greedy employers have been shafting the lowest level employees. But she's laying her suspicions on the wrong bunch of people. She might want to read up on the currency debasement of the central bank, the command economy vampire that sits at the center of America's supposedly free market economy.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Do We Really Need the Federal Reserve Bank? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Money_Morning
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: Last week I spent two days speaking to senior government officials and business leaders in Bermuda, which is one of the world's leading international insurance and reinsurance hubs. The men and women in the room are responsible for hundreds of millions in assets worldwide.
I spoke for over an hour on the implications and opportunities of the financial crisis (I'll have specifics for Money Morning readers next week).
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Europe's Disturbing Deposits Theft Precedent in the Cyprus Bailout / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: STRATFOR
The European economic crisis has taken different forms in different places, and Cyprus is the latest country to face the prospect of financial ruin. Overextended banks in Cyprus are teetering on the brink of failure for issuing loans they cannot repay, which has prompted the tiny Mediterranean country, a member of the European Union, to turn to Brussels for help. Late Sunday, the European Union and Cypriot president announced new terms for a bailout that would provide the infusion of cash necessary to prevent bankruptcies in Cyprus' banking sector and, more important, prevent a banking panic from spreading to the rest of Europe.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The Oligarch's Lost Euros and Alice's Gold / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Michael_T_Bucci
I met an old acquaintance, a Russian oligarch. He was in tears. "Why, I asked, are you crying?"
"As you know," he implored, "I'm already out of favor with Vladimir Putin and being out of favor with him, I'm shunned by my own class here in New York."
"Yes," I quipped, "but that's old news, yet you are still crying?"
"I'm crying now because I'm about to take a haircut from the barber in Brussels who is going to confiscate 30% of my $1.4 billion left in a Cypriot bank."
"Oh, my!" I replied.
"I don't know how I'm going to eat!" he exclaimed.
"Well, that's an easy one to solve," I replied. So I offered him a solution. "About four blocks down this street is a bank," I explained. "They will take care of you."
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Hayek v. Krugman – Cyprus’ Capital Controls / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Nobelist Paul Krugman has a propensity to spin and conceal. This allows for deception – the type of thing that hoodwinks some readers of his New York Times column. While deception doesn’t qualify as lying, it also fails to qualify as truth-telling.
Prof. Krugman’s New York Times column, “Hot Money Blues” (25 March 2013) is a case in point. Prof. Krugman sprinkles holy water on the capital controls that will be imposed in Cyprus. He further praises to the sky the post-1980 capital controls that were introduced in a number of other countries.
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens America's Future / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
William Kristol knows what is wrong with the United States. As he wrote recently in the flagship magazine of the neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard, the problem with the US is that we seem to have lost our appetite for war. According to Kristol, the troubles that have befallen us in the 20th century have all been the result of these periodic bouts of war-weariness, a kind of virus that we catch from time to time.
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Gazprom Eyes Cyprus' Offshore Natural Gas Deposits / Politics / Natural Gas
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE POTENTIAL IS THERE
Engaged players in unlocking the offshore gas potential of Cyprus at present only concern a few major energy corporations: Noble Energy of the US, Total of France, and Korea Gas. So far and to date, the single major find in 2011 by Noble Energy is estimated, by Noble, as holding about 0.3 billion cubic metres of gas (8 trillion cu feet). But Cyprus’ gas discoveries adjoin Israeli territorial waters where the discovery of the massive Leviathan gasfield (estimated at 425 billion cubic metres) and the smaller Tamar gasfield (250 billion cubic meters) have been enough to make foreign companies rush to cash in on this. European Union total gas consumption in 2012 was about 460 billion cubic metres, in decline for the second straight year, and EU 27 total gas production in 2012 was about 150 bn cu metres, also declining but not at the double-digit rates of annual gas demand in almost all EU countries.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Cyprus Mass Panic Banks Are Collapsing and ATMs are Running Out Of Money / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Global_Research
Economic Collapse writes: European officials are openly admitting that the two largest banks in Cyprus are “insolvent“, and it is now being reported that Cyprus Popular Bank only has “enough liquidity to cover the next few hours“. Of course all banks in Cyprus are officially closed until Tuesday at the earliest, but there have been long lines at ATMs all over Cyprus as people scramble to get whatever money they can out of the banks. Unfortunately, some ATMs appear to be “malfunctioning” and others appear to have already run out of cash.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Cyprus Bank Battle: The Long-planned Deposit Confiscation Scheme / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Ellen_Brown
“If these worries become really serious, . . . [s]mall savers will take their money out of banks and resort to household safes and a shotgun.” — Martin Hutchinson on the attempted EU raid on private deposits in Cyprus banks
The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making. US depositors could be next …
On Tuesday, March 19, the national legislature of Cyprus overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout. Reuters called it “a stunning setback for the 17-nation currency bloc,” but it was a stunning victory for democracy. As Reuters quoted one 65-year-old pensioner, “The voice of the people was heard.”
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Sunday, March 24, 2013
Get Ready for Capital Controls, Right here in America / Politics / Credit Crisis 2013
By: Bill_Bonner
"Can you by legislation add one farthing to the wealth of the country?" The great classical-liberal thinker Richard Cobden asked the House of Commons on Feb. 27, 1846.
The Argentines think so. So do the Europeans. And of course, the Americans.
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Friday, March 22, 2013
Cyprus, Greece Debt Crisis Storm Threatens Europe and America / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: EWI
The similarities between Greece and pre-WWII Germany are striking.
- Nazi salutes.
- Praise for Adolf Hitler.
- Swastika-like banners.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Queen Merkel Says - Off With Their Heads! / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE QUEEN OF HEARTS AND THE MAD HATTERS
In the famous children's story, Queen of Hearts Merkel only needed one Mad Hatter - but today has an Airbus load of them, called The Troika's expert analysts, advisor and strategists. Also, Merkel has lost her longtime and truly favourite Mad Hatter - called Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, who she dubbed "Mr Bean".
Today she royally scrapes along in her Economic Kingdom rightly named Wonderland (in the Lewis Carroll story), with a huge rabble of discordant expert halfwits.
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Friday, March 22, 2013
Israel Lobby Goading a Gullible America Into War / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Patrick J. Buchanan writes: As President Obama departed for Israel, there came a startling report. Bashar Assad's regime had used poison gas on Syrian rebels.
Two Israeli Cabinet members claimed credible evidence. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said, "It's clear for us that (gas is) being used. ... This ... should be on the table in the discussions."
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