Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, January 18, 2013
President Obama Shoots Himself in the Foot on Gun Contro / Politics / US Politics
By: Gary_North
North’s law of knee-jerk politics is this: “When you become a knee-jerk politician, you will eventually shoot yourself in the foot.” This is what President Obama has just done. He has decided that he is going to make gun control one of his two major issues.
The first issue is getting the House of Representatives to raise the debt ceiling. He has made it clear that he will not compromise in any way.
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Friday, January 18, 2013
The Ticking Trillion Dollar Debt Bomb / Politics / US Debt
By: Graham_Summers
Since the EU Crisis went into overdrive in 2010, EU politicians have largely resorted to political posturing rather than implementing any actual financial solutions to the EU’s debt and banking crisis.
To clarify that statement, we view a “real solution” as one that A) cleared bad debts from the system, B) brought debt levels down to manageable levels, and C) got the troubled country’s economy back on track.
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Thursday, January 17, 2013
Open Fort Knox! The Ink at the Money Printing Press Is Dry / Politics / US Debt
By: InvestmentContrarian
George Leong writes: The government needs money fast. The problem is that the bank vaults are closed for the time being, and unless they are opened by early March, America could face a cash crunch.
The intense battle between Congress and President Barack Obama, who is requesting an immediate increase to the current national debt limit of $16.4 trillion, is ongoing, but it needs to be resolved soon, as the current national debt subject to the limit is $16.39 trillion. Obama is threatening possible delays to Social Security and veterans’ benefits, along with an impact on the government payroll, if the cash doesn’t come. (Source: Lee, C.E., and Hook, J., “Obama Escalates Debt Fight,” Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2013.)
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Thursday, January 17, 2013
France's Soupcon Of Economic Austerity - Or Is It A Wall Of Poverty? / Politics / France
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE NUMBERS TALK
France's present and coming economic disaster is relatively well hidden, at least to outsiders who look in the wrong places and read the French official statistics - which are as lively, imaginative and "true to facts" as anyplace else. Above all, France seems for a short while longer to have wriggled out and away from the savage austerity cures which have already steamrolled, and go on crushing the economy and society of Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and other European countries.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
U.S. Government Raids Pension Funds to Avoid Debt Default / Politics / US Debt
By: Money_Morning
Diane Alter writes: The U.S. Treasury, in order to avoid default, has resorted to an eyebrow-raising move: it has borrowed from the federal employee pension fund as the country nears its debt ceiling.
The U.S. government stopped investing in the federal employee pension fund Tuesday "to avoid breaching the statutory debt limit," according to a letter Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent to Congress.
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Thursday, January 17, 2013
Tim Geithner, the King of a Cloud Cuckoo Land Stock Market / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
On January 25, Timothy Geithner will step down as US Treasury Secretary. A lot of people will say and write a lot of things about him at that point, and it sounds like a good idea to be ahead of the game and provide some perspective.
There are voices claiming (there will be many more, promise) that Geithner pulled us out of the recession and the crisis, and saved the economy. That seems presumptuous. It may just as well be true that Geithner has fooled us into thinking that. Just because the stock markets are pulling through so far doesn't mean, let alone prove, that the economy has recovered or been saved. You would need something better, more substantial than that. While acknowledging that relatively strong stock market numbers are at least in potential a great way indeed to fool people about the economy.
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Thursday, January 17, 2013
Washington's Trillion Dollar Banana / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Michael_Pento
It should be clear to all that Keynesian Counterfeiters now control many of the major governments across the globe. Fiscal and monetary "stimulus" led to the bond market collapses of southern Europe a couple of years ago. The Greek bond market was the first to crack at the beginning of 2010. Borrowing massive quantities of printed money caused yields on their 10-year note rose from 5.8% in January, to over 40% two years later. But the problem in Europe wasn't confined to just a Greek tragedy. In Portugal, their 10-year note yield soared from 4.07% at the start of 2010, to 15.4% in just 24 months. Similar, but less dramatic, bond duress occurred in Spain and Italy as well.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
How Does the System of the Crooks Operate In America and Why Worry About It? / Politics / US Politics
By: Jas_Jain
Early in the morning, I watched an interview on Bloomberg with Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, who just became a voting member on FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee, but it is more of a Foul Open Mouth Committee because these days they talk on TV lot more than they deliberate in the meeting, i.e., they are in propaganda business). Bill Cohan (that is the correct spelling according to Bloomberg), who had worked on Wall Street before the Crisis of 2008 and these days he is a Bloomberg commentator after writing a book on the Crisis, was infuriated after the interview because "all that the Fed is doing is enriching the banks." (Rosengren being the most supportive of Fed doing more QE, i.e., he is left of the left interventionist).
Thursday, January 17, 2013
America's Un(der)employed Youth, The Man with the Broom... / Politics / Employment
By: Don_Miller
One of the greatest joys of writing Miller's Money Weekly and our premium publications is working with Alex Daley, Casey Research's resident technology guru, who also wears many other hats. While I can walk and chew gum, Alex can also whistle and juggle.
I've never reported to someone considerably younger than I am. What a treat! We are different in so many ways: I have a black book, he has a cell phone; my appointments are written on my big desk pad and his are programmed into his cell phone. You get the picture.
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Price for Eurozone Collapse is Too High / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Pravda
The Eurozone will not fall apart, because the price of getting out of the game is too high for each country. When, in early September, it was announced that the ECB would buy government bonds in unlimited quantities, the bridges behind the Euro area countries have collapsed. There is no way back, and this means that one can only move forward and fight for their own happiness.
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Marooned Global Warmers Face Shrinking Floes Of Money / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
CRISIS IN PARADISE
Once upon a time any New Age journalist could make an easy living spouting global warming crisis themes and memes: it was only necessary to pick and mix the one-liners from Al Gore, James 'Gaia' Lovelock, James Hansen and other hopefuls supping at the brimful trough of "hard edged scientific facts" on climate change which show we are on the path to the Apocalypse, and-or the Olduvai Gorge. Today however, even the UK Met Office has been forced to heavily tone down, we should say cool down its gripping hockey stick forecasts of ever-leaping-upward temperatures, which for years it so confidently communicated (with a straight face) as a somber warning of Very Bad Things to Come.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The Economics of Sequestration / Politics / Government Spending
By: BATR
Delaying the sequester process for two months confirms that business as usual is well on Capital Hill. The egregious idea of abiding by a former deal that would trigger automatic spending cuts is just too much for Congressional leaders to bear. March 1, 2013 is said to be the new due date. Senatorial magic escapes any semblance of facing up to the obvious. Administration spending is so habitual that even a government shutdown is immune from observance. The true economics of sequestration centers within the next imaginative episode of delay and denial. It is little wonder that commerce and business is a far more risky endeavor, when the principal problem of the national debt is abnegated as an excessive spending crisis.
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The Trillion Dollar Coin Trick / Politics / US Debt
By: Peter_Schiff
The birth, and the apparent death, of the trillion dollar platinum coin idea may one day be recalled as a mere footnote in the current debt crisis drama. The ultimate rejection of the idea (which was to use a loophole in commemorative coinage law to mint a platinum coin of any denomination) by both the the President and the Federal Reserve seems to offer some relief that our economic policy is not being run by out-of-touch academics and irresponsible congressmen. In reality, our government has been creating more than one trillion dollars out of thin air every year for the past five. The only difference is that the blatant dishonesty of a trillion-dollar platinum coin is so easy to understand that the public simply couldn't be expected to swallow it. The American people are more than willing to be fooled, but they won't tolerate so simple a ruse.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
America Stepping Back as Global Policeman, Avoiding the Wars That Never End / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the United States would transfer the primary responsibility for combat operations in Afghanistan to the Afghan military in the coming months, a major step toward the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Also last week, France began an intervention in Mali designed to block jihadists from taking control of the country and creating a base of operations in France's former African colonies.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Ron Paul On Obama's New National Security Team, Keep Your Eye on the Policy / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
President Obama announced his choices for key national security posts this past week, and there has been both celebration and gnashing of teeth in Washington and around the country. There is widespread belief that either or both of these nominees will have an immediate and profound effect on US policy. However, this belief is really just a mistaken over-emphasis on personnel over policy. We should not forget that cabinet secretaries serve the president, and not the other way around.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
U.S. Trillion Dollar Battle: Print, Baby, Print! / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Axel_Merk
While the introduction of a trillion-dollar coin has been shrugged off as nonsense, there are plenty of nonsensical concepts employed in our monetary system. Here we’ll shed light on a few of them.
Governments - or their central banks - can print a $100 bill. The value of such a piece of paper is worth exactly as much as the supply and demand of a currency dictates. Dollar bills are legal tender for payment of debt, but if someone does not like that the $100 bill is not backed by anything, then anyone is free to decline a $100 bill in exchange for services, and barter instead.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
President Obama Utilizing Media to Pressure Republicans on Debt Ceiling / Politics / US Debt
By: EconMatters
Let me first state that I am not a Republican or a Democrat, or a Tea Party advocate; I just look at individual issues based upon their merit. The issues and the right solution is what is important to me, and not collective party ideology. But president Obama trying the same tactics of negotiation in the media to frame the debt ceiling debate as the Republicans being irresponsible, and not paying the Country`s bills is just media manipulation at its finest.
This tactic is very transparent and apparent to the educated members of society, unfortunately the tactic worked with regards to the fiscal cliff, and he is hoping to do the same thing again by putting all the pressure on the Republicans with these media shows, and essentially making the Republicans look like the bad guys here.
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Monday, January 14, 2013
Hollande Goes To War, French War On Terror in Mali / Politics / France
By: Andrew_McKillop
Francois Hollande's surprise decision in the night of January 11 to rush French pilots and troops into war, to counter the southward advance of "islamic terrorists" in Mali, drew predictable 'union sacree' support from all French political parties including the hardline extreme right Front National and hardline extreme left parties led by Jean-Luc Melanchon. Within 24 hours French media consumers also learned that a French DGSE secret service agent held hostage for more than 3 years by an "Al Qaeda related" terror group in Somalia, 3750 miles (6000 kms) to the east, had been murdered by his captors when DGSE secret service operatives and regular military personnel made an unsuccessful rescue bid. Two of the military were killed and one was injured and taken hostage by the Somali "islamic terrorists" who lost 17 of their own fighters in the raid, according to French reports.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Gun Confiscation - Last Refuge of the Tyrant / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
Few polarizing subjects are more hotly debated than gun control. Usually lost in the fray of emotional diatribes to ban guns, are the historic empirical foundations of our forefathers who fought a revolution to escape from imperial tyranny. The true reality in today’s AmeriKa is that individual liberty is the most despised activity that any citizen can exert in their lives. Both the popular state worship culture and the authoritarian hoodlums that run the government are so fearful of armed independent citizens, that they are eager to burn the Bill of Rights. Face it, the government is committed to force you to be a ward of the state and will kill you if you resist.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
“Zero Dark Thirty” Torturing the Facts / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Marjorie Cohn writes: On January 11, eleven years to the day after George W. Bush sent the first detainees to Guantanamo, the Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty is making its national debut. Zero Dark Thirty is disturbing for two reasons. First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find bin Laden’s hiding place in Pakistan. Secondarily, it ignores both the illegality and immorality of using torture as an interrogation tool.