Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, July 29, 2019
The Ever-Political IMF Meddlers Give Boris Johnson Unsolicited Advice / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Steve_H_Hanke
No sooner than Boris Johnson put his foot over the threshold of 10 Downing Street, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offered its unsolicited advice to the newly elected Tory Prime Minister. Johnson won the right to replace the hapless Theresa May by pledging to remove Britain from the EU by October 31, 2019, “deal or no deal.”
Enter the IMF. In a preemptive strike, the Philosopher Kings threw cold water on the idea of a no deal, asserting that it would be a disaster. Talk about entering a domestic quarrel without an invitation.
But, such meddling is nothing new for the IMF. Indeed, a bipartisan Congressional commission (The International Financial Advisory Commission, known as the Meltzer Commission) concluded in 2000 that the IMF interferes too much in the domestic politics of member countries. Just recall the IMF’s involvement in toppling Indonesian President Suharto in 1998. This scandalous episode was confirmed by no less than former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. I would add that the IMF propensity to interfere has become much more pronounced since the days of the last great Managing Director of the IMF Jacques de Larosière (1978-1987).
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Monday, July 29, 2019
Why The Government Has Screwed Us Again / Politics / US Politics
By: Rodney_Johnson
I’ve got friends on both sides of the political aisle.Some are huge Trump supporters. They’re giddy over his tweets about “The Squad.” They think, why not call out people who demean the country? And if they don’t like it here, why don’t they just go anywhere else?
And how about enforcing the rule of law once in a while by sticking to our immigration policies? We’re not rounding up migrants because they come from other countries; we’re demanding that they comply with the law, which means leaving the country when their asylum claims have been denied after a hearing.
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Monday, July 29, 2019
Trump Debt Deficits Then and Now : What a Difference 3 Years Make! / Politics / US Debt
By: MoneyMetals
As investors look ahead to a likely rate cut next week by the Federal Reserve, gold and silver markets have been consolidating their recent gains.
A big move in metals markets could come after the Fed’s policy meeting next Wednesday. Of course, the magnitude and direction of the move will depend on what Chairman Jerome Powell and company do and say.
Central bankers are under immense political pressure to lower interest rates and resume purchases of government bonds. A recent downturn in manufacturing and home sales data may well give them cover to roll out new stimulus even as the stock market sits near a record high.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Brexit Politics and Algorithms / Politics / BrExit
By: Raul_I_Meijer
It’s a development that has long been evident in continental Europe, and that has now arrived on the shores of the US and UK. It is the somewhat slow but very certain dissolution of long-existing political parties, organizations and groups. That’s what I was seeing during the Robert Mueller clown horror show on Wednesday.
Mueller was not just the Democratic Party’s last hope, he was their identity. He was the anti-Trump. Well, he no longer is, he is not fit to play that role anymore. And there is nobody to take it over who is not going to be highly contested by at least some parts of the party. In other words: it’s falling apart.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a natural process, parties change as conditions do and if they don’t do it fast enough they disappear. Look at the candidates the Dems have. Can anyone imagine the party, post-Mueller, uniting behind Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris? And then for one of them to beat Donald Trump in 2020?
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Friday, July 26, 2019
Trump Kills the Tea Party / Politics / US Politics
By: Peter_Schiff
After claiming to be the greatest at just about everything, Donald Trump has finally found an area where he can stake a credible claim. By negotiating a disastrous budget deal with Democrats, the President could become the greatest creator of government debt in the history of the country. While Trump is selling the two-year deal as a major victory because it increases military spending and removes the possibility of a government shutdown for two years, in reality, the agreement to suspend the debt ceiling and push annual deficits even further above the trillion dollar mark may only succeed in destroying the Republican Party as we know it.
The Tea Party wave of 2009 and 2010, a Republican movement born in reaction to the budget blowouts of the Obama Presidency, is now officially dead. It's ironic that as Trump hammered the final nail into the Tea Party's coffin, no one seemed happier than the corpse itself! There was hardly a word of discomfort from all the Republican Senators and Congressmen who had so loudly railed against debt when the other party occupied the White House. There is simply no legitimate way that Republicans will ever be able to argue again that they are the party of fiscal discipline. They may try, but only the most partisan and credulous voters will buy it.
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Thursday, July 25, 2019
UK Heatwave - Sheffield Temperature Hit's 39.1c for Record Hottest July Day / Politics / Climate Change
By: Anika_Walayat
The UK like much of europe is experiencing a heatwave that has seen July records broken across the continent. Today, 25th of July was the UK's turn to set a string of new record highs across the land including in the city of Sheffield that busted through it's previous July high of 36c and the UK previous highest temperature of 36.7c (July 1st at heathrow airport), even beating Met office forecasts of 38.5c by hitting 39.1c during the afternoon and likely a touch higher in some locations later in the afternoon as this video from Sheffield illustrates.
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Wednesday, July 24, 2019
The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed / Politics / Climate Change
By: Ellen_Brown
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a Guardian article, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains:
Read full article... Read full article...As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Why Exponential AI Machine Learning Future Trend Will Change EVERYTHING! / Politics / AI
By: Adnaan_Walayat
We are currently galloping full speed along an exponential curve that unlike the neural nets of the 1990's, that promised a lot but delivered very little, this time it really looks like we are on the verge of AI success, not only that but it heralds changes in every aspect of our lives most of which we cannot even imagine today, hence the term the singularity is often used, the AI event horizon beyond which we cannot see.
“Success in creating effective A.I.,” said the late Stephen Hawking, “could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know.” Are we creating the instruments of our own destruction or exciting tools for our future survival? Once we teach a machine to learn on its own—as the programmers behind AlphaGo have done, to wondrous results—where do we draw moral and computational lines?
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Sunday, July 21, 2019
What’s With all the Weird Weather? / Politics / Climate Change
By: Richard_Mills
In January 2018, something strange happened in the Sahara Desert: it snowed. The Algerian town of Ain Sefra, named the “Gateway to the Sahara”, reportedly received up to an inch, barely enough to get the average North American out of bed early to scrape the car, but for North Africans, the outlier snowfall would have been magical; it was only the third time in 40 years that the Sahara Desert, one of the hottest places on earth, has received snow. (the desert gets very cold at night but even if it dips below freezing, any precipitation that crystallizes to snow usually melts right away)
A year later, extreme heat and cold were experienced in Australia and Russia. Temperatures at Port Augusta, South Australia, shot up to 49 degrees Celsius, on the same day, Jan. 7, as the mercury plunged to -56 in parts of Russia. That’s numbingly cold, but not as bone-chilling as in January 2018, when a blast of -67 cold air hit Russia’s remote Yakuta region - low enough to freeze eyelashes.
Can these outlier weather events be explained by climate change?
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Saturday, July 20, 2019
Africa Rising – Population Explosion, Geopolitical and Economic Consquences / Politics / Africa
By: Richard_Mills
A lot of resource investors stop listening to corporate presentations when they learn the company’s project is in Africa.
More often than not the country risk of exploring for minerals in the “dark continent” (as Africa was known to 19th century European explorers) is just too big a gamble for retail investors’ hard-earned capital.
Development projects are hi-jacked by rebels, or over-run by artisanal miners. Operating mines get expropriated by governments that can’t resist the temptation to raid a foreign company’s coffers. And African miners frequently see their profits reduced by corrupt officials intent on re-negotiating royalty contracts.
All of these things are true, yet in the long run, Africa cannot be ignored. The hammer-shaped continent is expected to drive global growth over the next several decades, as populations there climb, but dwindle elsewhere.
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Tuesday, July 16, 2019
This Economy Left Millions of Americans Behind / Politics / Social Issues
By: Patrick_Watson
Remember “No Child Left Behind,” George W. Bush’s education reform plan? Congress passed it in 2001.Whether that law actually helped is subject to debate, but Bush picked a good name for it. Humans are social creatures. Our instincts tell us to make sure no one in our tribe gets “left behind,” economically or otherwise.
That instinct breaks down sometimes. Or we disagree about who belongs in our tribe. It’s a big problem in either case.
Hence, when people say even the poorest Americans live better than their grandparents did, or better than those in other countries, they miss the point.
Past generations and people overseas are the wrong comparison. We get angry when our own group leaves us behind.
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Tuesday, July 16, 2019
What Would Happen If Venezuela & the Middle East Couldn’t Access Oil? / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Rodney_Johnson
We’re hyper-focused on politics at the moment because, well, Trump. If he weren’t the president, with unshakeable support from one faction while inducing loathing from another, then the 2020 election cycle might be a touch less fanatical. But he is the president, and we’ve got Democratic hopefuls pummeling each other as they move to the left, promising many nw programs with questionable funding sources.It’s as if the laws of supply and demand have been suspended.
Maybe they have when it comes to politics, but back in the real world, supply and demand do matter. And this cold reality could put the energy market in the deep freeze over the next 12 months.
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Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Strong Dollar is good for Small Businesses / Politics / US Dollar
By: BATR
The Trump economy has provided a much needed optimism. While confidence for the future has grown over the meager performance under Obama, the fabric of prosperity has not yet achieved universal reach. Remember that an America First economy thrives on a strong dollar. So it is unfortunate that the establishment is pushing President Trump into favoring an internationalist trading system that hinders a domestic small business economy. The corporatists on Wall Street hate independent business.
In order to combat the export of American jobs, much higher tariffs should be imposed. Raising the value of the U.S. Dollar (Federal Reserve notes) would put an end to the oversea search for the cheapest labor regime. International trade that diminishes domestic output has been the primary cause of destroying our national autonomy. For those who are in denial, admitting this fact is a major threat to their cartel of global interdependency.
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Sunday, July 14, 2019
Art Laffer On The Fed, What Would Milton Friedman Say? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Art Laffer, the supply-side guru and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom has caused yet another stir among the chattering classes. Last week, he told John Catsimatidis on AM 970 New York that “The Fed shouldn’t be independent of the administration. Never should be. None of those people were elected. They were appointed.” He repeated those sentiments on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning.
What would my good friend Milton Friedman say? Well, unfortunately, we don’t know for certain because Milton is no longer with us. That said, Nobelist Friedman weighed in on the issue of central bank independence on several occasions. Indeed, an essay he penned in 1962 was titled “Should there be an Independent Monetary Authority?” His essay appeared in In Search of a Monetary Constitution, which was published by Harvard University Press and was edited by my collaborator, the late Leland B. Yeager. Friedman was unambiguous. He concluded that “The case against a fully independent central bank is strong indeed.”
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Friday, July 12, 2019
State of the US Economy as Laffer Gets Laughable / Politics / US Economy
By: Peter_Schiff
While the willingness to abandon long held beliefs for political gain has always been a common trait among public figures, the spectacle has recently taken on shocking levels of casual audacity. The contempt for even minimal levels of intellectual consistency has allowed Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden for his past opposition to Federally mandated busing while simultaneously taking the exact same position herself. These somersaults are particularly common with former economic conservatives seeking to curry favor with President Trump's decidedly non-conservative policies.
We have seen former free-trader Larry Kudlow awkwardly embrace high tariffs and big deficits, and economist Stephen Moore disavow decades of monetary hawkishness to position himself as a potentially reliable Trump loyalist. But the most dizzying reversal came this week when supposedly conservative Reagan administration economist Arthur Laffer (in what I believe to be an audition for a job in the Trump Administration) hit the airwaves to make the case that the Federal Reserve should be run directly by the President, not by the Fed's supposedly independent governors. Come again? Direct political control of a central bank has always been the bogeyman of any conservative economist. Was he serious?
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Thursday, July 11, 2019
My SATS Results SHOCK! / Politics / Educating Children
By: Anika_Walayat
It's Sats results day when 600 thousand 10 and 11 year olds will be getting their Sats scores for English, Grammar and Maths tests that take place at the end of Key Stage 2 just prior to the move to secondary school. So find what the SATS results are all about and if my scores live up to expectations in my latest video.
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Friday, July 05, 2019
The Geopolitical Winds are Shifting / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
How do you define terror? Perhaps, because of the way the term has evolved in the English language, one wouldn’t call the west ‘terrorists’ per se, but ‘we’ are certainly spreading terror and terrorizing very large groups of people. Yeah, bring on the tanks and parade them around town. Add a marching band that plays some war tunes.
The ‘official’ storyline : at the request of the US, Gibraltar police and UK marines have seized an oil tanker in Gibraltar. The super-tanker, 1000 feet (330 meters) long, carrying 2 million barrels, had stopped there after sailing all around the Cape of Good Hope instead of taking the Suez canal on its way, ostensibly, from Iran to Syria.
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Friday, June 28, 2019
Is Bitcoin A Diversion from the Natural Monetary Order? / Politics / Bitcoin
By: Antonius_Aquinas
As modern man continues to wantonly deviate, flaunt, and reject the natural law and the Divinely-created order from which it derives, it is not surprising that illusions like Bitcoin and other crypto currencies have captured the imagination of many and have provided a vehicle for scammers to rip off their fellow man.
Crypto currencies are a more complex, yet still devious derivative of the immoral, economic destructive, and social debilitating system of central banking. In response, Bitcoin pumpers have craftily tried to portray digital currencies as a “decentralized” alternative to the present fiat, paper-money standard.
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Thursday, June 27, 2019
What Led to the Current Brexit Crisis? / Politics / BrExit
By: Travis_Bard
It’s more than a thousand days since the UK voted to leave the European Union, but the future relationship between the country and its continental neighbor is still unclear. The historic House of Commons, hailed as the Mother of Parliaments and based in the Palace of Westminster, has reached an impasse and can now only ask for an extension to the exit process in order to buy itself more time for a way out of the current predicament.
The public is as bitterly divided as the politicians – with more than six million people signing a petition to call for Brexit to be stopped and a mass march in London demanding another referendum to revisit the exit issue.
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Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Iran and the Dying Days Of the US Empire / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Something’s been nagging me for the past few days, and I’m not sure I’ve figured out why yet. It started when Donald Trump first called off the alleged planned strikes on targets in Iran because they would have cost 150 lives, and then the next day said the US would do sanctions instead. As they did on Monday, even directly targeting Trump’s equal, the “Supreme Leader Khameini”.
When Trump announced the sanctions, I thought: wait a minute, by presenting this the way you did, you effectively turned economic sanctions into a military tool: we chose not to do bombs but sanctions. Sounds the same as not doing a naval invasion but going for air attacks instead. The kind of decisions that were made in Vietnam a thousand times.
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