Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
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?
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
London's Burning, Twitter and Facebook Austerity Riots Erupt, House Prices Set to Crash as Buyers Evaporate / Politics / Social Issues
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Britain's economic austerity induced rioting, looting and arson has begun by dispossessed benefits culture youth with little prospects of jobs fuelled by spending cuts of youth services of as much as 75% and few of whom had considered further education now being saddled with a lifetime of debt should they go to university, the trigger for which was the apparent dubious shooting on Thursday night of an Afro-carribean male by police in Tottenham (London) under the Operation Trident which targets black on black gun crime, though the social tinder box was awaiting a trigger so sooner or later it would have been ignited by any excuse for rampant destruction and looting of high streets starting in Tottenham on Saturday, but soon spreading across London as rioters and looters took advantage of an increasingly thinly spread police force via social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, utilising smartphone's such as Blackberries to quickly organise and target lightly policed high streets much as protestors in the middle east used social media sites and mobile phones to quickly organise.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Bread, Circuses, Spending Cuts, Unicorns & The Appearance Of Wealth / Politics / US Politics
By: James_Quinn
"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses" -
Friday, August 05, 2011
Washington Debt Compromise Spells Death Knell for U.S. Economy / Politics / US Debt
By: Casey_Research
Vedran Vuk, Senior Analyst, Casey Research writes: With a last-minute debt deal reached, I’m reminded of two holy words in Washington: “compromise” and “bipartisanship.” It’s amazing that the political elite have so twisted the English language as to lend virtue to these terms. In Washington, these words hold intrinsic value… similar to how “truth” and “honesty” do outside D.C. Unfortunately for the American public, Washington compromises have been and will continue to be the death knell of the U.S. economy – and particularly the free market.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 05, 2011
Dog Days Of Summer, Politicians Rest Before Returning To The Fray. The Political War Will Continue / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
Now that the debt drama is over for the moment, we can all safely retreat in what was once called the “Dog Days Of Summer” and chill out if the volatile weather allows us to. We can think back to that old song, “Summer time and the living is easy” even as we all know that for millions “the living” is anything but.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
U.S. Debt Impasse: Fake and Real, The Republican Legacy / Politics / US Debt
By: Gary_North
The debt ceiling agreement that came over the weekend will raise the ceiling by $2.1 trillion – enough to get this issue off the political table until January 1, 2013, which was Obama's desire.
The House called the bill the Budget Control Act. It was the budget out of control act. It is 74 pages long. No one in Congress had time to read it. Typical.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
The Quiet Revolution: Latin America Moving Away from Washington's Influence / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: OilPrice_Com
Perhaps the biggest foreign-policy story of the past decade, thoroughly overlooked by the American media after 9/11 and its subsequent monomaniacal focus on terrorism, security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the fact that Latin America has essentially moved away from Washington's influence.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Do you think Ben Bernanke is J.P. Morgan? / Politics / Central Banks
By: Fred_Sheehan
On July 13, 2011, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was questioned by members of the U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
Chairman (of the Committee) Ron Paul asked: "Do you think gold is money?"
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Indonesia's Growing Global Geopolitical Significance / Politics / Emerging Markets
By: STRATFOR
I am writing this from Indonesia. Actually, that is not altogether a fair statement. I am at the moment in Bali and just came from Jakarta. The two together do not come close to being Indonesia. Jakarta, the capital, is a vast city that is striking to me for its traffic. It takes an enormous amount of time to get anywhere in Jakarta. Like most cities, it was not built to accommodate cars, and the mix of cars with motor scooters results in perpetual gridlock. It is also a city of extraordinary dynamism. There is something happening on almost every street. And in the traffic jams, you have time to contemplate those streets in detail.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
No Plan B - But Plan Crisis Default Is Coming / Politics / US Debt
By: Andrew_McKillop
It is a truism, and a total consensus view among all analysts of the present sovereign debt financing and monetary meltdown that no Plan B exists. For starters, if there was or had been a Plan B, it would have been used, already, a long time ago. Plan A only has one solution: print money and forget. We now have a radically politicizing context where the bolt-ons to Plan A including austerity-type quick fixes are shorting out any prospect of economic recovery and aggravating existing social stress among the crowd of increasingly enraged victims, the working population, consumers and voters. No Plan B exists.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Obama Torn Between Two Evils of Exorbitant Privilege And Eminent Domain / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
EXORBITANT PRIVILEGE
Using this codeword term, yesteryear, Imperial Powers bandied this subtle threat around and between themselves when things got tense. It basically threatens retaliation against an Imperial Power using borrowed and printed, invented or stolen money to grab control of local, regional or even global economic activity by inundating its rivals' zones of influence with its worthless money.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
U.S. Debt Deal is a Blank Check / Politics / US Debt
By: Peter_Schiff
By supposedly compromising to raise the debt ceiling, Congress and the President have now paved the way for ever higher levels of federal spending. Although, the nation was spared the trauma of borrowing restrictions, the actual risk of default existed solely in the minds of Washington politicians. But the real crisis is not, nor has it ever been, the debt ceiling. The crisis is the debt itself. Economic Armageddon would not have resulted from failure to raise the ceiling, but it will come because we succeeded in raising it. This outcome falls along the lines that I had forecast (See my commentary, "Don't Be Fooled by Political Posturing" from July 9th).
Monday, August 01, 2011
When a Spending Cut is Not a Cut / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 01, 2011
Obama Our Saviour, the U.S. Debt Ceiling Deal / Politics / US Debt
By: Submissions
Jonathan Davis writes:So, Obama and The Democratic leadership and The Republican leadership twisted loads of arms, tightened screws and got a deal. All over the media you hear $2.5Trns of cuts have been agreed. Rubbish!
First, this deal has to be approved by Congress. It will be.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 01, 2011
Raising the Debt Ceiling Avoids the Spending Addiction / Politics / US Debt
By: BATR
The latest example of political hyperbole is that the U.S. Treasury is ready to default on its debt. An actual examination of the underlying facts is that the relative purchasing value of the currency has long ago swindled debt holder in U.S. Bonds of their promised returns. A default defined under this definition is part of the equation. Repudiation of the entire debt obligation is the real fear. Contrary to all the public scare tactics that the financial world will stop turning, the Federal Treasury has ample revenue to pay the interests on bonds and notes that come due. The essential issue is whether the new bond lenders are willing to roll over the debt that is coming due and keep the shell game going.
Monday, August 01, 2011
Debt Wars in Washington: The First Crucible of Choosing Lambs for Sacrifice / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_T_Bucci
After my wife passed, I moved from my home and applied for an apartment. The stern manager looked at my application with approval but couldn't accept me because I had two ferrets, my only remaining family. He turned and asked: "Can you get rid of one of them?" I quickly replied, "Which one?" He was neutralized. When the Tea-Party/GOP presented President Obama its demands to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and entitlements, the President didn't reply "no", and didn't ask "which one". He answered: "We'll negotiate. We'll compromise. We'll make it bipartisan." It was a done deal.