Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Nationalization Train Has Left The Station / Politics / Nationalization
By: Mike_Shedlock
The Financial Times is reporting Alan Greenspan Hops On Board The Nationalization Express and is sitting in the bar car next to Nouriel Roubini. The next stop is D.C.
The US government may have to nationalise some banks on a temporary basis to fix the financial system and restore the flow of credit, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman has told the Financial Times.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Geithner vs the American Banking Sector Oligarchs / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Submissions
Bill Moyers interviews former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), MIT Sloan School of Management professor and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Simon Johnson examines President Obama's plan for economic recovery. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Shopping for Toxic Assets at the "Zombie Bank". Final Chapter of the Credit Crunch? / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Andrew_Butter
Timothy Geithner's new plan is to raise $2.5 trillion or so from the private sector to co-invest with him buying Toxic Assets. That sounds risky; but perhaps the flight to safety is over-priced these days? If so then "safety" is "risky".
But there are a few things I don't understand. Not least that the last time I looked, the main problem with buying those assets was finding anyone who wanted to sell some.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Washington Master Thieves Lecturing Wall Street Apprentice Thieves / Politics / US Politics
By: Oxbury_Research
The Thieves' Guild: What do I think of when I think of our nation's capital - Washington D.C.? The word thieves quickly comes to mind. It doesn't matter the political party. Both political parties are filled with scoundrels. Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, February 16, 2009
The City: Gold Capital of the World- Goldsmiths Part XXXI / Politics / Gold & Silver 2009
By: Robert_Bradshaw
In the early days of ancient Greece, governmental units called city-states developed. As these entities were feudalistic, the local fat cats controlled them. Perhaps from this organizational concept, other city-states developed in other parts of the world and often with surrounding walls. Over the centuries, these city-states proved hard to defend. So they largely vanished from the world scene; though some survived. Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, February 16, 2009
Government Banking Hypocrisy and Doublespeak 101 / Politics / Nationalization
By: Mike_Shedlock
Banking Hypocrisy and Doublespeak 101 class is now in session. See if you can spot the occurrence in Darling Says Banks Best Run Privately, Damps Lloyds Speculation . Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Understanding Money and War- Part I / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Robert_Bradshaw
In medieval times, the goldsmith business developed in much of Europe (with involvement of people whom had been known earlier as money changers). By the Middle Ages, goldsmithing was an established reality. As gold was physical, heavy and bulky to store, but yet of great value, many people found that they lacked the means to store and safeguard it. Goldsmiths provided this service. When gold was stored with the goldsmith, he would write a receipt for it which was given to the gold owner. Since the gold owner could get his gold upon surrender of the receipt, the receipt was as good as gold. Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, February 14, 2009
A Short History of U.S. Government Handouts / Politics / Economic Stimulus
By: Stephen_Lendman
Global economies are withering while Washington conceives "Financial Recovery Plan(s) from Hell," according to economist Michael Hudson in his latest February 11 article. Bankers demand more trillions, "or (they'll) plunge the economy into financial crisis." What they want they'll get, and here's where things now stand. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Obama's Opening Salvo Fails to Inspire Confidence in Financial Markets / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Peter_Schiff
There is nearly universal agreement that the opening salvo of the Obama Administration's campaign to restore health to the financial system, delivered this week by new Treasury Secretary Geithner, fell with a loud and ugly thud. The most common criticism is that the announcement was short on detail. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the new Administration intends to push spending back up to pre-crash levels and to fill the entire credit void that has disappeared into the black hole of the American financial system. Whether or not the prior levels of spending and lending were justified by market conditions then, or now, appears to be largely unexamined. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Geithners Bank Bailout Plan Gibberish "Not Ready for Prime Time" / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Mike_Whitney
Tuesday was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's coming out party. He was supposed to outline Obama's Financial Stability Plan to the Senate Banking Committee. Wall Street was looking for clarity, but it didn't get it. Instead, they got 25 minutes of political posturing and blather. The markets went into freefall. By the end of the day, the Dow was down 382 points. It was a complete fiasco. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Financial Markets Disappointment at Geithner’s Bank Bailout Plan / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
By: Money_and_Markets
Mike Larson writres: This was supposed to be a great week for Washington and Wall Street. The administration had leaked in advance that it was going to put a full-court press on for its stimulus and bailout programs. That led to intense anticipatory buying by the stock market bulls.
Monday night's primetime news conference with President Barack Obama only heightened anticipation ahead of the main events on Tuesday: A big speech from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and testimony before Congress by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Sociopaths Lacking Intellectual Capacity Bashing Banks / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
By: Oxbury_Research
The whole thing is ridiculous, all of it. I listened to Geithner release his “plan” to unfreeze lending markets. I watched some of the charades on Capital Hill involving the bank CEOs and their testimony. Lastly, I saw the vote and reaction of politicians on the most recent bit of financial socialism. What a mess… Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Davos and Debt Denial: The Last Gasp of Capitalism / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Darryl_R_Schoon
In an age of illusion, the guise of truth is often heresy - The gathering of the world's economic elites in Davos , Switzerland is a reflection of the reigning power dynamic of the modern world. Officially titled, the World Economic Forum, Davos is sponsored by the world's most powerful and wealthy corporations and presents itself as a “not-for-profit” entity. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Will the Economic Stimulus and TARP Banking System Rescue Work? / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Hans_Wagner
So far, the government has spent $350 billion of the TARP funds to shore up a number of financial institution's equity position. They also loaned money to GM and Chrysler. All this money to help stave off a worse condition. Now the U.S. Congress is about to pass legislation to help stimulate the economy amounting to more than $800 billion. The U.S. is encountering one of the worse recessions ever and the employment picture is getting worse by the week. Moreover, the Federal Reserve has lowered rates to zero to 0.25% range and they are buying securities of many types expanding their balance sheet dramatically. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Global Food Crisis as Technological Advances / Politics / Food Crisis
By: Oxbury_Research
By 2050, according to the World Bank (WB), global population is expected to increase by 3 billion people. The global population is always growing (I'm almost done being Captain Obvious), and a direct result of that growth comes the WB's expectation that food demand will double by 2030 from current levels. While more people are eating more food, farmland remains finite. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Geithner's Bailout Plan: Another Recipe for Financial Disaster / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: By relying on asset-backed securities, large amounts of leverage and unregulated hedge funds as its key elements, the U.S. Treasury Department's overhaul of the banking-system bailout plan is essentially relying on some of the same ingredients that caused the financial crisis in the first place.
This time around, someone should take the punch bowl away before the party even gets started. Otherwise, as Yogi Berra once said, it will be “ Déjà vu all over again.”
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Why the Bank Bailouts are Not Working / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: MoneyWeek
800bn, 1trn, 2trn – just think of a number. Then double it. That seems to be the approach behind the latest batch of bail-outs.
To 'save' their economy, America 's politicians are churning out even more 'rescue' packages. All with more noughts attached. Now they've just "placed an eye-watering $2.3trn price tag on bailing out the US banking system", says The Independent's Stephen Foley , opening up "a second front in the battle to pull the country out of recession".
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama Continues Bush Foreign Policy on Europe, Iran and Russia / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
While the Munich Security Conference brought together senior leaders from most major countries and many minor ones last weekend, none was more significant than U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This is because Biden provided the first glimpse of U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama. Most conference attendees were looking forward to a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration . What was interesting about Biden's speech was how little change there has been in the U.S. position and how much the attendees and the media were cheered by it. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama's War on Terror / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
The language is softened and deceptive. The strategy and tactics are not. The "war on terror" continues. Promised change is talk, not policy. Just look at Obama's "war cabinet," discussed in an earlier article. It assures: -- the "strongest military on the planet" by outspending all other countries combined;
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
A Short History of the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict: Past Is Prologue / Politics / Middle East
By: Stephen_Lendman
Its roots are from the late 19th century when Theodor Herzl founded modern Zionism at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel writes: Zionism seeks "the restoration of tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militaralized and aggressive state. (It) cut Jews off from (their) history and led to a fateful identity of interests with antisemitism (becoming) the only thing that united them. (It) fell into the ways of imperialist expansion and militarism, and showed signs of the fascist malignancy."
Read full article... Read full article...