The list that follows describes my best predictions for 2009. They are based on the honest observation of reality combined with the intelligence to see patterns in the chaos. As usual, most of these predictions will seem outlandish right up to the day they occur, at which point they will seem obvious.
Way back in 1789, the framers of the US constitution were a bit nervous about "democracy". They decided to put a buffer between the people and the position of highest power. Back then, our framers thought democracy was a dirty word, the rule of the mob. They thought the electors would be the most sophisticated and well-informed. Nowadays, the electors have no power at all - they are usually party officials who get to go to Washington a few weeks after the election just to "certify" the result.
Alan Greenspan, the former US Federal Reserve chairman, has publicly admitted that the US free-market ideology that he and others have championed for decades is flawed.The admission is one of the most significant comments made by a key architect of the world financial system that is now in chaos amid the global economic crisis.
Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation. Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.
Here, in the shadow of the giant casinos which mark the downtown landscape of this northern Nevada gambling mecca, as many as 150 people lived in a tent city until last weekend, one of a number of emergency shanty towns that sprang up in U.S. cities this past summer.
Where does the recent turmoil leave investors? Leaving emotions aside and taking a sober look at fundamentals, we arrive at the following conclusions. The global economy is likely already in recession. Despite the recent decline in energy costs and commodity prices, any recovery in domestic demand will be a protracted process.
If the answer is "no" then you don’t understand the true destruction of Iraq. This is not altogether something to be ashamed of; the media, led by Murdoch’s "FOX News" has deliberately refrained from covering the laws in any detail, mostly because if they did reveal the extent of the destruction, good American citizens would be outraged.
So the scene is set. In 2002 things have been unchanged for centuries. Why break a system that worked? Then Bremer came along with the answer: We’ll break a system that works for Iraq, because doing so will generate profit for America.
What we are going through has been repeated over and over again in the six or eight millennia that military conquest and pillage has been popular with elites. Although there are many argu- ments favoring the view that the US has been an imperialist, expansionist power nearly from our beginnings, we were able, due to unique circumstances, to enjoy the best of both worlds -- imperial domination abroad and productive abundance at home. Hence investment in domestic production and social improvement was possible along with military adventurism. This was a historical anomaly.
In 1942, German intelligence officers rounded up skilled Jewish prisoners and launched Operation Bernhardt, a clever scheme designed to counterfeit hundreds of millions of dollars worth of British Pounds and destroy the British economy by flooding it with counterfeit money. Located in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Operation Bernhardt was, even by modern standards, a runaway success that resulted in the creation of forged bank notes worth 132 million British Pounds. The FED is doing the same thing right now in the USA.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy are meeting in Paris to try and forge a common approach to sort out the European economy. But actions from the leaders can’t come soon enough for many European citizens - they’ve been feeling the pinch for a while.
We've heard President Bush say it, seemingly more times than even Google can count: Stop worrying. The American economy is strong. We are going through difficult times, perhaps, but the economy is strong. Ditto Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman.
The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin lashed out at the United States today for what he said was its inability to deal with the financial crisis affecting the global economy.
“And what is really sad is that we see an inability to take appropriate decisions. This is no longer irresponsibility on the part of some individuals, but irresponsibility of the whole system, which as you know had pretensions to (global) leadership."
When Nart Villeneuve couldn't remember the password to his Chinese MySpace page, the industrious Canadian hacker began examining China's version of Skype, and in the process, unlocked the inner workings of an Internet surveillance network tracking thousands of political activists in the world's most populous nation.
For long, McCain derided selfish politics and defended experience as indispensable for presiding over America as it leads in a volatile world. Now, he has turned around and chosen the least experienced person on his list of candidates for strictly narrow electoral calculations.
Which begs the question, how could the 72-year-old Vietnam vet with a poor health record choose a running mate with poor experience to be only a "heartbeat away from the presidency"?
Click for torture scandal links
Dead because of a lie. Dead because selfish people in government wanted a war and lied to get one. How can you not be angry?