Topic: United States (Page 18)
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π Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753 β December 5, 1784) was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.
On a 1773 trip to London with her master's son, seeking publication of her work, she was aided in meeting prominent people who became patrons. The publication in London of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral on September 1, 1773, brought her fame both in England and the American colonies. Figures such as George Washington praised her work. A few years later, African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in a poem of his own.
Wheatley was emancipated (set free) by the Wheatleys shortly after the publication of her book. She married in about 1778. Two of her children died as infants. After her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1784, Wheatley fell into working poverty and died of illness. Her last infant son died soon after.
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- "Phillis Wheatley" | 2018-10-29 | 50 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Everything Bubble
The everything bubble refers to the correlated impact of monetary easing by the Federal Reserve (and followed by the ECB and the BOJ), on asset prices in most asset classes, namely equities, housing, bonds, many commodities, and even exotic assets such as cryptocurrencies and SPACs. The term is related to the Fed put, being the tools of direct and indirect quantative easing that the Fed used to execute the monetary easing, and to modern monetary theory, which advocates use of such tools, even in non-crisis periods, to create economic growth through asset price inflation. The term first came in use during the chair of Janet Yellen, but it is most associated with the subsequent chair of Jerome Powell, and the 2020β2021 period of the coronavirus pandemic.
The everything bubble was not only notable for the simultaneous extremes in valuations recorded in a wide range of asset classes and the high level of speculation in the market, but also that this was achieved in a period of recession, high unemployment, trade wars, and political turmoil β leading to a realization that it was uniquely a central bank creation, with concerns on the independence and integrity of market pricing, and on the Fed's impact on wealth inequality.
Bloomberg attributed Powell's maintenance of monetary stimulus into 2021 (the final year of his first term as Fed chair), in spite of warnings of unprecedented levels of market risk and speculation, to his fear of repeating the crash in Q4 2018 when he started quantitative tightening; thus extending the bubble.
High up on his [President Biden] list, and sooner rather than later, will be dealing with the consequences of the biggest financial bubble in U.S. history. Why the biggest? Because it encompasses not just stocks but pretty much every other financial asset too. And for that, you may thank the Federal Reserve.
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- "Everything Bubble" | 2021-02-23 | 28 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Everything Bubble" | 2021-02-22 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
π US Gold Reserve Act
The United States Gold Reserve Act of January 30, 1934 required that all gold and gold certificates held by the Federal Reserve be surrendered and vested in the sole title of the United States Department of the Treasury. It also prohibited the Treasury and financial institutions from redeeming dollar bills for gold, established the Exchange Stabilization Fund under control of the Treasury to control the dollarβs value without the assistance (or approval) of the Federal Reserve, and authorized the president to establish the gold value of the dollar by proclamation.
Immediately following passage of the Act, the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, changed the statutory price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. This price change incentivized gold miners globally to expand production and foreigners to export their gold to the United States, while simultaneously devaluing the U.S. dollar by increasing inflation. The increase in gold reserves due to the price change resulted in a large accumulation of gold in the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, much of which was stored in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The increase in gold reserves increased the money supply, lowering real interest rates which in turn increased investment in durable goods.
A year earlier, in 1933, Executive Order 6102 had made it a criminal offense for U.S. citizens to own or trade gold anywhere in the world, with exceptions for some jewelry and collector's coins. These prohibitions were relaxed starting in 1964 β gold certificates were again allowed for private investors on April 24, 1964, although the obligation to pay the certificate holder on demand in gold specie would not be honored. By 1975 Americans could again freely own and trade gold.
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- "US Gold Reserve Act" | 2021-10-05 | 15 Upvotes 39 Comments
π Punjabi Mexican Americans
The Punjabi Mexican American community, the majority of which is localized to Yuba City, California, is a distinctive ethnicity holding its roots in a migration pattern that occurred almost a century ago. The first meeting of these cultures occurred in the Imperial and Central Valleys in 1907, near the largest irrigation system in the Western Hemisphere.
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- "Punjabi Mexican Americans" | 2023-09-07 | 44 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Satellite Babies
Satellite babies (also called Satellite Children) refer to immigrantsβ children who are temporarily sent back to their home country by their parents to be reared by extended family. Typically, the satellite babies are born in the host country and sent back as infants, returning to their parents in time to start schooling or when their parents have established financial stability. Research and media articles on satellite babies have predominantly focused on the topic from a Chinese-American context. Satellite babies have become more prevalent in recent decades due to globalisation, prompting researchers and social workers to raise concerns about the psychological impacts of repeated attachment disruptions and acculturation associated with satellite babies.
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- "Satellite Babies" | 2020-05-11 | 33 Upvotes 20 Comments
π Jedi Blue
Jedi Blue is an agreement between Alphabet and Meta Platforms that allegedly gave Facebook an illegal advantage in Google's ad auctions in exchange for Facebook's word that it would end its own ad service plans.
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- "Jedi Blue" | 2025-11-28 | 51 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Graphite Bomb
A graphite bomb is intended to be a non-lethal weapon used to disable an electrical grid. The bomb works by spreading a dense cloud of extremely fine, chemically treated carbon filaments over air-insulated high voltage installations like transformers and power lines, causing short-circuits and subsequent disruption of the electricity supply in an area, a region or even an entire small country. The weapon is sometimes referred to as blackout bomb or as soft bomb because its direct effects are largely confined to the targeted electrical power facility, with minimal risk of immediate collateral damage. However, since water supply systems and sewage treatment systems depend on electricity, widespread outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne diseases, causing large numbers of civilian deaths, have in the past been the direct consequence of this bomb's use.
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- "Graphite Bomb" | 2026-01-05 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Graphite Bomb" | 2023-12-05 | 27 Upvotes 3 Comments
π American cover-up of Japanese war crimes
The occupying United States government undertook the selective cover-up of some Japanese war crimes after the end of World War II in Asia, granting political immunity to military personnel who had engaged in human experimentation and other crimes against humanity, predominantly in mainland China. The pardon of Japanese war criminals, among whom were Unit 731's commanding officers General ShirΕ Ishii and General Masaji Kitano, was overseen by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in September 1945. While a series of war tribunals and trials was organized, many of the high-ranking officials and doctors who devised and respectively performed the experiments were pardoned and never brought to justice due to the US government both classifying incriminating evidence, as well as blocking the prosecution access to key witnesses. As many as 12,000 people, most of them Chinese, died in Unit 731 alone and many more died in other facilities, such as Unit 100 and in field experiments throughout Manchuria.
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- "American cover-up of Japanese war crimes" | 2026-03-21 | 42 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Lockheed Bribery Scandals
The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft.
The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. In the U.S., the scandal nearly led to Lockheed's downfall, as it was already struggling due to the commercial failure of the L-1011 TriStar airliner.
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- "Lockheed Bribery Scandals" | 2020-02-01 | 43 Upvotes 7 Comments
π United States involvement in regime change
United States involvement in regime change describes United States government participation or interference, both overt and covert, in the replacement of foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the SpanishβAmerican and PhilippineβAmerican wars. At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbors Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
During World War II, the United States helped overthrow many Nazi Germany or imperial Japanese puppet regimes. Examples include regimes in the Philippines, Korea, the Eastern portion of China, and much of Europe. United States forces were also instrumental in ending the rule of Adolf Hitler over Germany and of Benito Mussolini over Italy. After World War II, the United States in 1945 ratified the UN Charter, the preeminent international law document, which legally bound the U.S. government to the Charter's provisions, including Article 2(4), which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations, except in very limited circumstances. Therefore, any legal claim advanced to justify regime change by a foreign power carries a particularly heavy burden.
In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government struggled with the Soviet Union for global leadership, influence and security within the context of the Cold War. Under the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. government feared that national security would be compromised by governments propped by the Soviet Union's own involvement in regime change and promoted the domino theory, with later presidents following Eisenhower's precedent. Subsequently, the United States expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond traditional area of operations, Central America and the Caribbean. Significant operations included the United States and United Kingdom-orchestrated 1953 Iranian coup d'Γ©tat, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion targeting Cuba, and support for the overthrow of Sukarno by General Suharto in Indonesia. In addition, the U.S. has interfered in the national elections of countries, including the Philippines in 1953, and Japan in the 1950s and 1960s as well as Lebanon in 1957. According to one study, the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946β2000. Another study found that the U.S. engaged in 64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has led or supported wars to determine the governance of a number of countries. Stated U.S. aims in these conflicts have included fighting the War on Terror, as in the ongoing Afghan war, or removing dictatorial and hostile regimes, as in the Iraq War.
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- "United States involvement in regime change" | 2021-06-17 | 35 Upvotes 15 Comments