Nov
17
Pakistan has accused the United States of pushing it closer to bankruptcy by witholding up to 1 billion dollar in aid in military contributions despite the country’s efforts to fight terrorism.
Pakistan’s crucial role in the US-led war on terror has not been reflected in US revenue transfers at a time when Islamabad is desperately seeking an International Monetary Fund bailout; The Telegraph quoted a senior official Shaukat Tarin, as saying.
Tarin, the de facto Minister for Economy, said that a significant portion of the annual US payment for Pakistan’s counter-terrorism operations was overdue, causing additional strain on the country’s exchequer.
“There is a process of auditing and it is taking longer than it should. There is a cost. We have 100,000 troops fighting this war. That takes hard cash. On top of that we are paying for a loss in investment because of the security situation,” he said.
Approvals to release funds appeared to have been delayed by political sensitivities in the lead-up to the US presidential elections, the Paper said.
Pakistan’s economic losses from domestic instability are believed to exceed 8 billion dollar a year. America has paid Pakistan almost 10 billion dollar in direct military “reimbursements” since 2002, mostly as part of what are termed as Coalition Support Funds.
The subsidy pays for Pakistani military food, fuel, ammunition and maintenance but has come under scrutiny since last year when US military officials claimed that up to 70 percent of the money was “misspent”.
Pakistan has barely enough foreign reserves to cover nine weeks of imports and is struggling to raise funds to avert a balance of payments crisis.
Tarin, a former banker who was drafted in last month to restore some confidence in the ability of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to manage the country’s economy, has so far had limited success.
The IMF, World Bank and other lenders are expected to provide billions of dollars in loans before the end of this month, after China said it would pitch in with 500 million dollar.
Tarin hopes the IMF will stump up “more or less” 9 billion dollar and that the ‘Friends’ forum will be a source of further loans.
source
Nov
17
The fox and the hounds, of course, have a clear idea of what they want to do and how they want to do it, which is more than you can say of Paulson. Sums of incalculable size are being spent or pledged by Paulson and his playmate, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and nobody outside their organizations, or maybe inside them either, knows who got what, how much they got, and under what conditions they got it.
In the past couple of months Bernanke has loaned out $2 trillion to unnamed companies under eleven different programs and all but three of them were slapped together in the past fifteen months of financial crisis.
To repeat, we do not know who got this money or what collateral was put up in return for the loans or what conditions were attached to them.
The sums involved are almost three times as large as Paulson’s $700 billion muddled bailout efforts that Congress voted for last month. Bernanke does have the legal authority to pass out these trillions without Congressional authorization and without explanation, but secrecy breeds suspicion and loss of confidence.
These officials preface every speech by talking about “transparency,” their favorite word, at the same time they are handing off $2 trillion and they won’t say to whom, and leading Bloomberg News to file suit under the Freedom of Information Act.
Paulson has made off with $50 billion to give to AIG for the purpose of setting up a special entity by which the company’s lousiest loans are to be kept off the books and the unknown debtors protected. When asked about this by the <i>New York Times<i>, Lynn E. Turner, who sits on the Treasury Department’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession, complained that “We’ve had way too many things here that nobody knows anything about…. That’s why no one has faith in the capital markets.”
Paulson appears to have given away, invested, loaned or lost about $300 billion of the first $700 billion Congress gave him. But he has lost more than money: Nobody believes him or Bernanke anymore.
Every day another company steps forward with its hand out — American Express, Chrysler, GE Financial — and every day it appears Paulson and Bernanke are prepared to accommodate these corporate mendicants.
Paulson left his job as CEO of Goldman Sachs to become treasury secretary, and by now it may be dawning on him that CEO-ship is no substitute for an apprenticeship in public service that might have given him the political skills he lacks. The same may be said of Bernanke, who spent much of his life as a harmless Princeton professor of economics.
Both of these men are convinced, doctrinaire free-marketeers. They hate supervising this intervention into American business. Paulson repeatedly bemoans what he is doing.
Hence, both the principals are trying to devise and carry out programs that they do not believe in. They cannot have spent any time thinking about how government might regulate and intervene successfully. It’s as though one were to ask a couple of pro-life physicians to conduct a series of abortions. Should we be surprised they do not do it well?
With President Bush hors de combat and having rendered himself a nullity, we are reduced to Paulson and Bernanke to show us the way in this maelstrom. That may explain why criticism of their work has been so muted.
Two female officials, however, have conducted their offices with distinction. Sheila Bair, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has moved heaven and earth to get Paulson and Bernanke to embrace a massive program to stop the housing foreclosures and take the first step toward ending the chaos. To say that she has had mixed success with the men is an understatement.
Less well known is Brooksley Born, who will be a major figure when the history of this Great Debacle is written. Born was the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996 to 1999. She foresaw the calamity that runaway use of credit default swaps and other derivatives would cause, and battled to impose regulation on them. She was stopped by Alan Greenspan, Arthur Levitt and Robert Rubin, the major economic figures in the Clinton administration.
After a distinguished career in law, Brooksley Born has retired to watch birds and play with her grandchildren. Sheila Bair battles on against the dunderheads, and we are left helpless, waiting.
source
Nov
17
Nov
16
Nov
16
Nov
15
MOSCOW - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to travel this month to Cuba and Venezuela, which have increasing military and trade ties with Moscow.
The U.S. has objected to Russia’s greater links with the two countries that have antagonistic relations with Washington.
Medvedev will visit Cuba on Nov. 27, the Kremlin press service said. He will also visit Brazil during the trip.
The Soviet Union was a stalwart supporter of Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Cold War. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has moved to buy millions of dollars in Russian weaponry and invited Russian energy giants to drill in the country’s oil fields.
A Russian naval flotilla is on its way to the Caribbean to hold joint military exercises with Venezuelan forces.
source
Nov
15
Source: GMA News
More than 40 international and regional networks and movements from different parts of the world vow to stage global protests calling for fundamental structural changes and a new global economic and financial system that is more responsive to the needs of the poor and the developing countries.
This was announced as the world’s richest 20 countries are expected to meet Saturday to address the current global financial meltdown.
The time is ripe to seek an “alternative path” and turn the crisis into an opportunity for advancing a “people’s agenda for change,” Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JS-APMDD), said in a statement.
Nacpil, who is currently in Washington DC—the site of the G-20 summit, announced that 14 countries in Asia, 7 in Africa, 14 in Latin America and Caribbean, 8 in Europe and 1 in North America (USA) will be staging simultaneous protests in time for the “elite jamboree.”
In the Philippines, civil society groups led by Freedom from Debt Coalition will march to the US Embassy from the Mehan Garden in Manila to highlight the “culpability of the Bush administration” in the global financial, fuel and climate crises.
In a global call signed by 209 international, regional and national networks, the groups demanded “new national, regional, and global financial institutions based on economic democracy and equity, ecological sustainability and environmental justice, gender, racial, ethnic and international justice and equality, and self-determination and sovereignty of peoples and nations.”
The groups also called to end “market fundamentalism…that preached deregulation, privatization, the over-leveraging of banks and trade and capital liberalization that have damaged communities and the environment.”
“We believe that the system must be changed and can be changed,” Nacpil said. “We say no to summit called by lame duck US President George W. Bush and other G8 leaders. Their only agenda is to stabilize the current financial system in the interest of the global capitalist elite. The reforms they propose will only give greater power to institutions like the IMF and the World Bank which, in the first place, bear a big part of the responsibility for this financial crisis as well as the climate, food and energy crises. What should be done, instead, is to install economic structures and policies that place people’s needs first and give people greater control over resources and the decisions that affect their lives.”
source
Nov
15
After more than five years of rampant violence and misconduct carried out by the massive army of private corporate contractors in Iraq — actions that have gone totally unpunished under any system of law — the US Justice Department appears to be on the verge of handing down the first indictments against armed private forces for crimes committed in Iraq. The reported targets of the “draft” indictments: six Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16, 2007, killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.The Associated Press reports, “The draft is being reviewed by senior Justice Department officials but no charging decisions have been made. A decision is not expected until at least later this month.” The AP, citing sources close to the case, reports that the department has not determined if the Blackwater operatives would be charged with manslaughter or assault. Simply drafting the indictments does not mean that the Blackwater forces are certain to face charges. The department could indict as few as three of the operatives, who potentially face sentences of five to twenty years, depending on the charges.
For more click here
Nov
13
Nov
13
Amid the global euphoria surrounding Barack Obama’s victory — and the hopeful talk about a new bipartisanship in Washington — the Democrats are forgetting a powerful truth: modern Republicans are tied inextricably to slash-and-burn politics.
Even if some Republicans did want to shift toward a more bipartisan approach — after more than three decades of successfully using “wedge” tactics and armed with a right-wing media infrastructure built to destroy opponents — such a change might be impossible.
For more visit the source
