iBankCoin
Home / News (page 79)

News

On the Matter of Starbucks Etiquette

The proliferation of wireless access in this country has empowered an entire a generation of mobile workers. Working remotely has become a great new alternative for those seeking to buck the office-establishment.

Free from the chains of cubicle life, these workforce pioneers are now setting up shop at their local Starbucks. However, just like the traditional office has a workplace etiquette, the “coffee-shop office” also has own culture.

I’ll admit it: I’m a bit of a coffee-shop commando myself. I actually wrote my entire book at my local Miami Starbucks (SBUX). To get insight into the do’s and don’ts of working in the coffee shop office, I interviewed a couple of my coffeehouse “office mates” and we came up with the following list of typical workplace violators that may be familiar to you:

The Squatter.  Let’s get one thing straight, this ain’t Zuccotti Park, so don’t be pitching your tent in my Starbucks! There is nothing more annoying than the guy who sets up shop then leaves all of his stuff unattended at a table to head off for lunch or a trip to the gym.

Most shops are pretty small, which means table space is pretty scarce. Yet, this violator will have the audacity to ask you to watch his stuff while he whisks off to some other appointment at a nearby location only to return an hour later. To be fair, this tends to be more a rural Starbucks phenomenon. Anyone bold enough to pull this maneuver in any of the 500 plus Manhattan locations would likely return to find their office space looted.

The Aristocrat. Many a coffee shop will have both indoor and outdoor seating depending on the location and time of year. Without fail, there’s always that one overly-empowered “aristocrat” who feels they should set up shop in both locations, as if to have a second home of sorts. We the Starbucks taxpayers, end up funding this second home and paying the price in lack of space to operate.

These folks also tend to forget that Starbucks is not a traditional restaurant! They will happily make a mess at milk/sugar station and walk off leaving their table in complete disarray. It must have been nice to be raised by a staff who cleaned up after you.

The Line Diva. Without fail, wherever I travel I come across that annoying, not-so-self-aware individual standing in front of the counter chatting away on a cell phone as the barista patiently waits for the order. Really??? Who is so important that he or she must be on the phone while in line making everyone wait for the conversation to end?

What’s even more frustrating is that these folks tend to be seriously challenged when it comes to the art of multi-tasking. Seriously, hang up, make your order, and call back when you are clear of the line.

The Broadcaster. Some people struggle with the notion that other people actually exist in this world. I just don’t get why some people have to yell on their cell phones as if they are at home speaking to their hard-of-hearing grandmother. Is it too much to ask to be respectful of others while on the phone in a public place? These folks also like to Skype in public letting everyone become part of the conversation. In another life, these violators were likely circus performers of some sort that just need to express themselves. However, as eclectic as some Starbucks populations can be, this is not the Big Top!

At the end of the day we all need to be respectful of one another. So the next time you find yourself working remotely at Starbucks (or wherever your location choice) be sure to remember you aren’t alone!

 

Read more: http://trade.cc/erqixzz1d8LMVtg0

 

Comments »

Obama Health Care Reform Ruling: Appeals Court Upholds Law

A conservative-leaning panel of federal appellate judges on Tuesday upheld President Barack Obama’s health care law as constitutional, helping set up a Supreme Court fight.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a split opinion upholding the law. The court agreed to dismiss a Christian legal group’s lawsuit claiming the requirement that all Americans get health insurance is unconstitutional and violates religious freedom.

The requirement has been the subject of several lawsuits, with some judges across the country ruling it unconstitutional and others upholding the law. That means the Supreme Court is sure to decide the fate of Obama’s signature law. The high court is expected to decide soon, perhaps within days, whether to accept appeals from some of those earlier rulings.

The suit in Washington was brought by the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson. It claimed that the insurance mandate violates the religious freedom of those who choose not to have insurance because they rely on God to protect them from harm. But the court ruled that although the requirement is an encroachment on individual liberty, Congress had the power to pass it to ensure that all Americans can have health care coverage.

“The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems,” Judge Laurence Silberman, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, wrote in the 2-1 opinion. Silberman was joined by Judge Harry Edwards, a Carter appointee.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former top aide to President George W. Bush who appointed him to the bench, disagreed with the conclusion without taking a position on the merits of the law. He wrote a lengthy opinion arguing the court doesn’t have jurisdiction to review the health care mandate until after it takes effect in 2014.

SOURCE 

Comments »

MF Global Investigation Widens as Money Shortfall is Still Missing

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. http://trade.cc/eod

“The US investigation into the $633m shortfall at MF Global is widening as officials seek to question executives involved in the aborted sale of the trading firm to Interactive Brokers, people familiar with the matter say.

Officials with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Bureau of Investigation are expected to interview employees this week from MF Global, Interactive Brokers, and Evercore Partners, MF Global’s banker, these people say.”

Full article

Comments »

Judge blocks cigarette graphic images on packaging

About time someone got common sense and struck this down.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge on Monday blocked a federal requirement that would have begun forcing tobacco companies next year to put graphic images including dead and diseased smokers on their cigarette packages.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that it’s likely the cigarette makers will succeed in a lawsuit to block the requirement. He stopped the requirement until the lawsuit is resolved, which could take years.

Leon found the nine graphic images approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June go beyond conveying the facts about the health risks of smoking or go beyond that into advocacy — a critical distinction in a case over free speech.

The packaging would have included color images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat; a plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a mother’s kiss; a pair of diseased lungs next to a pair of healthy lungs; a diseased mouth afflicted with what appears to be cancerous lesions; a man breathing into an oxygen mask; a cadaver on a table with post-autopsy chest staples; a woman weeping; a premature baby in an incubator; and a man wearing a T-shirt that features a “No Smoking” symbol and the words “I Quit”

Comments »

CHINA BUBBLE POPPED? Businesses Feel the Pinch with Tightened Lending

GUANGZHOU, China — David Huan had big dreams last spring for his business, a factory in central China that turns out picture frames ranging from glossy wood to the gilded and baroque: new equipment, expanded production and an additional 400 to 600 workers atop the 400 he already employs.

Colin Beere for The New York Times

Helen Huang, the owner of a company producing chrome-plated paperweights, turned to a neighborhood lending pool last year.

The demand was there, he said on a recent afternoon. But his bankers weren’t. They balked at lending him money to buy equipment — and today his export-oriented business is about where it was six months ago.

“I feel like I’m walking in place,” he said.

He has lots of company. While many businesses in the United States struggle to stay afloat and workers collect unemployment checks, China has the opposite problem: an economy, pumped up by expansive lending by state-controlled banks, that is growing too fast to keep inflation and speculation in check.

Beijing’s solution has been to create an artificial shortage of credit. The central government has set stringent though undisclosed limits on how much money each bank can lend, clamped down on real estate speculation by limiting the number of mortgages allowed for each citizen and begun cracking down on many forms of semilegal and illegal lending. After months of steady tightening, the controls have finally begun to bite into inflation, business growth, real estate prices and lending.

Overall lending by Chinese banks jumped 32.5 percent in 2009 in inflation-adjusted terms. That growth slowed to 13.3 percent in 2010 and then 7.3 percent in the first three quarter of this year. Lending to small businesses has grown several percentage points faster each year. But there are so many of them and they are expanding so quickly that competition for these loans is especially fierce and difficult, said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The policy makers’ principal goal is to tamp down inflation, which has played a repeated role in triggering social unrest, including during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Despite a goal of limiting inflation to no more than 4 percent a year, prices have stubbornly remained about 6 percent higher this autumn than a year ago for consumers based on official gauges — and up to twice that by the estimate of many private economists.

The worst of the credit crunch this year has compelled at least a few business people to flee the country or even commit suicide. They did so after borrowing money at usurious rates of up to 5 percent a month — an 80 percent annual rate — from loan sharks or neighborhood lending pools and then finding that their speculative investments with the money did not pay off.

But the credit crunch is far broader. In more than a dozen recent interviews at the Canton Fair here, the country’s largest export trade fair, every business owner or sales manager described increasing difficulties in borrowing money — as well as strategies that banks and borrowers alike are using to cushion the impact of the new lending restrictions.

Some banks are requiring lenders to personally guarantee corporate loans and put up considerably more land and factory equipment as collateral. Others lend money only if borrower agrees to redeposit up to half of the loan in the same bank at a much lower interest rate. The practical effect is that the borrower pays a much higher interest rate than the official, heavily regulated interest rate for loans, usually 7 or 8 percent.

“If the bank lends you 1 million, they ask for 500,000 back as a deposit,” said Elaine Yan, the import and export manager at the Wuxi Zontai International Corporation, a trading company specializing in brightly colored shower curtains and bath mats. The company has opted not to borrow money at all, meeting its modest financing needs through retained profits.

Daunted by such terms, Helen Huang, the owner of a company producing chrome-plated paperweights, turned to a neighborhood lending pool last year. The $3.1 million she borrowed helped finance a $7.9 million land purchase so her company, the Shijiazhuang Harmony Import and Export Company, could build a new factory.

READ THE REST AT THE NY TIMES HERE 

Comments »

Iran Ready to Have a Nuke Party

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.

The officials, citing secret intelligence provided over several years to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the records reinforce concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related research after 2003 — when, U.S. intelligence agencies believe, Iranian leaders halted such experiments in response to international and domestic pressures.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog is due to release a report this week laying out its findings on Iran’s efforts to obtain sensitive nuclear technology. Fears that Iran could quickly build an atomic bomb if it chooses to has fueled anti-Iran rhetoric and new threats of military strikes. Some U.S. arms-control groups have cautioned against what they fear could be an overreaction to the report, saying there is still time to persuade Iran to change its behavior.

Iranian officials expressed indifference about the report.

“Let them publish and see what happens,” said Iran’s foreign minister and former nuclear top official, Ali Akbar Salehi, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Saturday.

Salehi said that the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program is “100 percent political” and that the IAEA is “under pressure from foreign powers.”

‘Never really stopped’

Although the IAEA has chided Iran for years to come clean about a number of apparently weapons-related scientific projects, the new disclosures fill out the contours of an apparent secret research program that was more ambitious, more organized and more successful than commonly suspected. Beginning early in the last decade and apparently resuming — though at a more measured pace — after a pause in 2003, Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could fit inside the country’s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a former IAEA official who has reviewed the intelligence files.

“The program never really stopped,” said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The institute performs widely respected independent analyses of nuclear programs in countries around the world, often drawing from IAEA data.

“After 2003, money was made available for research in areas that sure look like nuclear weapons work but were hidden within civilian institutions,” Albright said.

U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Iran’s leaders have not decided whether to build nuclear weapons but are intent on gathering all the components and skills so they can quickly assemble a bomb if they choose to. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear activities are peaceful and intended only to generate electricity.

The IAEA has declined to comment on the intelligence it has received from member states, including the United States, pending the release of its report.

But some of the highlights were described in a presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright’s summary were confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA’s internal reports. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol.

Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. In the presentation, he described intelligence that points to a formalized and rigorous process for gaining all the necessary skills for weapons-building, using native talent as well as a generous helping of foreign expertise.

“The [intelligence] points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,” Albright said, according to the notes from the presentation.

Key outside assistance

According to Albright, one key breakthrough that has not been publicly described was Iran’s success in obtaining design information for a device known as an R265 generator. The device is a hemispherical aluminum shell with an intricate array of high explosives that detonate with split-second precision. These charges compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.

Creating such a device is a formidable technical challenge, and Iran needed outside assistance in designing the generator and testing its performance, Albright said.

According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.

Danilenko’s role was judged to be so critical that IAEA investigators devoted considerable effort to obtaining his cooperation, the two officials said. The scientist acknowledged his role but said he thought his work was limited to assisting civilian engineering projects, the sources said.

There is no evidence that Russian government officials knew of Danilenko’s activities in Iran. ­E-mails requesting comment from Russian officials in Washington and Moscow were not returned. Efforts to reach Danilenko through his former company were not successful.

Iran relied on foreign experts to supply mathematical formulas and codes for theoretical design work — some of which appear to have originated in North Korea, diplomats and weapons experts say. Additional help appears to have come from the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose design for a device known as a neutron initiator was found in Iran, the sources said. Khan is known to have provided nuclear blueprints to Libya that included a neutron initiator, a device that shoots a stream of atomic particles into a nuclear weapon’s fissile core at the start of the nuclear chain reaction.

One Iranian document provided to the IAEA portrayed Iranian scientists as discussing plans to conduct a four-year study of neutron initiators beginning in 2007, four years after Iran was said to have halted such research.

“It is unknown if it commenced or progressed as planned,” Albright said.

The disclosures come against a backdrop of new threats of military strikes on Iran. Israeli newspapers reported last week that there is high-level government support in Israel for a military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

“One of the problems with such open threats of military action is that it furthers the drift towards a military conflict and makes it more difficult to dial down tensions,” said Peter Crail, a nonproliferation analyst with the Arms Control Association, a Washington advocacy group. “It also risks creating an assumption that we can always end Iran’s nuclear program with a few airstrikes if nothing else works. That’s simply not the case.”

 

Special correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran contributed to this report.

SOURCE 

Comments »

Japan Stocks Weak in Early Trading

Japanese stocks ticked lower in early Monday trading, with tech and pharmaceutical shares among the decliners. The Nikkei Stock Average JP:NIK -0.35% lost 0.4% to 8,764.87, with the Topix shedding 0.5%. Some tech exporters lost ground after strong gains on Friday, with Toshiba Corp. JP:6502 -1.94% TOSYY +0.59% down 1.7%, Elpida Memory Inc. JP:6665 -2.14% ELPDF -1.80% dropping 2.6%, and NEC Corp. JP:6701 -1.16% NIPNF -4.65% losing 1.7%. Shares of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.JP:4502 -2.28% TKPHF -0.11% gave up 2.3% after the company posted a 6% fall in first-half net profit, with disappointing sales for its Actos diabetes drug. Rival pharma firm Daiichi Sankyo Co. JP:4568 -1.64% DSKYF -0.88% lost 1.9%

SOURCE 

Comments »

The Vanishing Little Star of Bethlehem

News coming out of the Middle-East in the last few months has focused on two principal areas: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the so-called “Arab Spring”. The headlines have been restricted to these two topics. Buried deep within the bodies of such prestigious papers as the New YorkTimes, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, if covered at all, are stories of the on-going destruction and persecution of millennia-old Christian communities within the cradle of Christianity: the Middle-East. The phenomenon is not exactly new; it’s been going on for decades if not centuries, but the growth and spread of Islamic fundamentalism within the last decade and the overthrow of Western-oriented Arab dictatorships has set in motion a rising tide of anti-Christian behavior that threatens to wipe out Christianity in the Middle-East in what amounts to a repetition of what has occurred to Jewish communities throughout Islamic nations within the past six decades since the creation of the Jewish State of Israel.

Five nations that demonstrate the ongoing obliteration of Christianity in the region will serve to illustrate the point: Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iran.

We start with Egypt, a nation of eighty million with a 10 % minority population of eight million Coptic Christians. The Coptic Church is one of the world’s oldest, and its appearance in Egypt precedes Islam by at least half a millennium. Earlier this past month, Copts throughout Egypt organized demonstrations to protest the fire-bombing of a church in upper Egypt the prior week, as well as one  back in mid-March, and the on-going campaign of harassment by Islamists in the region. At the October 9, 2011 demonstration in front of the Maspero district headquarters of the national television network, attended by a reported figure of 10,000 Copts,  the Egyptian army opened fire with live ammunition, killing Copts indiscriminately. Then armored military vehicles appeared driving into the crowds randomly, causing widespread mayhem. Final tally: 24 dead and over 300 wounded. The on-going Islamist attacks against the Copts are causing many to consider seeking refuge in the West.

Let’s move on to Iraq. Twenty years ago, Iraq’s Christian community numbered over a million members. A decade ago, out of a total population of almost 24 million, 850,000 identified as Christians. Today, with a population of 30.7 million, the Christian population appears to be less than 335,000. What has happened? Although the new Iraqi constitution guarantees freedom of religion, there is no provision in the Iraqi system for those that wish to convert, especially if it is from Islam to Christianity. And radical Islam has been launching attacks on Christian Iraqis ever since Saddam Hussein’s ouster. This past year has seen the level of violence increase, starting with last year’s al-Qaeda attack on Our Lady of Deliverance Syrian Catholic Church in Baghdad which left 52 dead. Anti-Christian persecution continues, unabated.

In Afghanistan, along with the country being virtually “Judenfrei” or “Judenrein”, it is now free of any overt symbol of Christianity with the destruction of the last remaining church in March 2010. The U.S. State Department’s recently released report on religious freedom indicates that the small native Christian population feels tremendous pressure to remain out of sight, and the case of the Moslem who converted to Christianity and was nearly executed under Afghanistan’s Sharia law for Islamic apostasy demonstrates that freedom of conscience does not exist in present day Afghanistan despite the presence of American and NATO forces in that country for a decade.

When we turn to the Palestinian Territories, we are looking at the birthplace of Christianity. To see this two millennia community threatened with disappearance must be gut-wrenching for devout Christians. But like it or not, the Christian Arab population of the Holy Land faces the threat of extinction. The causes are many, but explosive Muslim birth rates compared with bare replacement rates among Arab Christians have caused the Christian percentage of the Palestinian Territories to diminish sharply. In actuality, the Palestinian Christian population has increased in the past forty-four years from 42,494 in 1967 to slightly more than 50,000 today. However, because of the changing percentage ratios of Christians to Muslims in the greater Bethlehem area—a region traditionally associated with very high percentages of Christian populations (70-95%)—the decreases to 28-60% appear as precipitous declines.

Along with the huge Muslim population explosion in the West Bank and Gaza there is now a phenomenon that does not bode well for the Christian Arab populations of these two areas. The radicalization of Islam, especially in Gaza where HAMAS controls the government, has resulted in pressure on the Christian community. But even in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, such as Bethlehem, Christian Arabs feel persecuted by the Moslem majority. Whether or not the persecution is officially sanctioned by the PA and/or HAMAS in their respective regions of control, it is clear that neither is doing enough to root out anti-Christian vigilantism.

The final country that we examine in this brief survey is Iran. Although the Islamic Republic of Iran enshrines freedom of religion in its constitution and has seats each for a Jewish and Armenian Christian representative in the national legislature (Majlis), because of Islamic (Sharia) law, conversion from Islam to Christianity is considered apostasy and as such is a capital crime. The result is that both converts to Christianity, and those Christians that aid them, find themselves under severe persecution, imprisonment, and occasionally, threat of execution. The current case of Pastor Yusef Nadarkhani is a perfect example. Nadarkhani is currently scheduled for execution for apostasy from Islam. Over 250 Christians were arrested in the last year for their religious beliefs and more than one has been release from prison only to disappear until his or her body parts show up in different locations.

In conclusion, it was revealed recently that some 105,000 Christians are killed annually because of their religious convictions, the vast majority at the hands of radical Muslims. At the end of his article, Elwood McQuaid makes a poignant statement, raising several pertinent questions that deserve repetition here: “In America, Muslims are protected, much more so than evangelical Christians. Protecting Muslim citizens is an honorable pursuit that raises America’s standards far above those in so many other parts of the world. Yet why are the same leaders who so passionately protect Muslim rights in America doing nothing for Christians who are dying in record numbers? Why do so many of our leaders hold their tongues as the world turns a blind eye? And there is another question—one we must all ask ourselves: Why has the church been virtually silent about the suffering of our brethren?” Why, indeed?

SOURCE 

Comments »

Flash: Euro Holds Steady After Greek Deal

The euro was little changed against the dollar on Monday after Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras agreed on a new coalition government to approve a euro zone bailout deal before elections.

The euro was at $1.3781 in early Asia-Pacific trade, versus around $1.3764 in late trade in New York.

The agreement came after the two leaders held talks with the president in an effort to break a political deadlock and thrash out a deal for a national unity government demanded by the country’s European partners.

SOURCE 

Comments »

Papa Greek and Opposition Reach Deal

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras have agreed on a new coalition government to approve a euro zone bailout deal before elections, the office of the country’s president said on Sunday.

The agreement came after the two leaders held talks with the president in an effort to break a political deadlock and thrash out a deal for a national unity government demanded by the country’s European partners.

A presidency statement said they will meet again on Monday to discuss who would head the coalition government, but that Papandreou would not lead the new administration.

“Tomorrow there will be new communication between the prime minister and the opposition leader on who will be the leader of the new government,” the statement said.

The statement made no mention of how long the interim government would last.

The European Union gave Greece 24 hours on Sunday to explain how it will form a unity government to enact a bailout agreement.

Papandreou and his opponents have been scrambling to hammer out a deal ahead of a meeting by finance ministers of euro countries on Monday, to show that Greece is serious about taking steps needed to stave off bankruptcy.

SOURCE 

Comments »

One-Term Obama? A Year Until US Election Day

bama could be a one-term president.

The election in 2008 may have been the most exciting for years culminating in the country’s first black president but three years on, most Americans believe he will not be re-elected, according to some polls.

We followed Mr Obama’s route through North Carolina last month to gauge his chances.

Winning the state, albeit with the slimmest majority, was a crucial part of his election strategy in 2008.

Asheville builder Brad Rice, whose company Bellwether Design and Build has contracted in the Obama economy and laid off workers, remembers Obamamania well.

 

“It was just exciting. Just something new. He had a lot of good ideas and it just seemed after eight years of George Bush everybody was ready for a change.”

But he says the excitement has “worn off” and America has come down to reality: “He said some things and he just hasn’t been able to get them done.”

In February 2009 Mr Obama himself doubted his chances of re-election if he could not get the economy back in shape.

“A year from now I think that people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress,” he told NBC News.

“But there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years then there’s going to be a one term proposition.”

So far the economy President Obama inherited from George Bush, already in poor shape, has not improved on his watch.

Growth is a sluggish 2.5%, unemployment a politically radioactive 9% at least.

 

Local banker David Wooten met the President at the barbecue restaurant he dropped in on in North Carolina and reckons Mr Obama should be worried.

“This area has been hit by unemployment, factories closing. We’ve had 10% unemployment for a long time and it’s the economy in a lot of cases that affects the election. He’ll probably have an uphill battle here.”

Since Mr Obama toured the state, economic figures have improved but only marginally and, more worryingly, the long-term outlook is equally depressing.

A few days after he swept through the mountain town of Boone, we talked to Philip Ardoin, politics professor at the Appalachia State University.

Mr Obama will not want to hear his analysis.

“I would give him a less than 10% chance of re-election right now.

“Because of the dire situation America is in, and the American people, and that is not necessarily justified, hold the President responsible for the economic situation. And as a result they’re going to look for an alternative.”

SOURCE 

Comments »

ECB May End Italy Bond Buys if No Reforms Come

The European Central Bank often discusses the possibility ending the purchase of Italian government bonds if it concludes Italy is not adopting promised reforms, ECB Governing Council Member Yves Mersch said.

“If we observe that our interventions are undermined by a lack of efforts by national governments then we have to pose ourselves the problem of the incentive effect,” Mersch said according to extracts of an interview with Italian daily La Stampa to be published on Sunday.

Asked if this meant the ECB would stop buying Italy’s bonds if it did not adopt reforms it has promised to the European Union, Mersch, who heads Luxembourg’s central bank, replied:

“If the ECB board reaches the conclusion that the conditions that led it to take a decision no longer exist, it is free to change that decision at any moment. We discuss this all the time.”

Since the ECB resumed its bond buying programme (SMP) around three months ago it has purchased some 100 billion euros of government bonds, a majority of which are thought to be Italian BTPs.

Mersch said the ECB did not want to become a lender of last resort to help the euro zone solve its debt crisis and said it was concerned that its job could be made more difficult by governments that “don’t meet their responsibilities.”

“Our job is not to remedy the errors of politicians,” he said.

Mersch also defended the right of Italian Lorenzo Bini Smaghi to remain on the ECB board even though this means Italy now has two members and France has none, much to the annoyance of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“He (Bini Smaghi) has an eight year mandate, the treaties do not say that if someone comes from a specific Treasury ministry he has a right to a place on the ECB board,” he said.

“The spirit of the treaties is that everyone leaves his passport in the wardrobe when he participates in ECB meetings.”

SOURCE 

Comments »

Greek Political Parties Continue to Bicker and Posture

Prime Minister George Papandreou launched his campaign on Saturday for a coalition to save Greece from bankruptcy, but rival parties showed little willingness to cooperate in tackling the nation’s economic, political and social crisis.

Papandreou said negotiations would start soon to form a broad-based government, tasked with ensuring parliament backs a euro zone bailout vital to keeping Greece afloat and preventing its crisis from bringing down much bigger economies.

But a government source said Papandreou’s deputy, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, was already negotiating behind the scenes to win support from smaller parties for a government that Venizelos himself wants to lead.

“Venizelos is having contacts with party leaders to secure their agreement,” said a government official who requested anonymity.

Greece’s two top political forces — the ruling socialist PASOK party and conservative opposition New Democracy — displayed little appetite for working together to tackle a crisis that has driven Greece deep into recession, sent unemployment soaring and living standards tumbling.

REJECTION

New Democracy chief Antonis Samaras flatly rejected Papandreou’s proposal of a coalition which would rule for several months and shepherd the 130 billion euro bailout, Greece’s last financial lifeline, through parliament.

But in snubbing Papandreou, who survived a parliamentary confidence vote in the early hours of Saturday, the conservative opposition acknowledged the leading role being played by his financeminister in the maneuvering for power.

“Whenever we try to find a way out, the Papandreou-Venizelos government invents new obstacles to block it,” New Democracy chief Antonis Samaras said. “We made our offer and he (Papandreou) shut the door. The offer is still on the table. I hope he realizes his mistake.”

Samaras repeated his demand for Papandreou to make way for a short-lived national unity government before snap elections. “We did not seek a role in this government, only that Mr Papandreou, who has become dangerous for the country, resigns.”

Two opinion polls showed Greeks appeared to favor Papandreou’s option. One commissioned by Proto Thema newspaper showed 52 percent of respondents supported the coalition idea while 36 percent wanted snap elections as proposed by Samaras.

Another poll commissioned by Ethnos newspaper put support for the rival proposals at 45 and 41.7 percent respectively.

Papandreou, whose father and grandfather were famous Greek prime ministers, defeated Venizelos for the PASOK leadership in 2004. But as Greece’s economic crisis created political turmoil, he turned for support to Venizelos, a burly former law professor with a reputation as a political bruiser.

Sources close to negotiations insist that Papandreou — by contrast an athletic, U.S.-educated member of an elite family — is going through the motions of trying to form a coalition, and will eventually make way for Venizelos.

Far from being competing political forces, the sources say, the two are aware of what each other is doing under a deal allowing Papandreou to depart with honor after two years in which the government has imposed pay and pension cuts plus tax rises at the behest of Greece’s international lenders.

The cabinet is due to meet informally on Sunday afternoon.

UNLIKELY BEDFELLOWS

Venizelos appeared to be reaching out to some unlikely bedfellows in his hunt for support. George Karatzaferis, who heads the far right LAOS party, said he had spoken to Venizelos in parliament during the confidence debate.

However, he played down the significance of their encounter, saying he would not join any coalition without New Democracy being there too and urged Samaras to change his mind.

“We need to realize that we haven’t got a prime minister. It’s all a formality. Papandreou resigned yesterday in parliament and the applause in the room was divided equally, for his speech and for his departure,” Karatzaferis said.

Papandreou officially opened his search for a coalition after meeting President Karolos Papoulias, saying Greece had to establish a political consensus to prove it wanted to keep the euro, while European leaders try to persuade the outside world that the currency bloc can overcome its huge problems.

“In order to create this wider cooperation, we will start the necessary procedures and contacts soon,” he told reporters. “A lack of consensus would worry our European partners over our country’s will to stay in the euro zone.”

Without saying when he might quit, Papandreou said during the confidence debate he was ready to discuss who should lead the new government. “The last thing I care about is my post. I don’t care even if I am not re-elected,” he said.

Under heavy domestic and international pressure, the prime minister retreated from a proposal for a referendum on the euro zone rescue. Greek voters could well have rejected the deal, potentially torpedoing euro zone leaders’ attempts to stop the debt crisis devastating economies such as Italy and Spain.

THINGS MAY TURN UGLY

Weary Greeks expressed disgust at the political wrangling.

“I’m sick of politicians in Greece, and feel that things will now turn ugly. If only they could cooperate, everything would be much better,” said Tassos Pagonis, a 48-year-old Athens taxi driver. “But will Greece be saved? I’m afraid not. Europeans don’t trust us anymore, they will throw us out.”

Pensioner Yiannis Vlahos, 83, compared the fates of Greece and Germany, which occupied the country in World War Two.

“When the Germans left we had some hope. They were ruined by World War Two but they worked hard and became the strongest economy. We Greeks haven’t learned our lesson, we only steal,” he said. “We ourselves hate our beautiful country.”

The leaders of France and Germany told Papandreou this week that Greece would not get a cent more of aid if it failed to approve the bailout, meaning that the state would run out of money in December.

SOURCE 

Comments »