By Mosharraf Zaidi
Pakistan is not going to default, because nobody will let it. That's too bad. Don't let the "economists" scare you. Default sounds like a dark, scary, doomsday scenario. Sovereign default sounds worse, like God's curse itself. It is not. "Sovereign" is the fancy term for country, used by the same loan sharks that milk pensioners to fatten their year-end bonuses (and who brought you Wall Street Meltdown 2008). Sovereign default is simply a country not making its loan repayments on time. It has happened to plenty of countries. They are all still around. Ex-bankers and former IMF employees will never advise Pakistan to default because to do so would be counter-intuitive. It would be like expecting the PPP to undertake land reforms, or the Jamaat-e-Islami to be consistent about anything. Advising Pakistan to default would represent an existential crisis worse than sovereign default. People would be forced to revisit the premise of their entire careers. We can't have that. So instead, we have experts from all around the world wringing their hands, loosening their ties and extolling the virtues of the "bitter pill" of yet another IMF programme. The purpose? To avoid the "dreaded" default, at all costs. Why is default such a "scary" thing, and why do countries go to extraordinary lengths to avoid default? Countries try to avoid default for four reasons. First, countries try to avoid default to save the country's reputation as a borrower in good standing--which means that they want to continue to borrow at rates that are favourable to them. Second, countries try to avoid default to save their ability to participate in international trade freely--which means they fear having sanctions imposed on them for being poor managers of their affairs. Third, countries try to avoid default to protect domestic banking and financial system--which means in essence that they want to protect the rich, because there aren't many poor folks with bank accounts. And finally, the fourth reason countries try to avoid default is to save the government of the day from the disgrace of having defaulted. Eduardo Borensztein and Ugo Panizza published an IMF working paper earlier this month that exposes one of the worst kept secrets in international development. They conclude that among all four of these reasons to avoid default, the most compelling, based on the evidence, is politics. They conclude that "The political consequences of a debt crisis seem to be particularly dire for incumbent governments and finance ministers". In short, governments choose not to default because it is the politically expedient thing to do. The actual economic costs of defaulting, Borenzstein and Panizza conclude, are simply not that high. Moreover, another paper earlier this year (by yet another IMF economist, Ali Alichi), suggests that the only real reason that countries repay the sovereign debt that they owe is to continue to be able to borrow money. In short, Pakistan is trying to avoid defaulting so that the PPP government can stay in power, and so that while it stays in power, it can continue to borrow money. The real question here is: where is all the money going and why does Pakistan need to keep borrowing it? Most of the money is going to debt-servicing and to defence. The traditional response to unsustainable expenditure in Pakistan is to call for a cut in defence spending, while continuing to find a way to pay off Pakistan's loans. No one ever actually explains what they mean by cutting defence spending, which is why the conversation begins with a request to cut the defence budget, meanders into the patriotism of those demanding the cut, and ends with a straight-faced refusal. No one expects Pakistan to compromise its national security, but it is not unreasonable to explore more efficient ways of securing the nation and the national interest. Far from a national conversation about spending priorities however, no one has gone so far as to even suggest a more traditional and hawkish view, for example, that the war on terror being waged by Pakistan's soldiers needs all the financing it can get, and that Pakistan's debtors will have to wait. An even more refreshing case to make would be to suggest that both debt servicing and national security are major drags on current and future generations, and that they represent much lower priorities than building infrastructure, fixing the police and delivering real education. What would a Pakistani government that was committed to those priorities look like? For starters it would stop hiring poorly qualified political workers to stack the deck for future election campaigns. Forget hiring another ten thousand jiyalas as teachers, to ruin another generation of children. Let's face it, Pakistan cannot grow teachers on trees, it doesn't have any teachers. It has to go out and hire the best Indonesian, Turkish, and Korean teachers. It has to bring them to Pakistan and put them to work. Pay them real salaries. Hire the Emiratis that have designed Sheikh Mohammad's infrastructure revolution to do the same thing to Karachi. Then go out and hire every willing CBM, FAST, GIKI, and IBA graduate out there, and make cops and municipal administrators out of them. Take ten of those supercops, give them Blackberrys, night-vision goggles, Humvees and some ammo and put them outside every school. Forget the entourages. Protect the schools. Take the municipal administrators and tell them to get running water to those schools. If there's no well, and no groundwater, teach them how to negotiate deals, so they can buy truckloads of mineral water for the students, and their mothers. Get those kids and their families some clean water. Make sure there are nurses and doctors at each school. Pay every Aga Khan University Medical School graduate twice what they would make as residents at Mount Sinai or Beth Israel. Teach the kids their native languages, drop the grammatically dreadful and aesthetically murderous fake American accents and bring back the Pakistani accent to film, television, radio and to dinner parties. That's the kind of expenditure that would explain indebting future generations of Pakistanis. It would explain deepening the pool of debt that Pakistan is drowning in. It would explain the helplessness currently being feigned by economic and political policy makers. In short, if Pakistan was borrowing money to pay for this kind of a social program, it would be hard to argue against it. Instead, Pakistan is borrowing money to throw it into the same black hole that the money has been going into for at least a generation now. What has Pakistan got to show for almost forty years of sustained debt growth? Illiterate fanatics who can't pronounce the name of God are taking over Swat because the courts don't work. Drug lords and criminals posing as religious vigilantes are taking over NWFP because the cops don't work, can't work, and aren't allowed to work. The water in the taps all over the country is toxic. The teachers at the school can barely read. The ones that can spend more time in Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi, at the civil secretariat looking for a transfer, than teaching their students whatever little they know. The students are at home watching Sanju Baba kill bad guys, and Jon Abraham seduce bad girls. The mullahs are making speeches they don't understand, to crowds that aren't listening, until they bring on the hate. Then everybody listens. The uncles and aunties think cheap Broadway rip-offs with racy costumes constitute a culture renaissance. Little girls in rural Pakistan meanwhile are being traded by remorseless jirgas, in the name of honour. The culture vultures hate Arabic, love Punjabi, and are addicted to broken English. The hawks want beef, the doves want bhindi. And bankers want to loan Pakistan more money to finance the whole rot all over again. It's time for Pakistan to start spending its money on people servicing, instead of debt servicing. Bigger and more successful countries have done this before including Indonesia, Russia, and Argentina. Pakistan loves to ape other countries. Now is its chance. Time to default.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Bollywood Craze
A Pakistani teenager's craze for a career in Bollywood has landed him in an Indian jail and his worried parents are appealing for his release on humanitarian grounds.
Nasir Sultan, a Class 10 student and a diehard fan of the Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, crossed over to India illegally to try and join the film industry. After reaching Punjab in India, he called his parents in the North West Frontier Province to say he was in the neighbouring country. Fifteen minutes later his parents got another call to say that their son had been arrested. Sultan's parents, who hail from Chukiatan, a small town of Dir district in NWFP, are now running from pillar to post to secure his release. Like most Pakistani boys of his age, Sultan was an avid Bollywood fan and was fascinated by the many stunts in Hindi films that he hoped to excel at too. On August 16, Sultan left home for school wearing his uniform and carrying his schoolbag but instead crossed the border.
Two days later, his father Sultan Zareen, who works at a petrol pump, got a call from Sultan, who said he was on his way to Mumbai. This was followed soon after by the news of his arrest.
Sultan is being held in Faridkot Jail for the past two months. "I don't know what to do to secure his release as he is in another country where I have no influence or resources to use for winning his release," Zareen told The News daily. Zareen said his wife was depressed and the Indian Government should release his son on humanitarian ground.
Nasir Sultan, a Class 10 student and a diehard fan of the Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, crossed over to India illegally to try and join the film industry. After reaching Punjab in India, he called his parents in the North West Frontier Province to say he was in the neighbouring country. Fifteen minutes later his parents got another call to say that their son had been arrested. Sultan's parents, who hail from Chukiatan, a small town of Dir district in NWFP, are now running from pillar to post to secure his release. Like most Pakistani boys of his age, Sultan was an avid Bollywood fan and was fascinated by the many stunts in Hindi films that he hoped to excel at too. On August 16, Sultan left home for school wearing his uniform and carrying his schoolbag but instead crossed the border.
Two days later, his father Sultan Zareen, who works at a petrol pump, got a call from Sultan, who said he was on his way to Mumbai. This was followed soon after by the news of his arrest.
Sultan is being held in Faridkot Jail for the past two months. "I don't know what to do to secure his release as he is in another country where I have no influence or resources to use for winning his release," Zareen told The News daily. Zareen said his wife was depressed and the Indian Government should release his son on humanitarian ground.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Canada Votes
Canadians have chosen "slow and steady," giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives a tighter hold on minority government as the country braces for a looming economic downturn. Harper, 49, was able to make vital gains in Ontario, including big victories in the 905 region, but campaign missteps in Quebec kept his long-sought majority agonizingly out of reach and leaves him facing a divided Parliament. But last night, Harper said Conservatives "hold out our hand to all members of Parliament" in order to "protect Canada's economy.
"This is a time for us all to put aside political differences and partisan considerations and to work cooperatively for the benefit of Canada," Harper told supporters at Calgary's Telus Convention Centre. The night proved a bitter disappointment for Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, 53, who failed to sell voters on his leadership or his controversial carbon tax and now faces an almost certain challenge to his leadership.
Dion told supporters early today that he will co-operate with the government in dealing with the economy. "We Liberals will do our part responsibly to make sure this Parliament works," he said.
"I assured (Harper) that my top priority will be the economy."
Liberals lost seats across Atlantic Canada and in the one-time stronghold of Ontario, where they gave up seats to the Conservatives in ridings such as Oakville and Halton, where high-profile Liberal Garth Turner lost to Conservative Lisa Raitt.
Dion, in his first campaign as a party leader, said he wouldn't quit if Liberals lost the election. But Tuesday night's result – the worst showing for the party in at least 20 years – makes it doubtful that Liberals are willing to give Dion, who struggled with English and his ability to connect with voters, a second chance.
Liberals Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff – Dion's rivals for the party leadership – both won their Toronto seats last night, ensuring that leadership speculation remains alive.
NDP Leader Jack Layton, 58, improved his party's standings, winning seats in Newfoundland and Northern Ontario. Layton campaigned to be prime minister, but in reality aspired to replace the Liberals as official Opposition. He lost on both counts, but yesterday's results give the NDP a stronger voice in Parliament.
"We didn't quite get the gold medal this election but we did give it our best shot," Layton told supporters gathered last night at a club on Toronto's waterfront. And he noted that the election did not give Harper a blank cheque. "Canadians have elected a minority Parliament. No party has a mandate to implement an agenda without agreement from the other parties," said Layton, whose wife Olivia Chow won in the riding of Trinity-Spadina.
In Quebec, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, 61, turned around his campaign and held onto seats, thanks to the Conservative missteps in the province, especially a proposed crackdown on young offenders, as well as arts cuts.
The result marks Canada's third minority government in four years. And it means the Conservatives will continue to face three progressive-leaning parties in Parliament, which could force Harper to strike a more conciliatory approach to his dealings with political rivals.
It could also mean that a question mark hangs over a Conservative campaign pledge to crack down on teen offenders, given the strong opposition to it from the other parties.
What started out as a sleeper campaign turned dramatic as wild stock market swings, global bank failures and recession fears thrust the economy into the spotlight.
In the end, voters opted for Harper's modest platform. But they kept the Conservatives on a short leash as they were unwilling again to trust them with a majority government, something that had seemed within easy reach during the 37-day campaign.
The Prime Minister gambled with his election call, opting to go to the polls a full year before the date set by his party's own legislation for the next vote. He told Canadians that Parliament was at an impasse and that he needed a new mandate from voters.
While Harper was able to deliver new seats at the expense of the Liberals – and make critical gains in Ontario – the result is sure to fuel some questions within Conservative ranks about Harper's leadership. For the third time he has failed to deliver a majority, despite the best possible scenario this time – a weak rival trying to sell voters on a new tax.
Conservative cabinet minister Diane Ablonczy insisted the party would be happy with the results, even though it fell about a dozen seats short of the 155 seats needed for a majority.
"We're very pleased with the very strong mandate we received tonight. I think you'll see a Parliament that works much better going forward," she told CBC News Tuesday night.
Harper, who must form a new cabinet in the coming weeks, is already facing opposition calls to return Parliament quickly to deal with the economic crisis and bring forward an economic update on the state of the country's financial books. Green Leader Elizabeth May, 54, fell short as well last night, losing to her Conservative rival Peter MacKay in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova.
The Greens failed to elect any of their candidates. Still, May's high-profile run gave new publicity to the party, thanks largely to her successful fight to win a spot in the televised leaders' debates, where she impressed many Canadians with her performance.
Harper launched the election on Sept. 7 determined to frame the ballot box issue as a question of whom Canadians should trust to lead the nation in troubled times.
In the end, the economy – and stomach-churning stock market tumbles that saw the Toronto index plunged more than 20 per cent during the campaign – stole his thunder and became the story of the campaign as all leaders pitched themselves as the best stewards to lead the nation.
The Prime Minister preached a "steady-as-she-goes" approach but Canadians scolded Harper for his initial lack of empathy for their worries over sagging investment portfolios and the future of their jobs. At one point, he even said there were some "great buying opportunities" as a result of the downtown, a comment that drew complaints that he was tone-deaf to the concerns of Canadians. The opposition parties jumped on the economy, charging that Harper's modest platform was a "do-nothing" recipe. Dion used the French-language televised debate to release his own five-point plan to bolster the economy. Layton drew attention to the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs. As well, Conservative cuts to arts and culture funding – and Harper's dismissive response – cost the party precious seats in Quebec, where the Conservatives had carefully courted voters in the hopes of making gains.
The result now ensures that the threat of another election will continue to hang over the nation.
http://www.thestar.com/federalelection/article/517664
"This is a time for us all to put aside political differences and partisan considerations and to work cooperatively for the benefit of Canada," Harper told supporters at Calgary's Telus Convention Centre. The night proved a bitter disappointment for Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, 53, who failed to sell voters on his leadership or his controversial carbon tax and now faces an almost certain challenge to his leadership.
Dion told supporters early today that he will co-operate with the government in dealing with the economy. "We Liberals will do our part responsibly to make sure this Parliament works," he said.
"I assured (Harper) that my top priority will be the economy."
Liberals lost seats across Atlantic Canada and in the one-time stronghold of Ontario, where they gave up seats to the Conservatives in ridings such as Oakville and Halton, where high-profile Liberal Garth Turner lost to Conservative Lisa Raitt.
Dion, in his first campaign as a party leader, said he wouldn't quit if Liberals lost the election. But Tuesday night's result – the worst showing for the party in at least 20 years – makes it doubtful that Liberals are willing to give Dion, who struggled with English and his ability to connect with voters, a second chance.
Liberals Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff – Dion's rivals for the party leadership – both won their Toronto seats last night, ensuring that leadership speculation remains alive.
NDP Leader Jack Layton, 58, improved his party's standings, winning seats in Newfoundland and Northern Ontario. Layton campaigned to be prime minister, but in reality aspired to replace the Liberals as official Opposition. He lost on both counts, but yesterday's results give the NDP a stronger voice in Parliament.
"We didn't quite get the gold medal this election but we did give it our best shot," Layton told supporters gathered last night at a club on Toronto's waterfront. And he noted that the election did not give Harper a blank cheque. "Canadians have elected a minority Parliament. No party has a mandate to implement an agenda without agreement from the other parties," said Layton, whose wife Olivia Chow won in the riding of Trinity-Spadina.
In Quebec, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, 61, turned around his campaign and held onto seats, thanks to the Conservative missteps in the province, especially a proposed crackdown on young offenders, as well as arts cuts.
The result marks Canada's third minority government in four years. And it means the Conservatives will continue to face three progressive-leaning parties in Parliament, which could force Harper to strike a more conciliatory approach to his dealings with political rivals.
It could also mean that a question mark hangs over a Conservative campaign pledge to crack down on teen offenders, given the strong opposition to it from the other parties.
What started out as a sleeper campaign turned dramatic as wild stock market swings, global bank failures and recession fears thrust the economy into the spotlight.
In the end, voters opted for Harper's modest platform. But they kept the Conservatives on a short leash as they were unwilling again to trust them with a majority government, something that had seemed within easy reach during the 37-day campaign.
The Prime Minister gambled with his election call, opting to go to the polls a full year before the date set by his party's own legislation for the next vote. He told Canadians that Parliament was at an impasse and that he needed a new mandate from voters.
While Harper was able to deliver new seats at the expense of the Liberals – and make critical gains in Ontario – the result is sure to fuel some questions within Conservative ranks about Harper's leadership. For the third time he has failed to deliver a majority, despite the best possible scenario this time – a weak rival trying to sell voters on a new tax.
Conservative cabinet minister Diane Ablonczy insisted the party would be happy with the results, even though it fell about a dozen seats short of the 155 seats needed for a majority.
"We're very pleased with the very strong mandate we received tonight. I think you'll see a Parliament that works much better going forward," she told CBC News Tuesday night.
Harper, who must form a new cabinet in the coming weeks, is already facing opposition calls to return Parliament quickly to deal with the economic crisis and bring forward an economic update on the state of the country's financial books. Green Leader Elizabeth May, 54, fell short as well last night, losing to her Conservative rival Peter MacKay in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova.
The Greens failed to elect any of their candidates. Still, May's high-profile run gave new publicity to the party, thanks largely to her successful fight to win a spot in the televised leaders' debates, where she impressed many Canadians with her performance.
Harper launched the election on Sept. 7 determined to frame the ballot box issue as a question of whom Canadians should trust to lead the nation in troubled times.
In the end, the economy – and stomach-churning stock market tumbles that saw the Toronto index plunged more than 20 per cent during the campaign – stole his thunder and became the story of the campaign as all leaders pitched themselves as the best stewards to lead the nation.
The Prime Minister preached a "steady-as-she-goes" approach but Canadians scolded Harper for his initial lack of empathy for their worries over sagging investment portfolios and the future of their jobs. At one point, he even said there were some "great buying opportunities" as a result of the downtown, a comment that drew complaints that he was tone-deaf to the concerns of Canadians. The opposition parties jumped on the economy, charging that Harper's modest platform was a "do-nothing" recipe. Dion used the French-language televised debate to release his own five-point plan to bolster the economy. Layton drew attention to the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs. As well, Conservative cuts to arts and culture funding – and Harper's dismissive response – cost the party precious seats in Quebec, where the Conservatives had carefully courted voters in the hopes of making gains.
The result now ensures that the threat of another election will continue to hang over the nation.
http://www.thestar.com/federalelection/article/517664
NRI wife paraded ..
JALANDHAR: In a shocking and brutal retribution for being "seen" with a man, a 30-year-old wife of an NRI was allegedly paraded naked in front of her children, mother-in-law and relatives as a bunch of angry villagers cheered on while some also recorded it on video.
The woman, in a complaint filed with police on Tuesday, said she had merely called a painter to her house as it was the festive season and she wanted a whitewash done. "But the sarpanch and some other villagers barged into my house and not only beat me up but also captured my image on their cellphones as they paraded me naked in front of my two children and relatives," the residentof Atta said.
Sarpanch Lakhbir Kumar is known to her and a few are even related to her. Dismissing her allegations, he said he played moral police and said a villagerhad seen her through "a cracked window" in a compromising position with the painter.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Jalandhar_NRI_wife_paraded_naked/articleshow/3596874.cms
The woman, in a complaint filed with police on Tuesday, said she had merely called a painter to her house as it was the festive season and she wanted a whitewash done. "But the sarpanch and some other villagers barged into my house and not only beat me up but also captured my image on their cellphones as they paraded me naked in front of my two children and relatives," the residentof Atta said.
Sarpanch Lakhbir Kumar is known to her and a few are even related to her. Dismissing her allegations, he said he played moral police and said a villagerhad seen her through "a cracked window" in a compromising position with the painter.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Jalandhar_NRI_wife_paraded_naked/articleshow/3596874.cms
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Rioters burn Muslim family of 6 to death in south India
APPublished: October 12, 2008, 14:03
Hyderabad: Rioters in southern India killed six members of a Muslim family by setting fire to their home after earlier clashes between Hindus and Muslims left four others dead and 15 injured in the same village, officials said on Sunday. Tensions have been high in Vatoli village since Friday when violence and looting erupted between the two sides, leading to four deaths, said Andhra Pradesh state Home Minister K. Jana Reddy. Authorities imposed a curfew on Friday, but were unable to stop the deadly arson attack, which apparently occurred before dawn on Sunday, Reddy said. "It is a beastly and barbaric act," Reddy told reporters. "Police are investigating the case and we will catch the culprits." Three children, including a 2-year-old, were among the six burnt to death, he said.
Vatoli is in Adilabad district, 275 kilometres north of the state capital of Hyderabad. Muslim leaders called for better protection for minorities, especially in rural areas. "Despite our repeated pleas and appeals, the government has failed to provide protection to the Muslims who live in remote areas and who have a very small population in those places," said Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of the lower house of the national Parliament
Hyderabad: Rioters in southern India killed six members of a Muslim family by setting fire to their home after earlier clashes between Hindus and Muslims left four others dead and 15 injured in the same village, officials said on Sunday. Tensions have been high in Vatoli village since Friday when violence and looting erupted between the two sides, leading to four deaths, said Andhra Pradesh state Home Minister K. Jana Reddy. Authorities imposed a curfew on Friday, but were unable to stop the deadly arson attack, which apparently occurred before dawn on Sunday, Reddy said. "It is a beastly and barbaric act," Reddy told reporters. "Police are investigating the case and we will catch the culprits." Three children, including a 2-year-old, were among the six burnt to death, he said.
Vatoli is in Adilabad district, 275 kilometres north of the state capital of Hyderabad. Muslim leaders called for better protection for minorities, especially in rural areas. "Despite our repeated pleas and appeals, the government has failed to provide protection to the Muslims who live in remote areas and who have a very small population in those places," said Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of the lower house of the national Parliament
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Abu Dhabi buys Citigroup stake
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will invest $7.5 billion in Citigroup, offering the nation's largest bank needed capital to offset big losses from mortgages and other investments.
The MD of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority says Citigroup has "tremendous opportunities for growth".
The cash from the sovereign investment fund of the Gulf Arab state, which has benefited from this year's surge in oil prices, will be convertible into no more than 4.9 percent of Citigroup Inc.'s equity. Citigroup characterized the investment as passive and said the fund will not be able to name any board members to the bank.
The Investment Authority's purchase, announced late Monday, would make it one of Citi's largest shareholders.
"We see in Citi a highly respected company with a premier brand and with tremendous opportunities for growth," said the Investment Authority's managing director, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al Nahayan. "This investment reflects our confidence in Citi's potential to build shareholder value."
The investment, which was expected to close within the next several days, will be considered Tier 1 capital for regulatory purposes, helping Citi reach its goal of returning to its target capital ratios in the first half of 2008, the bank said.
Citigroup's shares have lost about 45 percent of their value since the beginning of this year, wiping away $124 billion in market capitalization, as the drumbeat of bad news about its investment losses has mounted.
Citi shares jumped more than 2 percent, or $2.04, to $31.80 in premarket trading Tuesday. Shares fell $1, or 3.2 percent, to close at $30.70 Monday after hitting a five-year low earlier in the day.
Charles Prince stepped down as Citigroup's chairman and chief executive Nov. 4, the same day Citi announced that it will likely write down the value of its portfolio by $8 billion to $11 billion in the fourth quarter.
In the third quarter, the bank's exposure to assets tied to subprime mortgages led to a loss of about $6.5 billion.
The Investment Authority will receive equity units that pay an 11 percent annual yield until they are converted into Citigroup common shares at a price of up to $37.24 a share between March 15, 2010, and Sept. 15, 2011.
Analysts believe the Investment Authority is the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, although the fund has never publicly revealed its total assets. Analysts estimate the fund controls hundreds of billions of dollars, with some experts saying the amount could be approaching nearly a trillion dollars.
Sovereign funds throughout the Middle East have been building up overseas investments recently, much of it on the back of oil prices that have risen more than 60 percent this year, bringing record cash flow to the region. China and Russia also have considerable funds they are sending overseas.
Unlike its counterparts in Dubai, the Investment Authority provides very little information about its investments, with analysts saying it appears to regularly purchases less than 5 percent of the companies it targets to avoid having to disclose the investments.
Dubai International Capital, which is owned by the ruler of that booming Persian Gulf city-state, announced earlier Monday that it has acquired a stake of undisclosed size in the Japanese electronics and media company Sony Corp. Its other investments this year included acquiring a 3.12 percent of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., which builds Airbus commercial planes and military aircraft.
The firm also holds stakes in Daimler AG and British bank HSBC Holdings PLC.
Many companies have welcomed such investments because the funds tend to be stable investors, but some U.S. officials have expressed concern that their acquisitions could target sensitive industries with links to national security.
Abu Dhabi's move recalls the early 1990s investment in Citi made by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. After the bank made some losing bets on U.S. real estate and Latin America, Alwaleed bought a stake for less than $600 million that has since ballooned into billions.
The Abu Dhabi investment comes at a time when Citi is trying to reassure investors amid heavy credit-related losses and a search for a new CEO.
"This investment, from one of the world's leading and most sophisticated equity investors, provides further capital to allow Citi to pursue attractive opportunities to grow its business," Win Bischoff, acting chief executive, said in a statement.
"This investment also enables us to access capital in an efficient manner, and is consistent with our strategy of maintaining a balance sheet that benefits from highly diverse sources of funding in terms of both geography and type of security," Bischoff said
LINK:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/11/27/citigroup.investment.ap/index.html
The MD of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority says Citigroup has "tremendous opportunities for growth".
The cash from the sovereign investment fund of the Gulf Arab state, which has benefited from this year's surge in oil prices, will be convertible into no more than 4.9 percent of Citigroup Inc.'s equity. Citigroup characterized the investment as passive and said the fund will not be able to name any board members to the bank.
The Investment Authority's purchase, announced late Monday, would make it one of Citi's largest shareholders.
"We see in Citi a highly respected company with a premier brand and with tremendous opportunities for growth," said the Investment Authority's managing director, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al Nahayan. "This investment reflects our confidence in Citi's potential to build shareholder value."
The investment, which was expected to close within the next several days, will be considered Tier 1 capital for regulatory purposes, helping Citi reach its goal of returning to its target capital ratios in the first half of 2008, the bank said.
Citigroup's shares have lost about 45 percent of their value since the beginning of this year, wiping away $124 billion in market capitalization, as the drumbeat of bad news about its investment losses has mounted.
Citi shares jumped more than 2 percent, or $2.04, to $31.80 in premarket trading Tuesday. Shares fell $1, or 3.2 percent, to close at $30.70 Monday after hitting a five-year low earlier in the day.
Charles Prince stepped down as Citigroup's chairman and chief executive Nov. 4, the same day Citi announced that it will likely write down the value of its portfolio by $8 billion to $11 billion in the fourth quarter.
In the third quarter, the bank's exposure to assets tied to subprime mortgages led to a loss of about $6.5 billion.
The Investment Authority will receive equity units that pay an 11 percent annual yield until they are converted into Citigroup common shares at a price of up to $37.24 a share between March 15, 2010, and Sept. 15, 2011.
Analysts believe the Investment Authority is the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, although the fund has never publicly revealed its total assets. Analysts estimate the fund controls hundreds of billions of dollars, with some experts saying the amount could be approaching nearly a trillion dollars.
Sovereign funds throughout the Middle East have been building up overseas investments recently, much of it on the back of oil prices that have risen more than 60 percent this year, bringing record cash flow to the region. China and Russia also have considerable funds they are sending overseas.
Unlike its counterparts in Dubai, the Investment Authority provides very little information about its investments, with analysts saying it appears to regularly purchases less than 5 percent of the companies it targets to avoid having to disclose the investments.
Dubai International Capital, which is owned by the ruler of that booming Persian Gulf city-state, announced earlier Monday that it has acquired a stake of undisclosed size in the Japanese electronics and media company Sony Corp. Its other investments this year included acquiring a 3.12 percent of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., which builds Airbus commercial planes and military aircraft.
The firm also holds stakes in Daimler AG and British bank HSBC Holdings PLC.
Many companies have welcomed such investments because the funds tend to be stable investors, but some U.S. officials have expressed concern that their acquisitions could target sensitive industries with links to national security.
Abu Dhabi's move recalls the early 1990s investment in Citi made by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. After the bank made some losing bets on U.S. real estate and Latin America, Alwaleed bought a stake for less than $600 million that has since ballooned into billions.
The Abu Dhabi investment comes at a time when Citi is trying to reassure investors amid heavy credit-related losses and a search for a new CEO.
"This investment, from one of the world's leading and most sophisticated equity investors, provides further capital to allow Citi to pursue attractive opportunities to grow its business," Win Bischoff, acting chief executive, said in a statement.
"This investment also enables us to access capital in an efficient manner, and is consistent with our strategy of maintaining a balance sheet that benefits from highly diverse sources of funding in terms of both geography and type of security," Bischoff said
LINK:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/11/27/citigroup.investment.ap/index.html
Monday, October 6, 2008
Delhi tops crime charts for fifth year in a row
1 Jan 2008, 0349 hrs IST, Vishwa Mohan,TNN
NEW DELHI: Delhi continues to be the undisputed 'crime capital' of the country. It is not only No 1 among 35 big cities with the largest number of crime cases but also has the dubious distinction of having topped the list for five years in a row. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), in its latest annual report—Crime in India: 2006—also points out that Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities having a population of over a million people, for the second year in a row. The national capital occupies the top slot for almost all violent crimes, including murder, rape, dowry death, molestation, kidnapping and abduction. The report also notes the disturbing trend of young people taking to crime in a big way. It shows that 44.6% of the total arrested criminals during 2006 belonged to the 18-30 year age-group. In 2005, the figure was 44% and the trend was uniformly high across the 35 big cities under survey. Besides the top three cities, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur, Indore and Pune are the other mega cities which figure prominently in NCRB’s list for reporting relatively higher number of cases. The 35 mega cities collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 cognizable crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.7% over 2005. According to NCRB, the country reported a total of 51,02,460 cognizable crimes, of which 18,78,293 related to murder, rape, attempt to murder, kidnapping, abduction, dowry death, dacoity, molestation and other violent offences. The remaining 32,24,167 incidents were cases registered under the Arms Act, Gambling Act, Prohibition Act, Forest Act, Railways Act and other special and local laws. Although the overall crime in the country recorded an increase of 1.5% in 2006 as compared to 2005, the ‘crime rate’ (number of crimes per one lakh population) declined by 0.02%. Predictably, Delhi bucked this trend as well and the crime rate here grew to 357.2, more than double the national average of 167.7. The crime rate is universally accepted as a more realistic indicator of crime. These figures reveal the dismal state of women in the capital. Dowry death (120), rape (533) and molestation (629) rates in Delhi were much higher as compared with other mega cities. Delhi, in fact, accounted for 31.2% of the total rape cases reported in big cities. Among the states, Madhya Pradesh reported the highest number of rapes (2,900), accounting for as much as 15% of the total. NCRB’s figures for Delhi endorsed what the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) of the home ministry had recently mentioned about the city while referring to a study/survey. That study, conducted by the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science (NICFS) at the behest of BPR&D, had concluded that the "absence of visible police patrolling" and "the police's attitude towards women complainants" in the national capital had substantially reduced the trust-quotient of police, particularly among women. As far as states are concerned, NCRB has found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,94,711) followed by Maharashtra (1,91,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,73,909), Tamil Nadu (1,48,972) and Rajasthan (1,41,992) during 2006. Among violent crimes, India reported 32,481 murders, 19,348 rapes, 7,618 dowry deaths and 36,617 molestation cases in 2006.
LINK:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2665983.cms
NEW DELHI: Delhi continues to be the undisputed 'crime capital' of the country. It is not only No 1 among 35 big cities with the largest number of crime cases but also has the dubious distinction of having topped the list for five years in a row. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), in its latest annual report—Crime in India: 2006—also points out that Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities having a population of over a million people, for the second year in a row. The national capital occupies the top slot for almost all violent crimes, including murder, rape, dowry death, molestation, kidnapping and abduction. The report also notes the disturbing trend of young people taking to crime in a big way. It shows that 44.6% of the total arrested criminals during 2006 belonged to the 18-30 year age-group. In 2005, the figure was 44% and the trend was uniformly high across the 35 big cities under survey. Besides the top three cities, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur, Indore and Pune are the other mega cities which figure prominently in NCRB’s list for reporting relatively higher number of cases. The 35 mega cities collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 cognizable crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.7% over 2005. According to NCRB, the country reported a total of 51,02,460 cognizable crimes, of which 18,78,293 related to murder, rape, attempt to murder, kidnapping, abduction, dowry death, dacoity, molestation and other violent offences. The remaining 32,24,167 incidents were cases registered under the Arms Act, Gambling Act, Prohibition Act, Forest Act, Railways Act and other special and local laws. Although the overall crime in the country recorded an increase of 1.5% in 2006 as compared to 2005, the ‘crime rate’ (number of crimes per one lakh population) declined by 0.02%. Predictably, Delhi bucked this trend as well and the crime rate here grew to 357.2, more than double the national average of 167.7. The crime rate is universally accepted as a more realistic indicator of crime. These figures reveal the dismal state of women in the capital. Dowry death (120), rape (533) and molestation (629) rates in Delhi were much higher as compared with other mega cities. Delhi, in fact, accounted for 31.2% of the total rape cases reported in big cities. Among the states, Madhya Pradesh reported the highest number of rapes (2,900), accounting for as much as 15% of the total. NCRB’s figures for Delhi endorsed what the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) of the home ministry had recently mentioned about the city while referring to a study/survey. That study, conducted by the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science (NICFS) at the behest of BPR&D, had concluded that the "absence of visible police patrolling" and "the police's attitude towards women complainants" in the national capital had substantially reduced the trust-quotient of police, particularly among women. As far as states are concerned, NCRB has found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,94,711) followed by Maharashtra (1,91,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,73,909), Tamil Nadu (1,48,972) and Rajasthan (1,41,992) during 2006. Among violent crimes, India reported 32,481 murders, 19,348 rapes, 7,618 dowry deaths and 36,617 molestation cases in 2006.
LINK:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2665983.cms
India records highest number of murders in world
NEW DELHI
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
INDIA has recorded the highest number of murders in the world, a latest study by a government agency shows, news reports said yesterday. Data put together by the National Crime Records Bureau, a department of the Federal Home Ministry, showed that the number of murders in India, was three times that of Pakistan and double of the United States.There were more than 32,000 incidents of murder recorded in India over 2007-2008, whereas there were nearly 16,700 murders in the US and about 9,700 in Pakistan, the NDTV network reported.India is closely followed by South Africa which registered nearly 31,000 incidents of murders. However, the survey clarified that the rate per population of murder and other crimes in India was much less compared to other countries.India has the world's second largest population after China with an estimated 1.13 billion people.The murder and rape rate in India was three and four per 100,000 population respectively, whereas South Africa had rates in the two categories as 65.27 and 115.8 respectively, the Times of India daily said in its report.The NCRB said the data was compiled in 22 countries which included Australia, Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, Canada, Britain, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Sri Lanka.According to the NCRB, the US topped the crime list with 23 million cases including murder, rape, sex and drug offences, while India reported 5 million incidents of crime.The top number of rape cases were reported in the US, which recorded 93,934 such assaults. More than 54,900 rape cases reported in South Africa and 18,359 rape cases were reported in India over 2007-2008.Indian crime rate has been increasing every year.DPA
LINK:
http://www.bt.com.bn/en/asia_news/2008/06/03/india_records_highest_number_of_murders_in_world
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
INDIA has recorded the highest number of murders in the world, a latest study by a government agency shows, news reports said yesterday. Data put together by the National Crime Records Bureau, a department of the Federal Home Ministry, showed that the number of murders in India, was three times that of Pakistan and double of the United States.There were more than 32,000 incidents of murder recorded in India over 2007-2008, whereas there were nearly 16,700 murders in the US and about 9,700 in Pakistan, the NDTV network reported.India is closely followed by South Africa which registered nearly 31,000 incidents of murders. However, the survey clarified that the rate per population of murder and other crimes in India was much less compared to other countries.India has the world's second largest population after China with an estimated 1.13 billion people.The murder and rape rate in India was three and four per 100,000 population respectively, whereas South Africa had rates in the two categories as 65.27 and 115.8 respectively, the Times of India daily said in its report.The NCRB said the data was compiled in 22 countries which included Australia, Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, Canada, Britain, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Sri Lanka.According to the NCRB, the US topped the crime list with 23 million cases including murder, rape, sex and drug offences, while India reported 5 million incidents of crime.The top number of rape cases were reported in the US, which recorded 93,934 such assaults. More than 54,900 rape cases reported in South Africa and 18,359 rape cases were reported in India over 2007-2008.Indian crime rate has been increasing every year.DPA
LINK:
http://www.bt.com.bn/en/asia_news/2008/06/03/india_records_highest_number_of_murders_in_world
Children deprived of Eidi
New modus operandi come forward as the rate of street crime in the city continues to rise. A family that was robbed on Saturday night narrated to The News the novel way in which the gang which looted them operated.“On Saturday night, I was driving back home after visiting relatives during Eid,” Muhammad Arif said. When he reached near a famous Pizza outlet on University Road, he received a call from his older brother. Arif parked his vehicle by the roadside to attend to the call.“It was possible for me to drive while receiving a call but I preferred to not do so and follow traffic rules,” he said. “In the meantime, a healthy man came up to me and asked me to help him as his son had some serious disease.”Arif said that he gave the man Rs10 but he walked away without taking the money. “Before leaving, the stranger took had a good look inside my car. Meanwhile, another person approached me and started narrating his story but I simply ignored him,” Arif said.“I was about to end the call because my children were sleepy and were continuously asking me to drive home as fast as I could,” he said. “A third person walked towards my car and asked me if I had a toolbox because he had to fix something in his motorbike.”Arif said that he told the stranger that he did not have a toolbox and the person replied: “No problem, give me your cellular phone, wallet and other valuables.”“He also ordered my wife to hand over her gold to him,” Arif added. “The man was armed but he did not pull out his weapon because it was a public place and many vehicles were parked there and passengers were sitting inside. I told him that I did not carry a wallet and surrendered my cellular phones. When I said that my wife does not wear gold he got panicky.”“I realised that he might hurt us, so I asked my daughter to give him her handbag. She had all her Eidi in there,” the victim said. The child gave the robber her handbag, which had around Rs3,000 in it. She also removed her plastic rings from her fingers and gave those to the criminal as well.“The bandit collected cash, my phones and wife’s handbag and calmly walked to his motorcycle and left the scene,” Arif said. “My older son was telling me to crush the motorbike and the rider who had robbed them and deprived them of their Eidi.”He further said that later on his daughter told him that she had heard that another woman offered Rs100 to the person who had asked for help for his son, but the man had walked away from that woman, in much the same way as he had walked away from Arif and his family. Arif added that he then realised that all those people were probably part of the same gang.“They were not more than 30 years of age and all of them belonged to different ethnic groups,” he said.His ordeal did not end there, however. The next day, one of the robbers used the phone robbed from Arif to call up the latter’s relatives. “He told them to meet him at a particular place at the given time if they were interested in getting my things back,” Arif said. “I first had to bear a loss, and now they are trying to con my relatives.”The victim said he had tried to get his SIMs blocked but had been unable to do so till the time this report was filed. People have lost faith on the police so does that mean what Arif's son said about crusing the motorbike who robbed them is the only solution ?
Pakistans Tribal Areas
What kind of negotiations is government doing with taliban in the frontiers….
Ask these militants to write down their demands as to what type of Shariat do they want there.
And ask these Hardliners to attach the reference of any Hadhees and Quran …with all their demands….
So that we also know ..and they also should know whether the demands they are making such as no education for girls etc are according to the Islam or not….let them find out any hadees ..i am sure when they will try to bring support or prove for their demands ..they hey will not be able to find out anything for their demands.The government should make public these negotiations and do some intense publications such as pamphlets and news papers and distribute in these troubled areas …mentioning Hadhees and Quranic references against their unjust demands …….so that an ordinary tribes man and ordinary Illiterate man can understand Islam….. These kinds of brochures and pamphlets needed to be distributed through mosques and dropped down by airplanes …in thousands of numbers..so that they reach every corner of the frontiers……..And it should be published in the Local news papers of frontiers and tribal areas..not the big cities …So that the illiterate ordinary boy or girls can no longer come in the tricks these people play with their minds to make them suicide bombers……But this kind of a thing has to be on a very intense and on a very large scale…
Secondly what steps is government taking to unwashed the brains of these militants when they are caught or when they surrender……. ..These militants should be passed through an intense course or procedure …where they are taught true islam about suicide bombings and many other things, like music, girls education, and concept of Jihad etc etc …… They should not be released before they are passed through such exams….. These kinds of experiment has been done in Saudi Arabia ..and later those militants accepted that they were wrong…..Such a procedure is much more needed in Pakistan than Saudi Arabia…..
Ask these militants to write down their demands as to what type of Shariat do they want there.
And ask these Hardliners to attach the reference of any Hadhees and Quran …with all their demands….
So that we also know ..and they also should know whether the demands they are making such as no education for girls etc are according to the Islam or not….let them find out any hadees ..i am sure when they will try to bring support or prove for their demands ..they hey will not be able to find out anything for their demands.The government should make public these negotiations and do some intense publications such as pamphlets and news papers and distribute in these troubled areas …mentioning Hadhees and Quranic references against their unjust demands …….so that an ordinary tribes man and ordinary Illiterate man can understand Islam….. These kinds of brochures and pamphlets needed to be distributed through mosques and dropped down by airplanes …in thousands of numbers..so that they reach every corner of the frontiers……..And it should be published in the Local news papers of frontiers and tribal areas..not the big cities …So that the illiterate ordinary boy or girls can no longer come in the tricks these people play with their minds to make them suicide bombers……But this kind of a thing has to be on a very intense and on a very large scale…
Secondly what steps is government taking to unwashed the brains of these militants when they are caught or when they surrender……. ..These militants should be passed through an intense course or procedure …where they are taught true islam about suicide bombings and many other things, like music, girls education, and concept of Jihad etc etc …… They should not be released before they are passed through such exams….. These kinds of experiment has been done in Saudi Arabia ..and later those militants accepted that they were wrong…..Such a procedure is much more needed in Pakistan than Saudi Arabia…..
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Financial Crisis
By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer
Financial crisis likely to yield biggest banking shakeout since savings-and-loan meltdown
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Here's a safe bet for uncertain times: A lot of banks won't survive the next year of upheaval despite the U.S. government's $700 billion plan to restore order to the financial industry. The biggest question is how many will perish and how they will be put out of their misery -- in outright closures by regulators scrambling to preserve the dwindling deposit insurance fund or in fire sales made under government pressure.
Enfeebled by huge losses on risky home loans, the banking industry is now on the shakiest ground since the early 1990s, when more than 800 federally insured institutions failed in a three-year period. That was during the clean-up phase of a decade-long savings-and-loan meltdown that wound up costing U.S. taxpayers $170 billion to $205 billion, after adjusting for inflation. The government's commitment to spend up to $700 billion buying bad debts from ailing banks is likely to save some institutions that would have otherwise died, but analysts doubt it will be enough to avert a major shakeout.
"It will help, but it's not going to be the saving grace" because a lot of banks are holding construction loans and other types of deteriorating assets that the government won't take off their books, predicted Stanford Financial analyst Jaret Seiberg. He expects more than 100 banks nationwide to fail next year. The darkening clouds already have some depositors pondering a question that always seems to crop up in financial panics despite deposit insurance: Could it possibly make more sense to stash cash in a mattress than in a bank account?
"It sounds like a joke," said business owner Mauricoa Quintero as he recently paused outside a Wachovia Bank branch in Miami. "But it sounds safer than the turmoil out there right now."
Not as many banks are likely to fail as in the S&L crisis, largely because there are about 8,000 fewer today than there were in 1988. But that doesn't necessarily mean the problems won't be as costly or as unnerving; banks are much larger than they were 20 years ago, thanks to laws passed in the 1990s. "I don't see why things will be that much different this time," said Joseph Mason, an economist who worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in the 1990s and is now a finance professor at Louisiana State University. "We just had a big party where people and businesses overborrowed. We had a bubble and now we want to get back to normal. Is it going to be painless? No, With more super-sized banks in business, fewer failures could still dump a big bill on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the government agency that insures bank and S&L deposits. The FDIC's potential liability is rising under a provision of the bailout that increases the deposit insurance limit to $250,000 per account, up from $100,000.
Using statistics from the S&L crisis as a guide, Mason estimates total deposits in banks that fail during the current crisis at $1.1 trillion. After calculating gains from selling deposits and some of the assets of the failed banks, Mason estimates the clean-up this time will cost the FDIC $140 billion to $200 billion.
The FDIC's fund currently has about $45 billion -- a five-year low -- but the agency can make up for any shortfalls by borrowing from the U.S. Treasury and eventually repaying the money by raising the premiums that it charges the healthy banks and S&Ls.
Through the first nine months of the year, 13 banks and S&Ls have been taken over by the FDIC -- more than the previous five years combined.
The FDIC may be underestimating, or least not publicly acknowledging, the trouble ahead. As of June 30, the FDIC had 117 insured banks and S&Ls on its problem list. That represented about 1 percent of the nearly 8,500 institutions insured as of June 30. Entering 1991, about 10 percent of the industry -- 1,496 institutions -- was on the FDIC's endangered list.
Although the FDIC doesn't name the institutions it classifies as problems, this year's June 30 list didn't include two huge headaches -- Washington Mutual Bank and Wachovia. Combined, WaMu and Wachovia had more than $1 trillion in assets; the assets of the 117 institutions on the FDIC's watch list totaled $78 billion.
Late last month, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history, with $307 billion in assets, nearly five times more, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than the previous record collapse of Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984. The FDIC doesn't expect WaMu's demise to drain its fund because JP Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy the bank's deposits and most of the assets for $1.9 billion.
Regulators dodged another potential bullet by helping to negotiate the sale of Wachovia's banking operations to Citigroup Inc. in a complex deal that could still end up costing the FDIC, depending on the severity of future loan losses. On Friday, a battle of banking giants erupted when Wachovia struck a new deal with Wells Fargo & Co. without government help, and Citigroup demanded that it be called off.
The banking outlook looks even gloomier through the prism of Bauer Financial Inc., which has been relying on data filed with the FDIC to assess the health of federally insured institutions for the past 25 years.
Based on its analysis of the June 30 numbers, Bauer Financial concluded that 426 federally insured institutions are grappling with major problems -- about 5 percent of all banks and S&Ls.
About 15 percent of the banks on Bauer's cautionary list have more than $1 billion in assets. Not surprisingly, the troubles are concentrated among banks that were the most active in markets where free-flowing mortgages contributed to the rapid run-up in home prices that set the stage for the jarring comedown. By Bauer's reckoning, the largest numbers of troubled banks are in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Minnesota.
"It's important for people to remember that not all these banks are going to fail, just because they are on this list," said Karen Dorway, Bauer Financial's president. "Many of them will recover."
James Barth, who was chief economist of the regulatory agency that oversaw the S&L industry in the 1980s, doubts things will get as bad as they did then.
"It's scary right now, but it's not as scary as a lot of people are making it out to be," said Barth, now a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, a think tank.
Mani Behimehr, a home designer living in Tustin, Calif., isn't feeling reassured after what happened to WaMu and Wachovia. After he heard the news that WaMu had been seized and sold to JP Morgan, he rushed out to withdraw about $150,000 in savings and opened a new account at Wachovia only to learn about its sale to Citigroup two days later.
"I thought this is the strongest economy in the world; nothing like that happens in this country," said Behimehr, 46, who is originally from Iran.
The tumult is creating expansion opportunities for healthy banks. Industry heavyweights like JP Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. have already rolled the dice on major acquisitions of financially battered institutions in hopes of becoming more powerful than ever.
Smaller players like Clifton Savings Bank in New Jersey are bragging about their relatively clean balance sheets to lure depositors away from rivals that are wrestling with huge loan losses. The bank, with about $900 million in total assets, says just one of its 2,300 home loans is in foreclosure.
"There is going to be a flight to quality," predicted John Celentano Jr., Clifton Savings' chief executive. "People are going to start putting their money in places that were being run the way things are supposed to be run: the old-fashioned way."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081005/shaky_banks.html
Financial crisis likely to yield biggest banking shakeout since savings-and-loan meltdown
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Here's a safe bet for uncertain times: A lot of banks won't survive the next year of upheaval despite the U.S. government's $700 billion plan to restore order to the financial industry. The biggest question is how many will perish and how they will be put out of their misery -- in outright closures by regulators scrambling to preserve the dwindling deposit insurance fund or in fire sales made under government pressure.
Enfeebled by huge losses on risky home loans, the banking industry is now on the shakiest ground since the early 1990s, when more than 800 federally insured institutions failed in a three-year period. That was during the clean-up phase of a decade-long savings-and-loan meltdown that wound up costing U.S. taxpayers $170 billion to $205 billion, after adjusting for inflation. The government's commitment to spend up to $700 billion buying bad debts from ailing banks is likely to save some institutions that would have otherwise died, but analysts doubt it will be enough to avert a major shakeout.
"It will help, but it's not going to be the saving grace" because a lot of banks are holding construction loans and other types of deteriorating assets that the government won't take off their books, predicted Stanford Financial analyst Jaret Seiberg. He expects more than 100 banks nationwide to fail next year. The darkening clouds already have some depositors pondering a question that always seems to crop up in financial panics despite deposit insurance: Could it possibly make more sense to stash cash in a mattress than in a bank account?
"It sounds like a joke," said business owner Mauricoa Quintero as he recently paused outside a Wachovia Bank branch in Miami. "But it sounds safer than the turmoil out there right now."
Not as many banks are likely to fail as in the S&L crisis, largely because there are about 8,000 fewer today than there were in 1988. But that doesn't necessarily mean the problems won't be as costly or as unnerving; banks are much larger than they were 20 years ago, thanks to laws passed in the 1990s. "I don't see why things will be that much different this time," said Joseph Mason, an economist who worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in the 1990s and is now a finance professor at Louisiana State University. "We just had a big party where people and businesses overborrowed. We had a bubble and now we want to get back to normal. Is it going to be painless? No, With more super-sized banks in business, fewer failures could still dump a big bill on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the government agency that insures bank and S&L deposits. The FDIC's potential liability is rising under a provision of the bailout that increases the deposit insurance limit to $250,000 per account, up from $100,000.
Using statistics from the S&L crisis as a guide, Mason estimates total deposits in banks that fail during the current crisis at $1.1 trillion. After calculating gains from selling deposits and some of the assets of the failed banks, Mason estimates the clean-up this time will cost the FDIC $140 billion to $200 billion.
The FDIC's fund currently has about $45 billion -- a five-year low -- but the agency can make up for any shortfalls by borrowing from the U.S. Treasury and eventually repaying the money by raising the premiums that it charges the healthy banks and S&Ls.
Through the first nine months of the year, 13 banks and S&Ls have been taken over by the FDIC -- more than the previous five years combined.
The FDIC may be underestimating, or least not publicly acknowledging, the trouble ahead. As of June 30, the FDIC had 117 insured banks and S&Ls on its problem list. That represented about 1 percent of the nearly 8,500 institutions insured as of June 30. Entering 1991, about 10 percent of the industry -- 1,496 institutions -- was on the FDIC's endangered list.
Although the FDIC doesn't name the institutions it classifies as problems, this year's June 30 list didn't include two huge headaches -- Washington Mutual Bank and Wachovia. Combined, WaMu and Wachovia had more than $1 trillion in assets; the assets of the 117 institutions on the FDIC's watch list totaled $78 billion.
Late last month, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history, with $307 billion in assets, nearly five times more, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than the previous record collapse of Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984. The FDIC doesn't expect WaMu's demise to drain its fund because JP Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy the bank's deposits and most of the assets for $1.9 billion.
Regulators dodged another potential bullet by helping to negotiate the sale of Wachovia's banking operations to Citigroup Inc. in a complex deal that could still end up costing the FDIC, depending on the severity of future loan losses. On Friday, a battle of banking giants erupted when Wachovia struck a new deal with Wells Fargo & Co. without government help, and Citigroup demanded that it be called off.
The banking outlook looks even gloomier through the prism of Bauer Financial Inc., which has been relying on data filed with the FDIC to assess the health of federally insured institutions for the past 25 years.
Based on its analysis of the June 30 numbers, Bauer Financial concluded that 426 federally insured institutions are grappling with major problems -- about 5 percent of all banks and S&Ls.
About 15 percent of the banks on Bauer's cautionary list have more than $1 billion in assets. Not surprisingly, the troubles are concentrated among banks that were the most active in markets where free-flowing mortgages contributed to the rapid run-up in home prices that set the stage for the jarring comedown. By Bauer's reckoning, the largest numbers of troubled banks are in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Minnesota.
"It's important for people to remember that not all these banks are going to fail, just because they are on this list," said Karen Dorway, Bauer Financial's president. "Many of them will recover."
James Barth, who was chief economist of the regulatory agency that oversaw the S&L industry in the 1980s, doubts things will get as bad as they did then.
"It's scary right now, but it's not as scary as a lot of people are making it out to be," said Barth, now a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, a think tank.
Mani Behimehr, a home designer living in Tustin, Calif., isn't feeling reassured after what happened to WaMu and Wachovia. After he heard the news that WaMu had been seized and sold to JP Morgan, he rushed out to withdraw about $150,000 in savings and opened a new account at Wachovia only to learn about its sale to Citigroup two days later.
"I thought this is the strongest economy in the world; nothing like that happens in this country," said Behimehr, 46, who is originally from Iran.
The tumult is creating expansion opportunities for healthy banks. Industry heavyweights like JP Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. have already rolled the dice on major acquisitions of financially battered institutions in hopes of becoming more powerful than ever.
Smaller players like Clifton Savings Bank in New Jersey are bragging about their relatively clean balance sheets to lure depositors away from rivals that are wrestling with huge loan losses. The bank, with about $900 million in total assets, says just one of its 2,300 home loans is in foreclosure.
"There is going to be a flight to quality," predicted John Celentano Jr., Clifton Savings' chief executive. "People are going to start putting their money in places that were being run the way things are supposed to be run: the old-fashioned way."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081005/shaky_banks.html
Some of us never listen
Passengers travelling by PIA's direct flight from Pakistan to Toronto are facing severe scrutiny on landing here, following a recent incident when a passenger managed to travel on one such flight without a ticket, visa or even a passport. The incident exposed serious flaws in security at Pakistani airports. In this case a PIA contract employee, who was recently regularized, travelled on PK 781 from Karachi to Islamabad on a rebated domestic ticket, and then managed to stay on board the aircraft, going all the way to Toronto. The fact that he was a PIA contract loader makes the situation worse. Reports that this stowaway passenger was known to some of the cabin crew who perhaps ignored his presence are even more worrying. It is mind-boggling that such an incident can take place, where a passenger can travel without going through immigration, customs or security. Airlines have systems where headcount of passengers is a mandatory requirement before departure. What if this passenger had been a terrorist? Heads should roll but will they? Due to few people, every body now have to suffer taking PIA. After reading this will you guys will be taking PIA to Canada?
Kylie 'being paid $3.5mn' for Atlantis gig
by Claire Ferris-Lay
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Kylie Minogue is reportedly getting $3.5 million for her role in the Atlantis opening. (Getty Images)Kylie Minogue, the Australian pop star, is reportedly being paid $3.5 million for a 60-minute performance at the grand opening of The Atlantis resort in Dubai.
No expense is being spared at the opening party of the flagship resort on The Palm Jumeirah, according to British newspaper reports which suggest the party will be one of the most expensive ever staged, costing $28 million.
As well as Kylie’s gig, there will be a firework display by Grucci, the company behind the Beijing Olympic firework display. While catering and further entertainment will cost another $2.6 million.
Four Michelin-starred chefs Giorgio Locatelli and Nobu Matsuhisa will also be cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
Reports also suggest that the guestlist, which will include politicians, actors, musicians and royalt
Kylie Minogue is reportedly getting $3.5 million for her role in the Atlantis opening. (Getty Images)Kylie Minogue, the Australian pop star, is reportedly being paid $3.5 million for a 60-minute performance at the grand opening of The Atlantis resort in Dubai.
No expense is being spared at the opening party of the flagship resort on The Palm Jumeirah, according to British newspaper reports which suggest the party will be one of the most expensive ever staged, costing $28 million.
As well as Kylie’s gig, there will be a firework display by Grucci, the company behind the Beijing Olympic firework display. While catering and further entertainment will cost another $2.6 million.
Four Michelin-starred chefs Giorgio Locatelli and Nobu Matsuhisa will also be cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
Reports also suggest that the guestlist, which will include politicians, actors, musicians and royalt
will be flown in from around the world and will be given free accommodation at the resort. That is costing $8,700 per person – a further $17.5 million.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Robert Fisk "The Age of the Warrior"
JUAN GONZALEZ: The US strategy in Afghanistan is back in the news, just ahead of the vice-presidential debate tonight. The British ambassador to Afghanistan has been quoted in a French newspaper as saying that the American military strategy in that country is “destined to fail.” Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles’s critical comments about the NATO operation in Afghanistan were part of a leaked memo from a French diplomat. He also said, “The coalition presence—particularly the military presence—is part of the problem, not the solution.”
The British ambassador’s leaked statements were published just as the top US commander in Afghanistan called for three additional combat brigades—that is, over 10,000 soldiers—to be immediately deployed to Kabul. General David McKiernan told reporters in Washington, D.C. Wednesday that Americans were facing a “tough fight” in Afghanistan that “might get worse before it gets better.”
AMY GOODMAN: As the US-led wars in the Middle East show no sign of abating, we turn now to a man who has chronicled eleven major wars in this part of the world and shows no sign of abating, himself. Robert Fisk is Britain’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, has borne witness to countless tragedies in the Middle East for over three decades.
Robert Fisk has been named British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times. He is currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His previous books include Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. His latest is a collection of his essays and articles from The Independent; it’s called The Age of the Warrior. Robert Fisk joins us here in New York in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’re traveling through this country in the midst of a major crisis and a war abroad. Talk about your observations.
ROBERT FISK: Well, I suppose the first thing is how similar the two things are. I mean, first of all, the Europeans were constantly advising more banking regulation, in case they got infected by any economic crisis. The United States, this had to be a free market, deregulation totally. In other words, once more, the United States did not listen to its foreign partners and allies, on economic issues this time.
Number two is, rushed into a quick fix for a rescue bailout without any really serious planning, like crossing the Tigris River without a plan for post-war Iraq.
And three, it’s the little people who get hit: the little Iraqis, in the hundreds of thousands, who’ve died; and, of course, poor Americans, for the most part, who join the Marines or the Reservists because they want to have a university education, they end up in Iraq, and they get killed. The little people, once more, are the people who are getting hit. They’re very parallel things, in my view. I can see it all the time.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, here, in this country, as the number of US casualties has declined, so has the attention in the media or in the public to the situation in Iraq, and everyone has now bought into the thought that things are getting better.
ROBERT FISK: Ha ha ha, yes. Look, the degree of ethnic cleansing that actually took place—genocidal, in some ways—and the fact that the Americans have now built walls through every community in every major city in Iraq, which has divided between the communities, means that there isn’t, in fact, any free flow of movement. There isn’t a country operating anymore.
But now, I mean, if you stand back a little bit and look at it like this, first of all, we went to Afghanistan, we won the war. Then we rushed off to Iraq and won the war. Then we lost the war in Iraq, or maybe we won it again. And then we’re going back to Afghanistan, where we seem to have lost the war, to win it all over again. And in due course, perhaps we’ll have to go back to Iraq. I mean, in my reports, I’m calling this Iraqistan. And now, we’ve actually got soldiers on foot turning up in Pakistan. I mean, has nobody actually stood back and said, “What on earth are we doing out there?” I mean, I calculated for our Sunday magazine that we now have twenty-two times as many military personnel per head of population as the Crusaders had in the twelfth century. You know, what are we doing?
It was a baker in Baghdad who asked me this very obvious question. He said, “Why are you”—“you” meaning Western military—“Why are you in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, French air base at Dushanbe running close as support for the British in Helmand province in Afghanistan? Why are your people going into Pakistan? Why are you in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why are you in Turkey? Why are you in Jordan and Egypt and Algeria? US Special Forces have a base outside Tamanrasset in the southern Sahara. Why are you in Bahrain? Why are you in Oman? Why are you in Yemen? Why are you in Qatar? Biggest US air base.” I didn’t have a reply.
But I was struck when I was having lunch on the West Coast a few days ago, by a very educated lady sitting next to me, saying, “But the Muslims wanted to take over the world, and they had already taken over France.” I mean, how does this happen? I mean, she might have told me that Martians had landed in New Mexico, only thing you could do to counter that kind of argument. It looks like somehow we’re on a brainwashing trip. And we’ve all bought the narrative. You know, we even have Mrs. Palin talking about victory in Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you go to Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you live there.
AMY GOODMAN: She also has talked about Iraq as being God’s war.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, we’ve had some generals who’ve talked about that, too—haven’t we?—and kept their uniform on in church when they said it. You know, more and more, I look back on the early statements by bin Laden, statements we never actually read. The narrative is always “Is this bin Laden?” when he appears. “Is he ill? When did he make the statement? And have the CIA confirmed it’s his voice?” What his voice actually says is never of any interest to us.
But if you remember, he went on and on about crusaders, and he actually made a very important statement before we invaded Iraq, in which he called upon Muslims in Iraq to collaborate with Baath Party officials against the crusaders, on the grounds that Salahadin had collaborated with the non-Muslim Persians against the crusaders in the twelfth century. We missed all this. And this was the detonation that set off the insurgency.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, at the debate, the presidential debate last Friday, we had the situation where the so-called candidate of peace—
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —Barack Obama, is talking about, well, we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, as if this is a game here that’s being played and we made a mistake in the game. And so, now we must go back to Afghanistan and possibly even into Pakistan.
ROBERT FISK: Look, I think you have to realize—and the Arabs do not, and I’ve been trying on Al Jazeera Arabic service to say this—it’s not going to make any difference who is the next president of the United States, as far as Southwest Asia and the Muslim world is concerned. I was in Qatar, actually, in the Al Jazeera Arabic studios when Obama made his famous Middle East trip. You know, he gave forty-five minutes to the Palestinians, twenty-four hours to the Israelis. And the Arabic anchorman turned to me. He said, “So, Robert, do you think Obama will win the election?” I said, “He’ll win the election for the Israeli Knesset. I don’t know if he’s going to get the presidency of the United States.” You know, we’ve got here a one-track policy into the Middle East by the United States, and it’s not going to change.
AMY GOODMAN: But, Robert, is that true? On the one hand, you have, yes, they don’t sound that different when it comes to, for example, Afghanistan. They agree that’s the main site of the war, the main candidates. But I guess it’s the question of what could happen next and what approach McCain or Obama would take.
ROBERT FISK: Look, the Taliban now control half of Afghanistan, not just at night, but in the day—during the day, too. There’s no doubt that Petraeus has got it right when he talks about things are going to get worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Petraeus.
ROBERT FISK: Petraeus. And there’s no doubt, too, that the famous British ambassador, Mr. Cowper-Coles—by the way, he’s in my book, and he’s the guy who persuaded the British, when he was ambassador to Saudi Arabia, not to continue with the bribes inquiry by the British fraud squad into arms sold to Saudi Arabia. He’s the guy who actually advised the fraud squad people to drop it.
AMY GOODMAN: And this involved Bandar Bush. This involved the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.
ROBERT FISK: Absolutely, it’s the same guy. I should add—I should just add that more than twenty years ago, a young diplomat in the Egyptian embassy—in the British embassy in Cairo advised me to drop one of our stringers in the region and take on another stringer who was rather favorable to the foreign office. I didn’t do as I was told. But that man was also Cowper-Coles. What a strange career he has!
However, let’s go back to your Obama thing. Look, at the end of the day, we cannot win in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not crossing porous borders. They don’t even acknowledge the border, because, for them, it’s Pashtunistan. The border was drawn by a British civil servant called Sir Mortimer Durand in the Victorian age, and no one there, apart from us, accepts that it’s there—and, I suppose, the Pakistani army.
And the fact of the matter is that we have no policy there. The Karzai government is totally discredited. Karzai himself only rules his palace, with the help of American mercenaries to protect him. His government is full of drug barons, warlords and criminals. And that includes the people down in Kandahar, which is virtually a lost city. The troops cannot enter Kandahar anymore. It’s gone, effectively, especially at night. You can’t go there. No Westerner can walk through the streets of Kandahar. And you don’t see any women, except in Kabul, who are not wearing burqas. You remember the famous liberation of women, equality, gender equality was coming? It’s all turned out to be totally false. And we’re going to win there? We’re going to win there?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and, of course, the issue of Pakistan, to me, is the most frightening one of all, because—
ROBERT FISK: Absolutely.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —you’re talking about a country that is really almost a failed state at this point.
ROBERT FISK: We’ve been told that—the narrative is that the mad mullahs with black turbans and the crackpot Ahmadinejad of Iran—and he is a crackpot—are going to destroy Israel, and then, of course, they’re going to destroy the Palestinians, and they’ll get destroyed with all these nuclear weapons.
I’ve been saying for more than two years there is one nation in Southwest Asia, which is packed with Taliban supporters and al-Qaeda supporters, and it’s got a bomb, and it’s totally corrupted, from the shoeshine boy to the president, via its intelligence services and army, and it’s called Pakistan. And only now are we beginning to see Pakistan pop up. I bet you if you run a computer check in the next few months, Iran will go right down to the bottom of the page, unless Israel chooses to bomb it, and up will go Pakistan.
And suddenly, how do we deal with this country? It will be a whole crazed mixture, which is already symbolized by the fact that, first of all, we put troops in on the ground in Pakistan and infringed its sovereignty. Then, when the Marriott Hotel blows up, the FBI offers its help in finding out the criminals. I mean, are we friends, or are we enemies of Pakistan? We don’t even know that.
And we start talking, using phrases like “victory.” We should be talking about phrases like "justice for the people of the Middle East.” If you have justice, you can build democracy on it, and then we can withdraw all these soldiers. We’re always going—promising people in the Middle East democracy and packages of human rights off our supermarket shelves, and we’re always arriving with our horses and our Humvees and our swords and our Apache helicopters and our M1A1 tanks. The only future in the Middle East is to withdraw all our military forces and have serious political, social, religious, cultural relations with these people. It’s not our land.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, just before we went on air, this came over AP: suicide bombers targeted Shia worshippers as they left morning prayers at two Baghdad mosques, killing nineteen people, injuring fifty others. In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot six people as they traveled in a minibus at Wajihiyah, a town sixty miles north of Baghdad.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, and we won, and the surge was successful, and everything’s going back to ordinary life, and people—I mean, that map which we saw, the two maps coming up—it’s preposterous. I mean, I get phone calls from Iraqis in Damascus, when I’m in Beirut, saying, you know, “Can you help us stay in Syria? Can we come to Lebanon? We cannot go back to Baghdad.” And they’re still getting calls saying, you know, “If you come back to your house, you’ll be murdered.” This is not a success; it’s a hell disaster for all the peoples of the Middle East. I mean, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank—I mean, is no one waking up to say that there is no hope there at the moment? You know, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel out in the Middle East.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you mentioned the West Bank, obviously, the original center of this entire conflict. The—
ROBERT FISK: I’m not sure it is the center anymore, by the way, but, yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Right. But the comments recently by Ehud Olmert, saying that—
ROBERT FISK: Look, Ehud Olmert is a has-been. He’s gone.
AMY GOODMAN: But he is prime minister.
ROBERT FISK: Just.
AMY GOODMAN: And he said you should give back the West Bank.
ROBERT FISK: Yes, but he’s going, Amy. He’s going. This is the same as all your generals who go out to fight in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and when they’re asked to comment to the press, they say, “Everything is going fine; it may be a tough battle,” and they salute and click their heels to Rumsfeld, or they did. And the moment they retire, they demand Rumsfeld’s resignation and say it’s all gone wrong. I mean, if only just one of them, just one, would say it in a press conference when they still had their uniform on, we might see a few changes coming about, but they don’t. They keep their—they go heel.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, we’ll end it there, but we’re going to do part two. Robert Fisk, bestselling author, journalist, writes for The Independent, currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His latest collection of essays and articles is called The Age of the Warrior.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/2/the_age_of_the_warrior_robert
The British ambassador’s leaked statements were published just as the top US commander in Afghanistan called for three additional combat brigades—that is, over 10,000 soldiers—to be immediately deployed to Kabul. General David McKiernan told reporters in Washington, D.C. Wednesday that Americans were facing a “tough fight” in Afghanistan that “might get worse before it gets better.”
AMY GOODMAN: As the US-led wars in the Middle East show no sign of abating, we turn now to a man who has chronicled eleven major wars in this part of the world and shows no sign of abating, himself. Robert Fisk is Britain’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, has borne witness to countless tragedies in the Middle East for over three decades.
Robert Fisk has been named British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times. He is currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His previous books include Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. His latest is a collection of his essays and articles from The Independent; it’s called The Age of the Warrior. Robert Fisk joins us here in New York in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’re traveling through this country in the midst of a major crisis and a war abroad. Talk about your observations.
ROBERT FISK: Well, I suppose the first thing is how similar the two things are. I mean, first of all, the Europeans were constantly advising more banking regulation, in case they got infected by any economic crisis. The United States, this had to be a free market, deregulation totally. In other words, once more, the United States did not listen to its foreign partners and allies, on economic issues this time.
Number two is, rushed into a quick fix for a rescue bailout without any really serious planning, like crossing the Tigris River without a plan for post-war Iraq.
And three, it’s the little people who get hit: the little Iraqis, in the hundreds of thousands, who’ve died; and, of course, poor Americans, for the most part, who join the Marines or the Reservists because they want to have a university education, they end up in Iraq, and they get killed. The little people, once more, are the people who are getting hit. They’re very parallel things, in my view. I can see it all the time.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, here, in this country, as the number of US casualties has declined, so has the attention in the media or in the public to the situation in Iraq, and everyone has now bought into the thought that things are getting better.
ROBERT FISK: Ha ha ha, yes. Look, the degree of ethnic cleansing that actually took place—genocidal, in some ways—and the fact that the Americans have now built walls through every community in every major city in Iraq, which has divided between the communities, means that there isn’t, in fact, any free flow of movement. There isn’t a country operating anymore.
But now, I mean, if you stand back a little bit and look at it like this, first of all, we went to Afghanistan, we won the war. Then we rushed off to Iraq and won the war. Then we lost the war in Iraq, or maybe we won it again. And then we’re going back to Afghanistan, where we seem to have lost the war, to win it all over again. And in due course, perhaps we’ll have to go back to Iraq. I mean, in my reports, I’m calling this Iraqistan. And now, we’ve actually got soldiers on foot turning up in Pakistan. I mean, has nobody actually stood back and said, “What on earth are we doing out there?” I mean, I calculated for our Sunday magazine that we now have twenty-two times as many military personnel per head of population as the Crusaders had in the twelfth century. You know, what are we doing?
It was a baker in Baghdad who asked me this very obvious question. He said, “Why are you”—“you” meaning Western military—“Why are you in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, French air base at Dushanbe running close as support for the British in Helmand province in Afghanistan? Why are your people going into Pakistan? Why are you in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why are you in Turkey? Why are you in Jordan and Egypt and Algeria? US Special Forces have a base outside Tamanrasset in the southern Sahara. Why are you in Bahrain? Why are you in Oman? Why are you in Yemen? Why are you in Qatar? Biggest US air base.” I didn’t have a reply.
But I was struck when I was having lunch on the West Coast a few days ago, by a very educated lady sitting next to me, saying, “But the Muslims wanted to take over the world, and they had already taken over France.” I mean, how does this happen? I mean, she might have told me that Martians had landed in New Mexico, only thing you could do to counter that kind of argument. It looks like somehow we’re on a brainwashing trip. And we’ve all bought the narrative. You know, we even have Mrs. Palin talking about victory in Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you go to Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you live there.
AMY GOODMAN: She also has talked about Iraq as being God’s war.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, we’ve had some generals who’ve talked about that, too—haven’t we?—and kept their uniform on in church when they said it. You know, more and more, I look back on the early statements by bin Laden, statements we never actually read. The narrative is always “Is this bin Laden?” when he appears. “Is he ill? When did he make the statement? And have the CIA confirmed it’s his voice?” What his voice actually says is never of any interest to us.
But if you remember, he went on and on about crusaders, and he actually made a very important statement before we invaded Iraq, in which he called upon Muslims in Iraq to collaborate with Baath Party officials against the crusaders, on the grounds that Salahadin had collaborated with the non-Muslim Persians against the crusaders in the twelfth century. We missed all this. And this was the detonation that set off the insurgency.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, at the debate, the presidential debate last Friday, we had the situation where the so-called candidate of peace—
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —Barack Obama, is talking about, well, we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, as if this is a game here that’s being played and we made a mistake in the game. And so, now we must go back to Afghanistan and possibly even into Pakistan.
ROBERT FISK: Look, I think you have to realize—and the Arabs do not, and I’ve been trying on Al Jazeera Arabic service to say this—it’s not going to make any difference who is the next president of the United States, as far as Southwest Asia and the Muslim world is concerned. I was in Qatar, actually, in the Al Jazeera Arabic studios when Obama made his famous Middle East trip. You know, he gave forty-five minutes to the Palestinians, twenty-four hours to the Israelis. And the Arabic anchorman turned to me. He said, “So, Robert, do you think Obama will win the election?” I said, “He’ll win the election for the Israeli Knesset. I don’t know if he’s going to get the presidency of the United States.” You know, we’ve got here a one-track policy into the Middle East by the United States, and it’s not going to change.
AMY GOODMAN: But, Robert, is that true? On the one hand, you have, yes, they don’t sound that different when it comes to, for example, Afghanistan. They agree that’s the main site of the war, the main candidates. But I guess it’s the question of what could happen next and what approach McCain or Obama would take.
ROBERT FISK: Look, the Taliban now control half of Afghanistan, not just at night, but in the day—during the day, too. There’s no doubt that Petraeus has got it right when he talks about things are going to get worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Petraeus.
ROBERT FISK: Petraeus. And there’s no doubt, too, that the famous British ambassador, Mr. Cowper-Coles—by the way, he’s in my book, and he’s the guy who persuaded the British, when he was ambassador to Saudi Arabia, not to continue with the bribes inquiry by the British fraud squad into arms sold to Saudi Arabia. He’s the guy who actually advised the fraud squad people to drop it.
AMY GOODMAN: And this involved Bandar Bush. This involved the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.
ROBERT FISK: Absolutely, it’s the same guy. I should add—I should just add that more than twenty years ago, a young diplomat in the Egyptian embassy—in the British embassy in Cairo advised me to drop one of our stringers in the region and take on another stringer who was rather favorable to the foreign office. I didn’t do as I was told. But that man was also Cowper-Coles. What a strange career he has!
However, let’s go back to your Obama thing. Look, at the end of the day, we cannot win in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not crossing porous borders. They don’t even acknowledge the border, because, for them, it’s Pashtunistan. The border was drawn by a British civil servant called Sir Mortimer Durand in the Victorian age, and no one there, apart from us, accepts that it’s there—and, I suppose, the Pakistani army.
And the fact of the matter is that we have no policy there. The Karzai government is totally discredited. Karzai himself only rules his palace, with the help of American mercenaries to protect him. His government is full of drug barons, warlords and criminals. And that includes the people down in Kandahar, which is virtually a lost city. The troops cannot enter Kandahar anymore. It’s gone, effectively, especially at night. You can’t go there. No Westerner can walk through the streets of Kandahar. And you don’t see any women, except in Kabul, who are not wearing burqas. You remember the famous liberation of women, equality, gender equality was coming? It’s all turned out to be totally false. And we’re going to win there? We’re going to win there?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and, of course, the issue of Pakistan, to me, is the most frightening one of all, because—
ROBERT FISK: Absolutely.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —you’re talking about a country that is really almost a failed state at this point.
ROBERT FISK: We’ve been told that—the narrative is that the mad mullahs with black turbans and the crackpot Ahmadinejad of Iran—and he is a crackpot—are going to destroy Israel, and then, of course, they’re going to destroy the Palestinians, and they’ll get destroyed with all these nuclear weapons.
I’ve been saying for more than two years there is one nation in Southwest Asia, which is packed with Taliban supporters and al-Qaeda supporters, and it’s got a bomb, and it’s totally corrupted, from the shoeshine boy to the president, via its intelligence services and army, and it’s called Pakistan. And only now are we beginning to see Pakistan pop up. I bet you if you run a computer check in the next few months, Iran will go right down to the bottom of the page, unless Israel chooses to bomb it, and up will go Pakistan.
And suddenly, how do we deal with this country? It will be a whole crazed mixture, which is already symbolized by the fact that, first of all, we put troops in on the ground in Pakistan and infringed its sovereignty. Then, when the Marriott Hotel blows up, the FBI offers its help in finding out the criminals. I mean, are we friends, or are we enemies of Pakistan? We don’t even know that.
And we start talking, using phrases like “victory.” We should be talking about phrases like "justice for the people of the Middle East.” If you have justice, you can build democracy on it, and then we can withdraw all these soldiers. We’re always going—promising people in the Middle East democracy and packages of human rights off our supermarket shelves, and we’re always arriving with our horses and our Humvees and our swords and our Apache helicopters and our M1A1 tanks. The only future in the Middle East is to withdraw all our military forces and have serious political, social, religious, cultural relations with these people. It’s not our land.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, just before we went on air, this came over AP: suicide bombers targeted Shia worshippers as they left morning prayers at two Baghdad mosques, killing nineteen people, injuring fifty others. In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot six people as they traveled in a minibus at Wajihiyah, a town sixty miles north of Baghdad.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, and we won, and the surge was successful, and everything’s going back to ordinary life, and people—I mean, that map which we saw, the two maps coming up—it’s preposterous. I mean, I get phone calls from Iraqis in Damascus, when I’m in Beirut, saying, you know, “Can you help us stay in Syria? Can we come to Lebanon? We cannot go back to Baghdad.” And they’re still getting calls saying, you know, “If you come back to your house, you’ll be murdered.” This is not a success; it’s a hell disaster for all the peoples of the Middle East. I mean, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank—I mean, is no one waking up to say that there is no hope there at the moment? You know, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel out in the Middle East.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you mentioned the West Bank, obviously, the original center of this entire conflict. The—
ROBERT FISK: I’m not sure it is the center anymore, by the way, but, yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Right. But the comments recently by Ehud Olmert, saying that—
ROBERT FISK: Look, Ehud Olmert is a has-been. He’s gone.
AMY GOODMAN: But he is prime minister.
ROBERT FISK: Just.
AMY GOODMAN: And he said you should give back the West Bank.
ROBERT FISK: Yes, but he’s going, Amy. He’s going. This is the same as all your generals who go out to fight in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and when they’re asked to comment to the press, they say, “Everything is going fine; it may be a tough battle,” and they salute and click their heels to Rumsfeld, or they did. And the moment they retire, they demand Rumsfeld’s resignation and say it’s all gone wrong. I mean, if only just one of them, just one, would say it in a press conference when they still had their uniform on, we might see a few changes coming about, but they don’t. They keep their—they go heel.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, we’ll end it there, but we’re going to do part two. Robert Fisk, bestselling author, journalist, writes for The Independent, currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His latest collection of essays and articles is called The Age of the Warrior.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/2/the_age_of_the_warrior_robert
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