Gimme Shelter Radio is the nightly live radio program of the private "Gimme Shelter" forum hosted by Phoenix. Show topics cover the global current events impacting us all. The live show airs nightly at 11pm EST. All past shows are on-demand.
The following video is a compilation of news and videos that point to a potential catastrophic event that will happen around November 9, 2011 .. give or take a day or two or three ... Related articles are posted below this video...
*Friday, October 28th ~ The End of the Myan Calendar ~ Link Awakening As One ...
The adoption of a draft bill submitted in the oil and gas 2007
Baghdad-morning
Government agreed with the delegation of the Government of Iraqi Kurdistan on the adoption of the draft law of the State oil and gas in February 2007.
Chief said, ghadhban Fadel advisors quoted Kurdish news agency: "the Government has agreed with the delegation of the Government of Arbil to adopt a draft law State oil and gas in February 2007 and negotiation before the end of the year".
Last week, completed three joint commissions formed between Baghdad and Erbil to resolve outstanding issues and raised three reports to the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for consideration and formulation of its position.
Baghdad and Tehran agree to end the outstanding files
Al-Maliki stresses the need to activate dialogue among States of the region
Baghdad-morning
Paid a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to Baghdad on strengthening cooperation between the two sides reached agreements on border demarcation and water, energy and trade.
With President Jalal Talabani stressed importance of joint action between the two countries, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confirmed the importance of dialogue and understanding among States of the region stressed Maliki arrival in Baghdad on Monday declared the need to activate dialogue and understanding among States of the region, including links and subscribers, which makes every State affected by the other State., Salehi was ready to cooperate in resolving all the outstanding problems between the two countries, including the theme of water, where the two sides agreed to form a Joint Committee of specialists to access To develop a bilateral Convention specific mechanisms to address this issue.
Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money have gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the company’s operations as it filed for bankruptcy on Monday, according to several people briefed on the matter.
The revelation of the missing money scuttled an 11th hour deal for MF Global to sell a major part of itself to a rival brokerage firm. MF Global, the powerhouse commodities brokerage run by Jon S. Corzine, had staked its survival on completing the deal.
Now, the investigation threatens to tarnish the reputation of Mr. Corzine, the former New Jersey Governor and Goldman Sachs chief who oversaw MF Global’s demise, making it the first American victim of Europe’s debt crisis.
What began as nearly $1 billion missing had dropped to less than $700 million by late Monday. It is unclear where the money went, and some money is expected to trickle in over the coming days as the firm sorts through the bankruptcy process, the people said.
But regulators are examining whether MF Global diverted some customer money to support its own trades as the firm teetered on the brink of collapse. If that was the case, it could violate a fundamental tenet of Wall Street regulation: Customers’ money must be kept separate from company money.
Such a finding would move the discussion from sloppy internal controls at MF Global to something more troubling. While the investigation is in its early days, it raises the specter that regulators could sanction the firm or the employees responsible.
MF Global and Mr. Corzine have not been accused of any wrongdoing
Snip ~ "The report also questioned tying the tax break to an "infrastructure bank", as proposed by some members of Congress"
October 31, 2011
Profit tax holiday could blunt U.S. exports: gov't
Any economic benefit that might result from a U.S. tax holiday for overseas corporate profits could be muted, or even reversed, if it strengthened the U.S. dollar and weakened exports, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
The report also questioned tying the tax break to an infrastructure bank, as proposed by some members of Congress.
The rationale for the infrastructure bank proposal "is not clear" because any short-term tax gains that could be used to fund transportation spending would be offset by greater government revenue losses later, said the October 27 report.
The report comes at a time when support on Capitol Hill for the proposal is growing, mostly among Republicans. It is being aggressively promoted by lobbyists for large multinationals, but it faces stiff opposition from many Democrats.
The Obama administration so far has refused to consider the proposal without a broad tax reform plan.
Any "stimulative impact of the repatriations on the U.S. economy would be lessened, or possibly reversed" by foreign exchange effects, said the report from CRS, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress.
"This effect could make the repatriation holiday contractionary overall during a period of less than full employment," the report said.
Some large multinationals defer paying taxes on foreign profits by keeping them abroad and not bringing them home, which is known as repatriating them.
An estimated $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in U.S. corporate profits is presently parked abroad avoiding the corporate income tax.
If those earnings monies were repatriated today, the corporations would have to pay the 35 percent top corporate tax rate on them. Many companies do regularly repatriate foreign profits and pay the tax, but some do not.
U.S., EU, Japan press China on financial services at WTO
Washington, The United States criticized China on Monday for failing to fulfill World Trade Organization commitments to open its financial services market, while the European Union and Japan pressed for answers on specific areas of Beijing's regulations.
"While we welcome China's progress in implementing many of its financial services commitments, it appears that China has not implemented, or has only partially implemented, some of them," the U.S. Trade Representative's office said in a statement made at the WTO in Geneva.
The trade office, known as the USTR, urged China "to take immediate steps to address the concerns ... and further improve foreign companies' access to its financial services sector." It made the comments as part of a final WTO review of China's progress in implementing the promises it made to join the World Trade Organization in 2001.
The terms of China's accession called for an annual review during the first eight years and a final one in the 10th.
ROME, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced fresh calls to resign on Monday as markets turned on Italy, pushing its borrowing costs to dangerous new levels on renewed concern about a worsening of the euro zone crisis.
One of Italy's most prominent businessmen, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, chairman of sports car maker Ferrari, said in a letter to the daily La Repubblica that Italy had reached "the point of no return" and urged Berlusconi to make way for a government of national unity.
Yields on Italy's 10-year, fixed-rate bonds known as BTPs rose to 6.1 percent, a level widely seen as unsustainable in the longer term and close to the level which forced Rome to seek help from the European Central Bank in August.
The ECB kept up its intervention to cap Rome's borrowing costs by buying Italian bonds on the market on Monday but the risk premium continued to rise and 10-year Italian yields ended the day more than 407 basis points above benchmark German Bunds.
The jump in the yield reflected widening market skepticism about measures EU leaders agreed last week to stem the euro zone crisis and underlined Italy's position at the center of an emergency which threatens the entire bloc.
Italian bank leaders said tensions on sovereign bond markets risked raising bank lending costs and hitting companies already complaining about the difficulty in raising cash for investment.
Baghdad, The government of Iraq continued to respond vigorously on Monday to a tip from the new interim leaders in Libya that former members of Saddam Hussein’s military and Baath Party were plotting a coup — so much so that critics are now saying that the information has become a pretext for arresting its political opponents.
As the overwhelming majority of high-ranking Baathists were Sunnis, the mass arrests by the Shiite-controlled government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is fanning sectarian tensions, just six weeks before the United States military is scheduled to withdraw its last soldiers.
Former Baathists, who made up much of the professional class as well as the military and political leaders under Saddam Hussein have said they are deeply concerned by the turn of events, particularly now that the American military can no longer guarantee their safety.
“Frankly, I am very scared and expect to be arrested at any moment,” Haji Abu Ahmed, a former Baathist in the southern city of Basra, said in an interview.
“The current practices are the same as the practices of Saddam,” he said. “There seems to be no difference between the two systems. Saddam was chasing Dawa, and now Dawa is chasing Baathists.” Dawa is Mr. Maliki’s political party.
When the government revealed last week that it had received the information in October, gleaned from the ruined headquarters of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s intelligence headquarters in Tripoli, the authorities detained more than 200 people.
By Saturday, the number of arrests of suspected members of what Mr. Maliki has characterized as an underground group made up of the vestiges of the disbanded Baath Party had more than tripled to 615, according to government figures.
Dozens of arrests have been reported since, with some suspects pulled from their houses before dawn, relatives said.
A senior official in the Iraqi government said last week that Libya’s interim leader, Mahmoud Jibril, revealed the plot to Mr. Maliki during a surprise visit to Baghdad in October.
In addition to the mass arrests in the supposed plot, the government is purging former Baathists in higher education. Last month, the government fired 145 employees of Salahudin University in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, for being former Baathists.
The leaders of Iraq’s Sunni minority are now, as they have been in the past, extraordinarily sensitive to efforts to arrest or extricate members of the former Baath Party from public life. That process, called de-Baathification, was introduced by the United States immediately after the 2003 invasion and contributed, in the minds of its many critics, to the formation of the insurgency.
Sunnis already nervous about the American withdrawal reacted to the arrests and firings with protests and threats that they will seek to spin off predominantly Sunni provinces as autonomous regions. In a largely symbolic vote, one local council in Tikrit, the hometown of Mr. Hussein and a Baath Party stronghold, decided to begin the process of gaining greater independence by forming an autonomous region similar to Kurdistan.
The council in Anbar, the Sunni-dominated western desert region that was an epicenter of the insurgency, issued an ultimatum that if the detainees were not freed, it would also vote to seek greater autonomy. Street protests erupted after Friday Prayer in Tikrit and Ramadi, another Sunni city.
In a television address over the weekend, Mr. Maliki defended the government’s actions, saying, “We do not have space in our government for those plotting against our government.”
He denied that the arrests were singling out political opponents, saying they were a “nonsectarian operation.” As proof, he pointed to Baathist conspirators who had been detained in the predominantly Shiite areas of southern and central Iraq and included Shiites. He said legal processes were respected and arrest warrants obtained.
“We should differentiate between the Baathists who work in departments and institutions of the state, who harmonized with the political process and who fought terror, and the Saddamist Baathists, who cooperate with Al Qaeda and work to overthrow the political process,” Mr. Maliki said.
The arrests are also apparently helping Mr. Maliki to shore up support among factionalized Shiite parties who find common cause only in persecuting their former oppressors.
As one example, Mr. Maliki’s uneasy partner in the governing coalition, Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric, endorsed the firings of alleged Baathists professors at Salahudin University. “The brother minister of higher education should go on with this uprooting,” Mr. Sadr said in a statement. “This is good for us and good for them.”
Baghdad, Any buildup of U.S. forces in the Gulf after their withdrawal from Iraq would be imprudent, Iran’s foreign minister said on Monday, urging all nations to tread cautiously in a troubled region.
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi made the comments in Baghdad days after U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran not to try to exploit the U.S. withdrawal at the year-end.
“Now, about the U.S. planning to build up their forces in the region … they are not following a rational and prudent approach,” Salehi told a joint news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari.
As the last remaining U.S. troops leave Iraq, oil production from the war-torn but oil rich nation is finally starting to ramp up.
Oil production in Iraq hovered around 2 million barrels a day for much of the post-U.S. invasion period.
But over the last year production jumped 13%, going from 2.3 to 2.6 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Much of that increase has come in the last few months alone, and it's part of the reason why many analyst expect Saudi Arabia to soon cut oil output.
In fact, some analysts say that over the next few years Iraqi oil production could really balloon. The Iraqi's may eventually produce as much oil as the Saudis.
Bankers: Bank capital increase will lead to optimal investment
Bankers were unanimous that more capital banks will help the Government to implement investment projects by borrowing or credit.
They (News Agency news) that local banks still capital limited and unable to contribute to the country's economic development processes.
Deputy Central Bank Governor Mohamed Saleh, in appearance if you increase the size of capital banks will help the Government to implement investment projects through loans, cash or credit.
Added benefit: the number of very large private banks totalled more than (37) banks, but still limited financial activity is not only (10%) Banking market activity in Iraq that the dominance of State-owned banks in spending funds for project implementation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has called for the expansion of ties and closer cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq.
Salehi made the remarks during a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad on Sunday night, IRNA reported.
Salehi expressed satisfaction over the development of Iraq and said he hoped that unity among the people would help the country make more progress in the future.
The two officials discussed ways to bolster bilateral cooperation and the latest developments in Iraq and other regional countries.
The Iranian foreign minister also held a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari and is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other senior Iraqi officials.
On Saturday, Salehi held a meeting with Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani in Tehran.
Salehi travelled to Baghdad from the Qatari capital Doha, where he discussed bilateral ties and regional developments with high-ranking Qatari officials.
As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
Moscow, For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.
Igor Panarin, In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."
Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.
But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.
MANILA, Philippines — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is hopeful that its new integration project to be launched next year will usher in a new year of mutually beneficial cooperation between Europe and Asia.
In an article he wrote for Izvestia, a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in Russia, Putin revealed that it will launch on January 1, 2012 an integration project, dubbed Common Economic Space (CES) of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which will also solidify efforts to bridge Europe and the Asia Pacific, creating the EurAsian Union.
Putin said that the CES is aimed at developing trade and production ties. “We are creating a huge market that will encompass over 165 million consumers, with unified legislation and the free flow of capital, services, and labour force,” he said.
Putin stressed that the project will allow borderless transactions between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
“The CES rooted in coordinated action in key institutional areas such as macroeconomics, ensuring competition, technical regulations, agricultural subsidies, transport, and natural monopolies tariffs,” he said.
Madrid, A second volcanic eruption off the coast of the island of El Hierro could be on the point of happening, scientists warned.
The warning came just over a week after the end of the first eruption, which forced a village on the island to be evacuated.
The offshore eruption began at a depth of over 100 meters below sea level on Oct. 10 off the southern coast of El Hierro, the smallest and most westerly of the Canary Islands, a group of islands off the western coast of Africa, which are governed by Spain.
It led to the creation of a stain caused by emissions of sulphur, pumice stone and magma which extended beyond El Hierro.
Although the first eruption died down and seismic activity began to fade, it has gained momentum again in recent days with El Hierro suffering over 120 earth tremors with the strongest reaching 3.9 on the Richter scale on Sunday.
Lawmakers in the United States, which provides about 22 percent of UNESCO's funding, had threatened to halt some $80 million in annual funding if Palestinian membership was approved. It wasn't clear in the immediate aftermath of Monday's vote whether the threat would become reality.
Huge cheers went up in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after delegates approved the membership in a vote of 107-14 with 52 abstentions. Eighty-one votes were needed for approval in a hall with 173 UNESCO member delegations present.
"Long Live Palestine!" shouted one delegate, in French, at the unusually tense and dramatic meeting of UNESCO's General Conference.
Gimme Shelter Radio is the nightly live radio program of the private "Gimme Shelter" forum hosted by Phoenix. Show topics cover the global current events impacting us all. The live show airs nightly at 11pm EST. All past shows are on-demand.
Washington, Europe's long shadow is tempering a burst of optimism that the United States can escape recession and China achieve a soft landing.
Deep concern persists that European leaders will fall short when they try to flesh out the details of how their rescue fund can tap sufficient resources to backstop Greece and to handle a potential government financing crisis in Italy or Spain.
Europe is looking to emerging economies to provide the extra financial firepower to strengthen the fund four- to five-fold, to about 1 trillion euros, a promise that could materialize at a Group of 20 summit in France on Thursday and Friday.
The response so far from China on strengthening the fund has been very cautious, and market experts want to see a fund with resources twice the size under discussion in Brussels. That has set the stage for possible unsettling disappointment in the days ahead.
"If the absolute amount is not enough, we will be back to the storms. The break in the clouds may only last a few hours," said Ellen Zentner, senior U.S. economist at UBS.
The Arab League handed Syrian officials a plan for ending seven months of increasingly violent unrest against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, and Assad told Russian Television he would cooperate with the opposition.
"We will cooperate with all political powers, both those who had existed before the crisis, and those who arose during it. We believe interacting with these powers is extremely important," Assad said in the interview on Sunday.
The United Nations says more than 3,000 people have been killed in the Syrian government's crackdown on protesters demanding political reforms and an end to Assad's rule.
Assad blames the unrest of foreign-backed armed gangs and said in the television interview there had been "hundreds of deaths among the military, police and security forces."
The Arab League committee put its plan, involving talks in Cairo between the Syrian authorities and their opponents, to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem and Bouthaina Shaaban, a political adviser to Assad, on Sunday in Qatar.
The League had previously set a two-week deadline for the start of such talks, which expired on Sunday. The committee said it hoped for a Syrian response to its plan by Monday.
"More important than a dialogue is action... This committee has given a very strong response to the recent killings," Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, whose country presides over the committee, told reporters.
Occupy Wall St. a prelude to mass violence in U.S.?
Within the last 24 hours significant, credible information has been received by this reporter indicating that the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement may be a mere prelude to mass violence in the streets of the U.S. One source, a political operative with connections in both Parties who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated that he fears widespread civil unrest associated with the movement--unrest that could potentially lead to dire consequences regarding the 2012 Presidential election.
Those fears are becoming increasingly common as shown by the number of persons calling into radio talk shows expressing their concern about the 'Occupy' movement and its potentially subversive aims. Rumors concerning the spread of violence and civil unrest prior to the 2012Presidential election have been running rampant on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Some have even suggested that Barack Obama himself is using the movement to stoke and prod the protesters into committing acts of violence that can then be used for political ends, such as a declaration of Martial law and the suspension of the 2012 Presidential election altogether.
While some of the growing hysteria seems to be far-fetched, there are subtle signs lurking just beneath the surface that point to the potential for such widespread civil unrest in America.
For example, the current tactic of Occupy protesters to gather in the streets in major financial districts in the major cities is only the first phase of an orchestrated multi-pronged attack. The second phase is believed to be much more aggressive and thus, more prone to deteriorate into violence.
U.S. President President Barack Obama will host Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon for a North American leaders' summit in Honolulu on Nov. 13, the White House announced Friday.
The trilateral summit will come on the heels of the larger meeting of leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation nations scheduled for Nov. 12 to Nov. 13in Obama's hometown.
It's the first time since 2009 that Obama, Harper and Calderon will hold the North American leaders summit. The Three Amigos meeting had been an annual tradition starting in 2005 when then-U.S. president George W. Bush hosted prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican president Vicente Fox at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and at his ranch in nearby Crawford.
The meeting comes as Canadians await the outcome of negotiations between Ottawa and Washington on a perimeter-security pact, which Harper and Obama first announced last February.
The Canadian government had initially said the Beyond the Border deal would be ready by the end of summer, but only last week the agreement had yet to be finalized.
The two countries are working on deal to better co-ordinate intelligence-sharing at the border and to streamline cross-border trade. There's been some tension between Canada and U.S., however, in recent weeks after the White House included new Buy American provisions in Obama's $447-billion job creation bill. The Canadian government is also upset over a new $5.50 customs user fee on travellers entering the United States by air or ship.
Harper is also likely to make an 11th-hour pitch for Obama to approve the $7-billion Keystone XL oilsands pipeline, a project that has become bogged down in regulatory delays and political wrangling.
Listen, do you want to know a secret Do you promise not to tell, woh, woh, woh Closer, let me whisper in your ear Say the words you long to hear I'm in love with you, oo
Listen, do you want to know a secret Do you promise not to tell, woh, woh, woh Closer, let me whisper in your ear Say the words you long to hear I'm in love with you, oo
I've known a secret for a week or two Nobody know just we two
Listen, do you want to know a secret Do you promise not to tell, woh, woh, woh Closer, let me whisper in your ear Say the words you long to hear I'm in love with you, oo, oo
Greetings and Salutations;
Someone suggested, I just say this week, ditto ditto, ditto, good bye. I can not tell anyone the 'moment', but huge things have transpired this past week, that have set the world up for it's transition....to the brave new world. I realize that telling spooky stories to people(bad news) gets more press, what will folks do when they find out the 'problems' have solved. While the dinar has not shown publicly, behind the curtain it's already being traded. All else is slated to dump and flip this world out and it will happen pretty much on top of each other. This will add to the confusion and our safety...from the vultures. I don't have anything against vultures, they have a job to do to. In jamaica, if you kill one, the authorities will make you eat it. Hopefully they were dieting on fish...and yes they do eat fish. They only thing you need to do is, follow instructions and don't try 'free lancing'. The trust has rules, follow them. That banker's job is to advise you about it to safe guard yourself. This is no time to be bragging...keep your mouth shut and all will be well.
The top national security advisors of the United States and Iraq met Saturday at the White House, signalling the continued close cooperation of the two countries as US troops prepare to depart by year's end, DPA reported.
Falah al-Fayyadh and Tom Donilon were following up on a recent video teleconference between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, according to a statement issued by the White House.
The men "reaffirmed the common vision of a broad, deep strategic partnership between the United States and Iraq" as provided for in the strategic framework under which troops are being withdrawn.
"The two held a far-reaching discussion of the elements of a fully normalized relationship between Iraq and the United States, including education, investment, and security," the White House Said. "And they committed to develop additional mechanisms to establish a continuous strategic dialogue between the United States and Iraq."
Iraq hopes to achieve 9pc growth in 2012 Baghdad, Iraq's gross domestic product growth should rise to 9 percent in 2012 from around 6percent currently, mainly driven by an expected increase in oil production and exports, a senior central bank official said on Sunday.
Iraq has some of the world's largest oil reserves and is currently producing about 2.9 million barrels per day (bpd).
High oil prices have helped the country earn billions of dollars more than projected this year.
'It will easily jump to 9 percent next year, it will not be difficult. If production and exports in the oil sector rise, it is possible to reach that figure,' Mudher Kasim, a deputy governor of Iraq's Central Bank, told Reuters in an interview.
Kasim said he expected GDP growth to sit at around 5-6 percent at the end of this year.
Iraq is slowly moving to rebuild its dilapidated infrastructure more than eight years after the US-led invasion, and needs investment in virtually every sector.
Iraq can't defend itself fully before 2020: general
Baghdad, Iraq's defense chief has said his military will not be fully ready to defend Iraq from external threats until 2020 to 2024, according to a U.S. inspector's report released on Sunday.
Lieutenant General Babakir Zebari has repeatedly warned that Iraq's security forces, rebuilt after the 2003 invasion that ousted strongman Saddam Hussein, would not be ready for years.
President Barack Obama announced on October 21 that American troops would fully withdraw from Iraq by year-end, as scheduled under a 2008 security pact between the two countries.
Both Iraqi and U.S. military leaders have said the army and police are capable of containing internal threats from Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias that launch scores of attacks monthly, but that they lag in external defense.
The Obama administration plans to bolster the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.
The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after President Barack Obama's announcement this month that the last U.S. soldiers will be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but U.S. military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake.
After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the Pentagon now is drawing up an alternative.
In addition to negotiations about maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.
With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration also is seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new "security architecture" for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.
IMF mulls how to better help countries under strain
Washington, The International Monetary Fund said on Sunday that it was considering how better to help countries under economic strain because of financial market stress but said it was not targeting particular countries.
The global lender was responding to weekend reports, including one in Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, that said the IMF would create a new short-term lending facility to prevent the current financial crisis in Europe from spreading.
The newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said the IMF was likely to provide funds for countries like Italy and Spain where government bond yields remain at high levels.
In a statement, the IMF said that over the past year it was reviewing existing lending arrangements, building on reforms begun in 2008 and 2009 to add to its tools for responding to crises.
It did not directly respond to the suggestion that it might set up a new lending facility.
"The aim of the review is to enhance the ability of the Fund to mitigate contagion by providing liquidity to countries with relatively strong policies and fundamentals that are affected by heightened global or regional financial market stress," the IMF said.
But it said its efforts were intended to meet potential needs of all its members and were not "targeted at particular countries" and have no indication when it might come to any decisions.
Snip ~ "I would be remiss if I didn’t avail myself of the opportunity to mention that the IMF itself is adapting to the new global economic realities. Historic governance reforms at the Fund are delivering a greater voice for the dynamic emerging market economies. Once the latest round of already agreed reforms are in place, China, India, Brazil and Russia will be among the Fund's top ten shareholders (along with the United States, Japan, and the four largest European economies).
At the same time, the voice of our poorest members has been protected. As result, it is our expectation that any issues regarding the IMF’s “legitimacy” will have been laid to rest" ____ May 2, 2011
The Global Economic Situation and Its Impact on the Transatlantic Relationship
John Lipsky - First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
5th U.S. – France Bilateral Dialogue, Washington, D.C., I am honored to have the opportunity to address this opening dinner of the 5th U.S. – France Bilateral Dialogue. I also wish to thank Ambassador and Mme. Delattre for graciously hosting this event at their beautiful and elegant residence.
I was pleased to be asked by the organizers to focus my remarks on how global economic developments are impacting transatlantic relations, as I find this issue to be both important and timely. As I will explain, I also find the answer to be uncertain, as I anticipate that the course of this key partnership will depend to a large extent on the resolution of key challenges being faced at this time in three arenas -- that is, in Europe, the United States and the global economy.
Brussels, Top EU officials urged on Sunday that an upcoming G20 summit address Europe's debt crisis, saying that measures taken at a make-or-break eurozone meeting last week were not enough alone to end the crisis.
In a letter to G20 leaders, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy summarised the measures decided on Thursday to stamp out a crisis that risks pushing the world economy into recession.
"We will implement these measures rigorously and in a timely manner, and we are confident that they will contribute to the swift resolution of the crisis," the EU officials said.
"However, whilst we in Europe will play our part, this cannot alone ensure global recovery and rebalanced growth. There is a continued need for joint action by all G20 partners in a spirit of common responsibility and common purpose," they wrote.
European leaders were under immense pressure to agree a deal before this week's G20 summit in Cannes and will try to sell the eurozone financial bail-out plan to a sceptical United States, China and others pressing them to put their house in order.
The agreement in Brussels is set to cut Greece's debt by 50 percent, recapitalise banks that would teeter from the loss, and offer a substantial boost to a 440 billion euro ($620 billion) bailout fund by possibly turning to emerging powers like China and Brazil.
Sarkozy’s Political Rivals Criticize His Request for China’s Help on Debt
French President Nicolas Sarkozy came under fire from opposition leaders for seeking China’s help to resolve the euro area’s debt crisis.
“It’s shocking,” Martine Aubry, the general secretary of the Socialist Party, said in the Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche. “The Europeans, by turning to the Chinese, are showing their weakness. How will Europe be able to ask China to stop undervaluing its currency or to accept reciprocal commercial accords?”
Sarkozy reached out last week to his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to build support for an enlarged rescue fund designed to solve the region’s sovereign-debt crisis.
The leaders talked just hours after a euro-region summit on Oct. 27 ended with an agreement to boost the European Financial Stability Facility to about 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion), leveraging existing guarantees by as much as five times.
French opposition party objections to a Chinese role come six months before the country’s presidential election, and amid growing concern about public debt in France and in Europe. France’s public debt, which is more than 80 percent of gross domestic product, and its budget deficit are considered by a third of the French as the most important issues confronting the economy, above purchasing power and unemployment, according to a poll published today in Ouest-France newspaper.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Tel-Aviv and across Israel to protest against economic injustice. The protest’s organizers are demanding that the Knesset rewrite the 2012 budget "taking into account the demands of the people."
The latest rally comes after a wave of social protests swept Israel over the summer and culminated in September, when half a million Israelis came out onto the streets. But since then, the movement has slowly died out as protesters returned to their daily lives.
Israeli police say more than 30,000 people marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, and thousands more protested in Jerusalem.
Many protesters are concerned that their story of social protest will be missed by the international community and media, which is now focused on unfolding events in Gaza.
In the past few hours, multiple rockets have been fired from Gaza into southern Israel.
A Progress M-13M spaceship carrying nearly three tons of cargo for the International Space Station successfully blasted off from Baikonur at 10.11 GMT on Sunday. The outcome of the mission will determine the future of manned operations at the ISS.
The spacecraft will dock with the space station on Wednesday.
It is the first launch of a Progress since a crash on August 24 when the rocket's third-stage engine shut down prematurely. Engineers discovered that the problem was caused by a low fuel feed, and returned all the engines currently in stock back to the manufacturer for inspection.
This spacecraft has brand new engines, which were manufactured according to stricter quality standards.
The Progress M-13M spacecraft is packed with 2.9 tons of food, fuel and supplies, including 1,653 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 3,108 pounds of maintenance gear, spare parts and hardware for experiments.
However, the reason so much attention is being paid to this unmanned launch is not its cargo, as the ISS has enough supplies for almost a year of continuous operation, according to NASA.
The launch is critical because it will pave the way for a manned launch of a Progress twin rocket which is waiting on standby, ready to deliver a replacement crew for the ISS.
Amsterdam, The Dutch remain overwhelmingly pessimistic about the prospects for the euro zone and fear that Italy or Spain will be next in line for a bailout, according to a poll published on Sunday ahead of another parliamentary debate on the debt crisis.
The Dutch parliament has grown increasingly critical of the high cost of the bailouts and failure to stem the euro zone crisis, mindful of growing resentment among taxpayers.
On Tuesday, parliament is due to debate the rescue package agreed by European leaders last week. However, the minority coalition government cannot bank on majority support for the package, because the pro-European, opposition Labor Party has become far more critical of euro zone policies in recent weeks.
Gimme Shelter Radio is the nightly live radio program of the private "Gimme Shelter" forum hosted by Phoenix. Show topics cover the global current events impacting us all. The live show airs nightly at 11pm EST. All past shows are on-demand.
Pranab Mukherjee, known as a man for all seasons, returned to the finance ministry as the nation reeled under rising prices. The Union finance minister speaks to Sanjay Basak and Pawan S. Bali on the steps being taken to boost growth at a time of turmoil in the external economic environment.
There has been no major policy reform in recent years from this government. Industry is looking up to you for this. FDI in retail has been pending. When can we expect this to materialise?
It is not correct that there has been no major reform. Let me list matters that have been addressed. The legislative agenda for reforms in the financial sector is quite significant and includes the introduction of major bills in Parliament.
Some of these are Banking Laws Amendment Bill, Factoring and Assignment of Receivables Bill, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, Insurance Laws Amendment Bill and Life Insurance Corporation Bill. These are expected to be passed in the Winter Session.
The Financial Stability and Development Council has been made operational. The Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission has been set up to rewrite financial sector laws and bring them in harmony with the new liberalised environment in the country and in keeping with global best practices.
US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns (L) shakes hand with China's State Councilor Dai Bingguo(R) during a meeting at the Zhongnanhai leaders compound in Beijing.
October 30, 2011
US, China discuss financial recovery
Washington: US and Chinese diplomats discussed ways the world's top two economies could promote balanced growth and a recovery from the global financial recession, the State Department said Saturday.
During a Thursday-Saturday visit in Beijing with senior Chinese officials, US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns also discussed the countries' priorities for major upcoming international meetings, including the G20 Summit next week, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and East Asia Summit in November.
Gimme Shelter Radio is the nightly live radio program of the private "Gimme Shelter" forum hosted by Phoenix. Show topics cover the global current events impacting us all. The live show airs nightly at 11pm EST. All past shows are on-demand.
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US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns (L) shakes hand with China's State Councilor Dai Bingguo(R) during a meeting at the Zhongnanhai leaders compound in Beijing.
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