Forget Björk and Make Way for New Icelandic Stars: Elín & Birna
by ERIKA YOST on OCTOBER 14, 2008

Time to let the women clean up after the boys. According to the Financial Times, Elín Sigfúsdóttir and Birna Einarsdóttir are set to become chief executives of New Landsbanki and New Glitnir respectively, the nationalized banks created by the Icelandic government in the wake of the crisis. One government minister said their appointments were an attempt to signal a new culture within the banking system.

Landsbanki, Glitnir and Kaupthing – known for their aggressive international expansion – collapsed last week under the weight of their debt, leaving the Icelandic economy in very dangerous waters. Many have laid blame for the crisis on the young and predominantly male bankers whose “eyes became bigger than their stomachs”, as one banker conceded. The women are expected to curb the “bonus-driven risk-taking” culture that has dominated in recent years.

The new banks will focus solely on domestic operations, in an attempt to keep money flowing around Iceland’s crushed economy. For the full Financial Times article click here.

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Corporate Banking at Landsbanki:  S. Elín Sigfúsdóttir
S. Elín Sigfúsdóttir is a business administration graduate from the University of Iceland (1979). She took up the position of Managing Director of Corporate Banking in May 2003. Prior to that she worked for Búnaðarbanki Íslands hf. for 24 years, rising to Managing Director of Corporate Banking after having been a Senior Director and Assistant Managing Director of the same division. She has been a board member of Landsbanki Luxembourg SA and SP-Fjármögnun hf. since 2003. She previously served on the boards of Búnaðarbanki in 1998-2003 and Lýsing hf. from 2000-2003.

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and at the Glitnir Bank:

Birna Einarsdóttir
Executive Vice President Iceland Commercial Banking

Ms. Einarsdóttir was appointed to the Glitnir Executive Board in February 2007. She first joined Glitnir (then Iðnaðarbankinn) in 1987. She was Director of Marketing and Sales of Íslandsbanki. After working for the Royal Bank of Scotland for six years she rejoined Glitnir in 2004 and has been in charge of Glitnir’s marketing and sales teams as well as the Corporate development unit. She directed the Bank’s successful re-branding in 2006. In June 2007 she took on the role of head of Glitnir’s Iceland Commercial Bank.

Ms. Einarsdóttir holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the University of Iceland and an MBA degree from Edinburgh University.

At a Summit of India, Brazil, South Africa, they ask the rich countries to consider their input on how to manage the current global financial crisis without jeopardizing the development of emerging economies.

“WE are the victims of a crisis generated by the rich countris,” daid Brazilian President Lula at this meeting that is intended to develop a strategy to deal with effects of the crisis.

Under Bush, US Influence in Latin America Wanes.
Saturday 11 October 2008, by: The Associated Press

From left to right, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva forge alliances at a regional integration meeting in Manaos, Brazil, in early October 2008. (Photo: Antonio Lacerda / EPA)

Quito, Ecuador - In a matter of weeks, a Russian naval squadron will arrive in the waters off Latin America for the first time since the Cold War. It is already getting a warm welcome from some in a region where the influence of the United States is in decline.

“The U.S. Fourth Fleet can come to Latin America but a Russian fleet can’t?” said Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa. “If you ask me, any country and any fleet that wants can visit us. We’re a country of open doors.”

The United States remains the strongest outside power in Latin America by most measures, including trade, military cooperation and the sheer size of its embassies. Yet U.S. clout in what it once considered its backyard has sunk to perhaps the lowest point in decades. As Washington turned its attention to the Middle East, Latin America swung to the left and other powers moved in.

The United States’ financial crisis is not helping. Latin American countries forced by Washington to swallow painful austerity measures in the 1980s and 1990s are aghast at the U.S. failure to police its own markets.

“We did our homework - and they didn’t, they who’ve been telling us for three decades what to do,” the man who presides over Latin America’s largest economy, President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva of Brazil, complained bitterly.

Latin America’s more than 550 million people now “have every reason to view the U.S. as a banana republic,” says analyst Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. “U.S. lectures to Latin Americans about excess greed and lack of accountability have long rung hollow, but today they sound even more ridiculous.”

From 2002 through 2007, the U.S. image eroded in all six Latin American countries polled by the Pew organization, especially in Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia. (The others were Brazil, Peru and Mexico.) People surveyed in 18 Latin American countries rated President Bush among the least popular leaders in 2007, along with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and just ahead of basement-bound Fidel Castro of Cuba, according to the Latinobarometro group of Chile.

In three years of presidential elections ending last year, Latin Americans chose mostly leftist leaders, and only Colombia and El Salvador elected unalloyed pro-U.S. chief executives. In May, the prestigious U.S. Council on Foreign Relations declared the era of U.S. hegemony in the Americas over. And in September, Bolivia and Venezuela both expelled their U.S. ambassadors, accusing them of meddling.

Along with the loss in political standing has come a decline in economic power. U.S. direct investment in Latin America slid from 30 percent to 20 percent of the total from 1998 to 2007, according to the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin American and the Caribbean.

The U.S. still does $560 billion in trade with Latin America, but in the meantime other countries are muscling in. China’s trade with Latin America jumped from $10 billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion last year. In May, a state-owned Chinese company agreed to buy a Peruvian copper mine for $2.1 billion.

Other countries are also biting into U.S. military sales in the region. Boeing Co. is vying with finalists from France and Sweden for the sale of 36 jet fighters to Brazil. Venezuela’s Chavez has committed to buying more than $4 billion in Russian arms, from Sukhoi jet fighters to Kalashnikov assault rifles. In April, Brazil and Russia agreed to jointly design top-line jet fighters and satellite-launch vehicles, and Brazil is getting technology from France to build a submarine.

“Similar deals could have been made with the United States had it been willing to share its technology,” said Geraldo Cavagnari, of the University of Campinas near Sao Paulo.

Last month, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered to help Chavez develop nuclear power. Even Colombia, the staunchest U.S. ally in South America, isn’t limiting its options. After expressing alarm about the Russian warships a week ago, its defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, promptly headed for Russia himself to discuss “better relations in defense.” Chavez says he expects to hold joint Russian-Venezuelan naval exercises as early as November.

Bolivia also is looking to deepen ties with Russia and Iran.

Although the Islamic republic’s ambassador has yet to arrive in South America’s poorest country, its top diplomat there announced Friday that Iran will open two low-cost public health clinics.

And while Bolivia’s only announced Russian hardware purchase is five helicopters for civil defense, Moscow’s ambassador told the AP - after Bolivia booted the U.S. ambassador - that Russia has every right to help Latin American nations arm themselves.

“We know of many historical cases of U.S. intervention in Latin American countries,” said the diplomat, Leonid Golubev.

Thomas Shannon, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the hemisphere, wouldn’t comment directly on whether the U.S. has lost influence in Latin America. But he added that there is no doubt that the U.S. still holds most of the military power in the Caribbean, and said it has no interest in reviving “Cold War rhetoric.” Shannon also noted that overall U.S. aid to the region will reach $2.2 billion for 2009, to total more than $14 billion during Bush’s presidency.

However, critics point out that roughly half that aid is for the military or counternarcotics, and that Washington sends more money annually to Israel alone. Even U.S. giving has been dwarfed by Chavez’s checkbook diplomacy, which easily eclipses U.S. aid between outright gifts and discounted oil.

His largesse has lured several longtime U.S. friends. Honduras’ president, Manuel Zelaya, said last month that after pleading with Washington and the World Bank, he accepted $300 million a year from Chavez for agricultural investment to help fight rising food prices.

“Allies, friends, did not help me when I asked,” he said.

Costa Rica’s president, Oscar Arias, says Venezuela offers Latin America about four or five times as much money as the United States. Costa Rica has become the 19th member of Petrocaribe, through which Chavez sells Caribbean and Central American nations cut-rate oil at very low interest.

The diminished profile of the U.S. in Latin America comes after a history of welcomed influence dating back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy of the 1930s, which emphasized cooperation and trade over military intervention. There have been major bailouts, such as Washington’s $20 billion rescue of Mexico in the 1994 peso devaluation crisis. As former Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich noted, “We are the assistance bureau of first choice for the region.”

But the U.S. has an ugly legacy of covert intervention in countries including Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Cuba. Chile’s center-left president, Michele Bachelet, was jailed and tortured by a U.S.-backed military dictatorship in the 1970s. She recently recalled telling Washington’s ambassador to Chile an old joke: “Some say the only reason there’s never been a coup in the United States is because there’s no U.S. Embassy in the United States.”

The United States has also long served as chief educator to Latin America’s elite. Correa is among its presidents with a U.S. graduate degree - though that didn’t stop him from accusing the CIA of infiltrating his military, or refusing to renew a lease for U.S. counterdrug missions to fly out of Ecuador.

With the U.S. facing its own financial crisis, it’s unlikely to be able to leverage economic influence in Latin America anytime soon. Sen. Barack Obama’s senior adviser on Latin America, Dan Restrepo, acknowledges that his candidate is essentially proposing a symbolic shift in style - albeit adding a special White House envoy for the Americas.

“Barack doesn’t see the United States as the savior of the Americas, but as a constructive partner,” Restrepo told the AP.

Reich, an adviser to Sen. John McCain who served three Republican presidents in the region, put it even more bluntly.

“No matter who is elected in November, there is not going to be any money for Latin America,” he said. “Latin Americans expecting financial resources, any kind of help from the United States, they are barking up the wrong tree.”

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Associated Press writers Dan Keane in Bolivia, Eduardo Gallardo in Chile and Stan Lehman in Brazil contributed to this report.

VIII conferência internacional da Datagro
Sobre açúcar e álcool

VIII international Datagro
Conference on sugar and alcohol

Neste ano, mais uma vez a DATAGRO realiza a sua VIII conferência internacional da DATAGRO sobre açúcar e álcool nos dias 27 e 28 de outubro de 2008, no Hotel Grand Hyatt São Paulo, à Av. Nações Unidas 13301.

Realizada em ambiente agradável, a conferência já se tornou tradicional centro de referência dos principais temas e preocupações do setor para os integrantes de sua cadeia produtiva, proporcionando também ótima oportunidade de networking. O evento contará ainda com ótima infra-estrutura de serviços e tradução simultânea português-inglês-português.
Na edição passada a Conferência Internacional da DATAGRO sobre açúcar e álcool reuniu mais de 530 participantes de 30 países, tendo sido um dos maiores e melhores encontros das maiores autoridades mundiais do setor sucro-alcooleiro. Distinguiu-se promovendo debates e levantando questões de suma importância para o desenvolvimento e crescimento do setor.

Para fazer sua inscrição on-line acesse o site www.conferencia.datagro.com.br ou envie um fax para (0XX11) 4195-6659. Outras informações pelo telefone (0XX11) 4133-3944, com Sr. Alyson.

Again this year, DATAGRO is organizing its VIII international DATAGRO conference on sugar and alcohol on October 27th and 28th, 2008 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel grounds, São Paulo-Brazil?. Held in a pleasant environment, the conference became a traditional center of reference on sugar and alcohol for the production chain members. Also, it provides a good opportunity for networking with the global leaders of these industries. The conference will offer outstanding infrastructure of services and will be available simultaneous translation Portuguese/English/Portuguese.

In the last edition, the international DATAGRO conference on sugar and alcohol attracted more than 530 participants from 30 different countries and was one of the biggest major encounters of the top global authorities in the areas of sugar and alcohol, distinguishing itself by promoting debates and pointing high important questions about the sector growth and development.

Please visit the conference website www.conferencia.datagro.com.br where you will find the conference program, hotel information, and online registration. For more information call us at (5511) 4133-3944 or send a fax to (5511)4195-6659.

Palestrantes Confirmados:
Confirmed Speakers:

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Baron - Diretor Executivo da International Sugar Organization (ISO) - U.K.
Alexis Duval - Tereos - França
Dr. Bruce Babcock - Director, CARD – Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University –  USA
Charlote Opal - Coordinator, Roundtable on Sustained Biofuels - Switzerland
Cláudio Piquet Pessoa - Diretor, Glencore Importadora e Exportadora S/A, Rio de Janeiro - Brasil
Douglas Newman - International Trade Commission – Washington, DC.
Edson Menezes da Silva - Superintendente de Abastecimento, ANP - Agencia Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis, Rio de Janeiro - Brasil
Eduardo Pereira Carvalho - ETH Bioenergia - Brasil
Guilherme Nastari – DATAGRO - Brasil
Ingo Kalder - Sugar Division, Cargill Agricola S/A - Brasil
Jonathan Kingsman - Kingsman & Co - Lausanne, Switzerland
Joseph Schmidhuber - Senior Economist - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – Italy
Manoel Ortolan - Presidente CANAOESTE - Brasil
Manoel Vicente Bertone - Secretário de Produção e Agroenergia, Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento (MAPA) - Brasil
Michael Betenson - Diretor Comercial da CRYSTALSEV – Ribeirão Preto, Brasil
Dr. Pedro Valls - Professor  Doutor, Fundação Getulio Vargas - Brasil
Dr. Plinio Mario Nastari – Presidente DATAGRO - Brasil
Sérgio Trindade - SE2T - EUA
Stephen Kanitz - Articulista Revista Veja

Presidentes dos Sindicatos das Indústrias do açúcar e do álcool

André Luiz Baptista Lins Rocha – Goiás
Anísio Tormena - Paraná
Antonio Jose de Sousa - Maranhão
Eduardo Ribeiro Coutinho - Paraíba
José Pessoa de Queiroz Bisneto - Mato Grosso do Sul
Luis Custódio Cotta Martins - Minas Gerais
Marcos Jank - São Paulo
Pedro Robério de Melo Nogueira - Alagoas
Piero Vicenzo Parini - Mato Grosso
Renato Pontes Cunha - Pernambuco

Richard N. Gardner is professor of law and international organization at Columbia Law School and counsel to the global law firm of Morgan Lewis.

Professor Gardner practiced law for three years in New York after finishing his doctorate at Oxford. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1957. He was appointed by President Kennedy as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in 1961, a position he held until 1965, when he served as a senior adviser to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. After a year with the U.N., he served as a member of the President’s Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy from 1970 to 1971. He served in various advisory positions in the U.N..

Under President Carter he was In 1977 - 1981 U.S. Ambassador to Italy. Those were tumultuous years. The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the failed attempt of the Italian Communist Party to take power, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the seizure of American hostages in Tehran all left their marks upon the rapidly changing political landscape of 1977 to 1981. The culmination of these events resulted in Italy’s historic decision to deploy U.S. cruise missiles, which Mikhail Gorbachev identified as a decisive factor in his decision to shift Soviet foreign policy toward genuine disarmament and peaceful cooperation, ultimately signifying the end of the Cold War era.

President Clinton appointed Gardner as U.S. Ambassador to Spain, from 1993 to 1997. In 2000, he was a U.S. Public Delegate to the 55th U.N. General Assembly.

He was a member of the Trilateral Commission from 1974 to 2005.

He is currently  Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School and Counsel to the global law firm of Morgan Lewis. At Columbia University he also runs a Lecture Series of the Center on Global Legal Problems - THE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLICY ISSUES FACING THE NEXT PRESIDENT.

Center News
SPEAKER SERIES EXAMINES INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLICY ISSUES
FACING THE NEXT PRESIDENT

Press Contact: Sonia von Gutfeld, 212-854-1453, sgutfe@law.columbia.edu
Public Affairs Office, 212-854-2650

September 3, 2008 (NEW YORK) – In the two months leading up to the election, Columbia Law School’s Center on Global Legal Problems will host a speaker series titled “International Law and Policy Issues Facing the Next President.” Legal experts will discuss such topics as terrorism, global warming, international trade and the pre-emptive use of force.

September 10
“Can We Combat International Terrorism Consistently with International Law, the US Constitution, and American Values?”
Speaker: Professor Philip Bobbitt, Columbia Law School

September 18
“What Kind Of International Agreement Is Possible and Desirable To Deal With The Challenge Of Global Warming?”
Speaker: Professor Nicholas Robinson, Pace Law School

October 7
“What Policies on International Trade Negotiations, Foreign Investment, and Global Financial Imbalances?”
Speaker: Honorable Stuart Eizenstat, Covington & Burling

October 29
“When Should the United States Use Armed Force in Preemptive Self-Defense or Intervene Militarily in Other Countries?”
Speaker: Professor Michael Doyle, Columbia Law School

All lectures take place from 12:05 – 1:00 p.m. at Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Hall Room 107, located at 435 West 116th Street (bet. Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.), New York, NY.

Journalists, please contact Sonia von Gutfeld at 212-854-1453 or sgutfe@law.columbia.edu if you would like attend.

Presiding over the lecture series is Richard N. Gardner, Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School.

*****

His last guest was Professor Nicholas Robinson from Pace University who spoke on September 23, 2008, who focused on the problems relating to Global Warming/Climate Change right when the news about the collapse of the US Financial System started to break open before the international viewers.

Center on Global Legal Problems
PROF. NICHOLAS ROBINSON LECTURES ON GLOBAL WARMING
Second Lecture Of Speaker Series:
International Law And Policy Issues Facing The Next President

Press Contact: Erin St. John Kelly ekelly@law.columbia.edu
Office 212-854-1787 Cell 646-284-8549 Public Affairs Office 212-854-2650

Photo: Eileen Barroso

September 23, 2008 (NEW YORK) – “We are going to have a global team effort to create a new economy at the same time that the global investment trading system is collapsing in shambles,” said Nicholas Robinson ’70, Professor of Law at Pace Law School, in a lecture on Sept. 18 as a worldwide financial crisis roiled the stock markets.

The new economy he referred to consisted of the various carbon cap-and-trade systems that have been initiated or are being considered in Europe, Australia, the United States and other countries.

In his talk, “What Kind of International Agreement Is Possible and Desirable to Deal With the Challenge of Global Warming?” he said that while the presidential election has mostly ignored the issue of climate change, countries internationally are having a robust debate about it.

Robinson’s lecture was given as part of a speaker series scheduled for the two months leading up to the election. “International Law and Policy Issues Facing the Next President” is organized by Columbia Law School’s Center on Global Legal Problems and presided over by Richard N. Gardner, Professor of Law and International Organization. Legal experts are scheduled to discuss such topics as terrorism, global warming, international trade and the pre-emptive use of force.

To a room of about 60 attentive students Robinson, a former student of Prof. Gardner, gave an overview of the successes and failures thus far of international environmental regimes and the political dynamics at play during negotiations. He also assessed the environmental issues confronting the next administration.

Robinson said that in 1987, the United Nations-commissioned Brundtland Report asserted that it was “time to do something because we had already launched an irreparable change on the environment,” he said. “But the urgent pace of international development is slow.”

Robinson cited a recent analysis by the League of Conservation Voters that of 2,938 questions asked by journalists of the presidential candidates, only six concerned climate change. “Why have nations gotten stirred up about it if the politicians aren’t?” he asked.

He attributed the United States’ reluctance to participate in international environmental agreements partially to the large size of the nation, which lends it some short-term immunity to the effects of climate change. Small island states such as the Cook Islands and the Maldives, he said, face imminent extinction. Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation, is already negotiating to move its entire population to neighboring New Zealand.

He recalled a conversation he had with the President of the Maldives, a country which has already started relocating citizens from low-lying to more highly elevated areas. The president said that even this measure wasn’t enough, joking, “You know, we have to hurry on this, because we are short people.”

Touching on the United States’ general resistance to multilateral agreements, he recounted the story of how it was forced to join the international community last December at the Bali Conference on Climate Change. “Previously, Australian Prime Minister John Howard had been President Bush’s only ally in the ‘let’s pretend there’s no climate change’ camp,’” Robinson said, to laughter from the crowd. However just before Bali, Howard was defeated, leaving the United States without an ally.

Calling the Bali agreement “extraordinary,” Robinson said it should eventually lead to a post-Kyoto agreement in 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Looking to the future, Robinson said, “I can predict a cap-and-trade system. It will be wholly imperfect, but an extraordinary paradigm shift,” he said, adding, “To internalize externalities is better than ignoring them.”

Questions from the audience covered the barrier in negotiations between emerging and developed countries, the possible benefits climate change will bring to some nations and the presidential candidate’s environmental policy proposals.

Robinson emphasized the relevance of climate change to every future lawyer in the room, whether or not they pursue environmental law. “The new international regime for climate change will affect finance, trade and commerce, human rights – every area that you will make your careers in.”

Nicholas Robinson is the Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law and co-director of the Center for Environmental Legal Studies at Pace Law School. Robinson has developed environmental law since 1969, when he was named to the Legal Advisory Committee of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality. He currently is legal advisor and chairman of the Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, engaged in drafting treaties and counseling different nations on the preparation of their environmental laws.

The Center on Global Legal Problems addresses globalization’s legal dimensions through diverse interdisciplinary research and scholarship. The Center, founded in 2003, supports collaborative research with professional disciplines outside of law and with professional schools of business, journalism, public health, and international and public affairs. It hosts periodic conferences and speaker series and supports associations with other Columbia University centers and programs as well as joint programs with international organizations such as the United Nations. The Center’s executive director is Professor José E. Alvarez.
by Laura Shin

*****

Now, October 7, 2008, with all the depth of the meteoritic crack of the financial system quite obvious, the next guest of the series was Mr. Stuart Eizenstat, another veteran of many Washington Administrations.
From 1977 to 1981 he was President Jimmy Carter’s  Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff. He was Bill Clinton’s Deputy Treasury Secretary, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and also served as the Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade at the International Trade Administration (ITA) from 1996 to 1997.

He has served as the US ambassador to the EU  from 1993 to 1996 and as co-chairman of the European-American Business Council (EABC).

Eizenstat is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Global Panel Foundation.

In 2008 The Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Distinguished Professorship in Jewish history and culture was endowed in Eizenstat’s honor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also received the Courage and Conscience Award from the Israeli government, the Knight Commander’s Cross (Badge and Star) of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the French Legion of Honor from the Government of France.

He is Currently  a partner at  the Washington DC  law firm, Covington & Burling, where he deals mainly with Trade & Customs issues, and senior strategist at APCO Worldwide - a majority women-owned international public relations firm.

Possible Obama Treasury pick: Stuart Eizenstat (The Deal Newsweekly) - www.thedeal.com/newsweekly/dealmaker.php?slideshow=23&slide=109 - 17k -

His topic was: “WHAT POLICIES ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS, FOREIGN INVESTMENT, AND GLOBAL FINANCIAL IMBALANCES?” - But though he intended to talk mainly on Energy, the News Of The Day, he said,  caused him to deviate somewhat from his originally intended presentation.

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In The Light Of The Bush / Paulsen Demand For Full Reins To The Secretary of the Treasury In The Matter of Over 1.5 Trillion Dollars - What will be the role of Next US President? If Obama and McCain Accept the Proposed Set Of Rules They Might Just As Well Go Hunting Moose In Alaska Instead of Fighting for the Right To Become The White House Christmas Tree.  We hope That Sarah Palin Was Able To Negotiate With Mr. Karzai to Get Some Afghan Hounds To Accompany Them.

We got the following e-mail from the Obama people:

Pincas –

The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has created a financial crisis as profound as any we have faced since the Great Depression.

Congress and the President are debating a bailout of our financial institutions with a price tag of $700 billion or more in taxpayer dollars. We cannot underestimate our responsibility in taking such an enormous step.

Whatever shape our recovery plan takes, it must be guided by core principles of fairness, balance, and responsibility to one another.

They Suggest - Please show your support for an economic recovery plan based on the following:

• No Golden Parachutes — Taxpayer dollars should not be used to reward the irresponsible Wall Street executives who helmed this disaster.
• Main Street, Not Just Wall Street – Any bailout plan must include a payback strategy for taxpayers who are footing the bill and aid to innocent homeowners who are facing foreclosure.
• Bipartisan Oversight — The staggering amount of taxpayer money involved demands a bipartisan board to ensure accountability and oversight.

Show your support and encourage your friends and family to join you.

The failed economic policies and the same corrupt culture that led us into this mess will not help get us out of it. We need to get to work immediately on reforming the broken government — and the broken politics — that allowed this crisis to happen in the first place.

And we have to understand that a recovery package is just the beginning. We have a plan that will guarantee our long-term prosperity — including tax cuts for 95 percent of families, an economic stimulus package that creates millions of new jobs and leads us towards energy independence, and health care that is affordable to every American.

It won’t be easy. The kind of change we’re looking for never is.

But if we work together and stand by these principles, we can get through this crisis and emerge a stronger nation.

Thank you,

Barack

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Our difficulty with the above is that the moment Obama accepts the proposed recovery plan - he loses the Presidency even if he wins the election. This because of the simple fact that it takes all the air out of his lungs - that is all the money that he could have used to change the system.

What the Bushites do now is to perpetuate the present situation and make sure that nothing will change for many years to come - or ever. Ah! and you must buy this in a rush, right this week - because Congress must go home to campaign for their reelection - so they will buckle first.

Will the Senate buckle also? Will they just be pushed around further by tales that the FBI will study next 15 years the wrong-doers and their institutions, and take this for their fig-leave and jump to the commands they were just given? Blah!

Mc Cain / Palin can do what they want - but from Obama we expect now real show of backbone. He must stand up like Samson and say - with me the Philistines. He must dare Washington by saying that US Democracy requires that taxation of $1,5 Billion is a matter for Congress. The Giants  in Cartoon #136 must be asked to raise from their graves - “Capitalism” and “Private Enterprise.” If things get worse and other companies fold - he will be accused of not playing the game set for him by the establishment in Washington - and it will be clear and evident for all to see who is the reformer and who is the dog musher.
We expect that Right and Left will back him against the timid crooked Center. He will win and his win will finally  have a meaning. He will get the reins not of oppression - but of reform.

WE HOPE THAT THE OBAMA STAFF WILL STUDY THIS POSTING OF OURS, WITH ITS BORROWED CARTOON - AND OBAMA WILL CONSIDER IT WHEN HAVING THE UNENVIABLE TASK TO DECIDE HOW TO RUN HIS CAMPAIGN IN THE LIGHT OF THE BLOW THAT WAS Already PREDICTED SEVERAL MONTHS AGO BY FINANCIAL MAGICIAN GEORGE SOROS, BUT WAS LOWERED ON THE CAMPAIGNS ONLY NOW.  OBAMA MUST ALSO DECIDE IN TWO DAYS  HOW TO BUILD HIS POSITION AHEAD OF THE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008, FIRST DEBATE WITH MCCAIN IN MISSISSIPPI. THAT DEBATE COULD NOW GIVE THE REAL START OF THE ELECTION FINALS A COMPLETE NEW TURN. DO THE US CITIZENS WANT TO ALLOW THEMSELVES FLEECED FOR EVER, OR THEY ARE READY TO BE COUNTED SAYING: “DON’T TREAD ON ME.”

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Please Obama People - read also our other posting on this subject and see what a bright Journalist thinks of this. The bottom line is that whatever Obama decides to do - he will be blamed by the American people anyway - that is what the world thinks of the American electorate, so why not going out all the way and do the right thing? The hope here is that the better part of solid Republicans will vote Obama.

Gwynne Dyer, A London Based Journalist, Writes About Comrade Bush And The Banks. She Reaches The Conclusion About A Convergence Of The US And Chinese States - And Explains That In The End The Americans Will Blame The Democrats if Obama Wins.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 24th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

Capitalism must be more regulated, says Sarkozy.
ELITSA VUCHEVA, The Euobserver, September 24, 2008

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, on Tuesday (23 September) {in his speech before the UN General Assembly in New York City} called for an international summit to tackle the global finance crisis and its consequences, saying that capitalism should be more “regulated.”

“Let us build a capitalism where ratings agencies will be subject to controls and punished when necessary, where transparency of transactions will replace opaqueness. The opaqueness is such today that we have difficulty understanding even what is happening,” Mr Sarkozy said in a speech to the UN General Assembly, Reuters reports.

Mr Sarkozy denounced “a crazy system which has been our system for years.” (Photo: United Nations)

“I am told ‘We don’t know who is responsible.’ Oh yeah? Well let me tell you that when things were going well, we knew who got bonuses. What a strange system,” he also told journalists, denouncing “a crazy system which has been our system for years.”

Mr Sarkozy hopes to see an international meeting to discuss the crisis, the worst the world has seen, he said, since the Great Depression.


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“I’m convinced that it’s the duty of heads of state and government of the countries most directly concerned to meet before the end of the year to examine together the lessons of the most serious financial crisis the world has experienced since that of the 1930s,” Mr Sarkozy said before the UN General Assembly, in his first public statements on the financial crisis.

At a press conference later in the day, he said he was thinking of a G8-format summit in November, gathering the world’s eight leading economic powers – namely the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia, but also open to “emerging countries,” such as China, India, and Brazil.

Mr Sarkozy did not specify where the summit should take place, saying that it could be anywhere from Washington or New York, to London, Brussels and Paris.

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More regulation:

Additionally, the French president suggested a general overhaul of the financial system should be considered, where capitalism would be more “regulated.”

“Let us rebuild together a regulated capitalism in which whole swathes of financial activity are not left to the sole judgment of market operators, in which banks do their job, which is to finance economic development rather than engage in speculation,” he was reported as saying by Deutsche Welle.

His comments come just a day after MEPs also called on the European Commission to come up with legislation plans to regulate the activities of hedge funds and private equity funds.

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However, EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy told MEPs he did not believe it was “necessary at this stage to tar hedge funds and private equity with the same brush as we use for the regulated sector. The issues relating to the current turmoil are different.”

One should “analyse the impact of the existing EU provisions and of additional member states’ rules in this field before one embarks on introducing any new legislation,” said the commissioner.

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EU-Russia economic space:

Separately, the EU president-in-office also suggested establishing “a common economic space that would unite Russia and Europe.”

However, the French president also referred to Russia’s war with Georgia this summer and underlined that the EU “cannot compromise on the principal of sovereignty and independence of states.”