The Following is all from The Financial Times of  Monday, September 29, 2008.

We do not post the paper’s editorial by its Editorial Board, but we post Chrystia Freeland’s article - she is the Economics’ Editor of the paper.

The Forum on Religion and Ecology Newsletter 2.9 (September 2008).

Contents

1. Introduction by Sam Mickey and Elizabeth McAnally

2. Report from Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim

3. From the Field: Sarah Fredericks

4. Focus on the Web: Events  http://fore.research.yale.edu/events/ind…)

5. New Guidebooks Related to Climate Change

6. Blog: Green Muslims in Washington, D.C.

7. Conference Announcements

8. Calls for Papers

9. Job Announcements

10. Worldviews and Other Journals

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1. Introduction by Sam Mickey & Elizabeth McAnally.

Dear Forum Colleagues,

We hope you all are flourishing.  This edition of the Forum newsletter contains a lot of exciting information about religion and ecology, including a report from Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.  We have invited Sarah Fredericks (professor of philosophy and religion studies at the University of North Texas) to share with us her interdisciplinary and collaborative experiences from the field of religion and ecology, in which she works with questions of environmental justice while exploring some ways that environmental indicators of energy use intertwine environmental ethics, religion, science, and environmental policy.  Also in this newsletter, and in each newsletter, we provide you with access to information about multiple efforts in religion and ecology, including current information related to conferences, books, journals, job opportunities, internet resources, and more.  By keeping you informed about these and other efforts when they are publicized or announced, our aim is to make it possible for you to learn more about them or to participate in them as individuals and as communities, professional organizations, and religious institutions.

Sam Mickey & Elizabeth McAnally
Forum on Religion and Ecology
Web Content Managers & Newsletter Editors
 news at religionandecology.org

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2. Report from Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.

Dear Colleagues,

We hope you have had a restorative summer and that this new autumn season will be a productive one for your work.

We wanted to share with you information on a conference that will be held from October 5-14, 2008 in Barcelona that is of great interest to the Forum on Religion and Ecology. This is the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the largest body of environmentalists in the world.  http://www.iucn.org/news_events/events/c… Over 8,000 people will attend this conference and for the first time it will feature several panels on religion and ecology. There will also be panels on the Earth Charter, in large measure because the IUCN endorsed the Charter several years ago at their meeting in Bangkok. The Newsletter highlights the panel where the Forum will be represented.

We also wanted to let you know about two international conferences that took place this summer in which religion and ecology was part of the discussions along with the Earth Charter.
The first was in Sweden from June 26-28 2008 and was organized by the Tallberg Forum led by Bo Ekman.  http://www.tallbergforum.org/  The title was: “How on Earth can we live together? In search of the common sense”. The Tallberg Forum gathered thinkers and leaders from 70 nations for discussions related to the challenges of global interdependence. It began with a workshop exploring scientific and moral boundary conditions for sustainability. Here the Forum on Religion and Ecology’s work was highlighted along with the Earth Charter. Some of the questions explored in the following days were: Can we design, govern and manage the sustainable interaction between natural systems and the systems of human activity? Can we negotiate among ourselves the resolution of the planetary crisis? Can we find better ways to integrate the work of governments and institutions with the actions of other actors from civil society, business, or technology when tackling sustainability? It generated many concrete ideas and proposals for policy and strategy and ended with a superb talk by Kofi Annan along with his playing of conga drums!

The second conference was at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris from September 3-5, 2008. It was organized to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  www.un.org
There were over 1300 participants, many from various religious groups. The aim of the conference was to highlight effective ways in which civil society can contribute to the advancement of human rights at the international, regional, national, and local levels. One of the important dimensions of the conference was the acknowledgement that environmental rights need to be included in discussions of human rights. This referred to both rights of nature and rights of humans to be protected from the harmful effects of polluting water, air, soil and ecosystems. Environmental justice issues were frequently cited. To highlight this approach, there was a panel which featured the Earth Charter as a declaration not just of independence and rights for humans, but as a Charter which features interdependence with and responsibility toward nature, other species, and future generations. For a further report on this panel see www.earthcharter.org.

It is encouraging to see in all of these conferences the expansion of care and concern for the larger Earth community.
With all good wishes,
Mary Evelyn Tucker & John Grim

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3. From the Field: Sarah Fredericks.

First, I would like to thank Sam Mickey and Elizabeth McAnally for their invitation to write about my research for the newsletter. I’ve appreciated the work of the Forum in the past, look forward to its future activities, and am delighted to be a part of it this month.

Over the past few years as I’ve met fellow scholars at conferences and job interviews, those outside of “religion and ecology” often ask me why I study religion and environmental ethics. While this question might not be quite so common among readers of the Forum, I think my answer to it is a good way to introduce my work.

I came to the world of “religion and ecology” through a PhD program in science, philosophy, and religion at Boston University. While I greatly enjoy the theoretical and historical side of studies in science and religion, I recognized that connecting theory to everyday, practical problems was my main interest. So, to make a long story short, I began to focus on religious environmental ethics, and centered on the ethics of energy use. Religious environmental ethics is particularly appealing to me because religions form the moral basis of many, if not most, people’s worldviews, and I want my work to be easily connectible to popular methods of thought. Additionally, religious ethics have more resources to deal with the limits of human knowledge, despair, guilt, and hope than most contemporary philosophical ethics. I also fit into the “religion and ecology” tent because I think that ethics and the sciences need to continually be in conversation with each other to be able to respond to contemporary challenges including human relationships with the environment.

I modeled this interconnection of disciplines in my dissertation where I identified principles of environmental ethics; used them to critique indexes of sustainable energy development, tools used to assess the sustainability of a country’s energy use; and refined the principles based on this test case.

My principles included responsibility, justice, careful use of resources, feasibility, farsightedness, and an adequate assessment of the situation. These principles were drawn from the ethics embedded in Agenda 21, and the work of James A. Nash, who works from a modified natural law tradition; that of Othman Abd-ar-Rahman Llewellyn, a scholar of Islamic law; and that of Richard Sylvan and David Bennett who try to reform deep ecology. I intend that these principles can enable communication between diverse worldviews about environmental ethics even as each participant in the conversation speaks from the specifics of his or her own tradition.

Indicators condense lots of information about a complex phenomenon into easy to understand graphs or single numbers. Most of you are probably familiar with the UV indicator, published in many newspapers, that indicates the danger of getting sunburned on that day according to a twelve-point scale rather than forcing readers to figure out the danger from masses of atmospheric data. Similarly, sustainable energy indicators assess the sustainability of a country’s energy use, typically according to social, environmental, and economic factors. Unlike the UV index, however, sustainable energy indicators often rely on graphical outputs rather than single numbers so that trade-offs between social, economic, and environmental sustainability can be tracked.  In addition to monitoring the effects of a nation’s energy use, indicators can also help assess the effectiveness of particular energy policies.

My ethical analysis of these indicators showed that while the indicators generally do promote the careful and responsible use of energy with some farsightedness about energy policy, they do not register disparities in access to the benefits and burdens of energy use within populations. In other words, the indicators do not focus on justice. Given the widespread prioritization of aid to the poor and powerless in religious ethics, this neglect of justice in energy indicators is a problem.

This observation and the knowledge that minority populations are those with the least access to high-quality energy yet bear much of the burden of energy use has led me to several new research questions in ethics and the sciences of index development: How can ethicists who are not part of minority groups aid environmental justice movements? How will focusing on environmental justice shape Christian environmental ethics? I predict that focusing on environmental justice will help ethicists overcome the “humans against the environment” type of thinking where either jobs or endangered species are prioritized. Instead, I think that emphasizing environmental justice will help us recognize that the environment and humans are currently suffering from the way we are treating the environment and thus need to be helped together. I also think that recognizing the problems of environmental justice will push environmental ethicists to emphasize social change over individual lifestyle changes.

Prioritizing societal reform leads to additional questions: How can policies and indicators that evaluate policies reflect our priority of justice? How can highly localized environmental justice movements and national environmental policy be linked? How can the expertise of ethicists, social and natural scientists, policy-makers and community members be utilized together? How can scientific knowledge about risk and the state of environments be used by ethicists and community leaders when this knowledge is uncertain, incomplete, and continually changing? What sources of hope do communities have in the face of widespread environmental destruction and injustice?

These are some of the questions that I am exploring or hope to study in the near future. Quite obviously, such research questions require collaboration with academics in a variety of fields, as well as governmental, community and industry leaders. As I just started a new job in a new part of the country, I’m still definitely in the midst of making these connections and envisioning my new research. I already have some fantastic leads and am thrilled to be in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas as it highly supports and encourages such interdisciplinary, collaborative research.

Sarah Fredericks
University of North Texas
Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies
 sfrederi at unt.edu
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4. Focus on the Web: Events  http://fore.research.yale.edu/events/ind…)

2009 is just a few months away. While you’re planning your engagements for the upcoming year and for the remainder of this year, be sure to visit the recently updated Events section of the Forum on Religion and Ecology website.

You can find information about past, present, and future events related to religion and ecology at http://fore.research.yale.edu/events/ind….

Feel free to send information to us at  news at religionandecology.org regarding coming events so that we can include them on the website.

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5. New Guidebooks Related to Climate Change.

We would like to announce two recent publications, which can function as guidebooks for engagements with religion and ecology.

The first publication is a “Green Guide for Muslims,” a 20-page booklet published by Lifemakers UK in conjunction with the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES). This guide provides practical means for Muslim households to mitigate climate change in their everyday decisions (e.g., food, water, transportation, energy, etc.), and it includes a helpful checklist so that each household can see how “green” it is. For more information regarding the Green Guide, e-mail IFEES at  info at ifees.org.uk or visit the website at http://www.ifees.org.uk. The Green Guide can be downloaded from the IFEES website: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr6508…). Copies of the book can be obtained through mail order or via the internet at Church House Publishing  http://www.chpublishing.co.uk).

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6. Blog: Green Muslims in Washington, D.C.

We would like to inform you of an interesting web-log (”blog”) about a network of Muslims in the District of Columbia (and surrounding areas) who are working proactively to help our communities understand and implement sustainable and eco-conscious ways of living while relating it to faith and a holistic world-view.
For more information, see: http://www.iucn.org/news_events/events/c…

 The Columbia University World Leaders Forum, September 26, 2008, Became The Podium For Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark To Make Known A  Roadmap To The December 2009 Climate Change Meeting in Copenhagen. The Prime Minister Is Keenly Interested That The Copenhagen Event Becomes The Turnaround Point From Our Present Descent Towards Global Environmental Disaster, and He Negotiated This Week A Roadmap With The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and The Two Candidates For The US Presidency.  We Wished Him All The Luck He Needs; Nevertheless We Expressed Some Skepticism.

The Columbia Forum brings to campus, during all months of the academic year, leaders involved with all sorts of ongoing problems, and at the time of the September High Level meetings of the UN General Assembly, it picks up special speed, and manages to pick up speakers that may have fallen in between the cracks when organizations like the Asia Society and the Americas Society, or the Foreign Policy Association, or the Council on Foreign Affairs, set up their schedules. This time it was really not the case. Prime Minister Rasmussen came to Columbia University because he has high esteem for the work done at the Earth Institute that is the home for a large number of scientists that were involved in the readying of the IPCC reports. Having said that, we must also note that rather then having the people from The Earth Institute involved in the Forum, the University chose to go all out with Columbia University President, Lee C. Bollinger, and University Professor of Economics and Law, Jagdish Bhagwati, a specialist on globalization and development, being the official hosts.

The above august Columbia University reception caused Mr. Rasmussen to start by saying: “I congratulate you on your work. I am impressed by the contribution of The Earth Institute to both the development agenda and the Millennium Development Goal. Issues I had the opportunity to discuss yesterday with other world leaders. Today, I will be speaking about another major topic for The Earth Institute and for many leaders including myself: CLIMATE CHANGE. I will focus on three key elements: THE CHALLENGE, THE VISION, and THE DEAL.”

 The introduction said to us clearly - the Prime Minister does not want to see the reality of climate change being submerged under tons of other global problems. The task of his leadership towards a Copenhagen 2009 agreement is to lead to an agreed timetable for the decrease of CO2 emissions from human made causes - it is this, rather then the maze of other linked problems, that he intends to tackle. He laid bare the problem in his first two segments - but his aim is the third segment - THE DEAL.

We intend to post his whole presentation - but for this fast posting we want to go directly to the DEAL, point out questions that came up in follow up discussions, and the full information that was then provided to the very few members of the media present at a follow up press conference.

***

The Prime Minister wants to see in the December 2009 declaration a deal based on four key elements:

FIRSTLY: A Long Term Vision for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from 1990 baseline by 2050.                    This in order to set out targets for businesses in planning their investments.

SECONDLY: An Ambitious Medium Term Goal for the industrialized countries modeled after the European commitment to 30% reduction by 2020. “A tall order, I know, but it meets the challenge and creates opportunities.”

But that is not enough. The Major Emerging Economies will also have to join this endeavour by taking actions. They must stabilise, and subsequently reduce, their emissions. This obviously taking in consideration the different levels of development of the individual countries. IN THIS PRESERVATION OF FORESTS WILL PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE.

Without clear 10 to 15-year reduction commitments from the industrialized countries it will not be possible to develop cost effective measures.

THIRDLY: The Technology aspect requires the development and dissemination of low carbon technologies and INNOVATION within a global collaborative effort that promotes programs and policies that sustain economic development while ensuring decreased emissions. We must encourage investment and financing of low-carbon technologies.

FOURTHLY: Dealing with the special needs of the most vulnerable developing countries that contributed least to global warming and suffer the hardest consequences, they must be given a safety net which includes financial support for their efforts including adaptation.

The Prime Minister wants to see cost-effective, market-based instruments - efficiency standards and national, regional, and global carbon markets. He looked further at places that such moves were started already - the EU, China,  in many countries in Asia, other emerging economies.

“I believe the Chinese business sector and government have understood the prospects for low carbon technology. They can see a double benefit. Firstly their economy and, secondly, their participation in the global economy. They are already out there seeking to be part of the next generation of smart, low-carbon technologies” - he said.

Mr. Rasmussen did not mince words: “Following the last oil crisis Toyota started to build smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. General Motors did not. Today Toyota is the most sold car in America.”

“In China, cars are produced according to strict fuel efficiency standards. At the same time, US manufacturers are struggling with old fashioned fuel intensive models” - he said. “DO I NEED TO SAY MORE?”

From here Mr. Rasmussen pointed out that much did actually happen in many US individual States that have also established regional carbon markets and energy efficiency standards - so - he wants to see America lead again by example, by entrepreneurship - politically as well as economically.

“I know,” he said, “that many people fear competition from China, especially in energy intensive sectors. And Yes, no deal can address climate change without both China and the United States being part of it. But do not deceive yourself: with emissions at 24 tons per capita the USA has a long way to go and cannot afford to wait for others. There are huge gains to be won by moving rapidly and with determination.”

The choices that will be made in 2009 are not short of shaping actually the future of planet earth for the next century - but Mr. Rasmussen does not think that his goals are unattainable - they are not impossible and they are not unaffordable - they are actually absolutely vital for our survival - he said - and he offered also that they are vital for our economic recovery and growth.

“We could continue to wring our hands, watching helplessly as the oil price rises and falls. Watch weather systems spreading havoc. Continue to transfer huge amounts of wealth to autocratic regimes and rely on unstable supplies of oil and gas. Watch our planet grow more unlivable every day. But that is not an option. We are not going to do that.”

***

Professor Bhagawati, in his remarks mentioned, in reference to the present calamity of the US financial sector, also with application to the issues here at hand, that we were once used to the image of a ship captain standing in a position of salute when his ship was going down, this after putting his passengers into the lifeboats. Now we see the captains leaving in the lifeboats and leaving the passengers behind to go down instead.

He also suggested that from Kyoto I we will probably not go to Kyoto II, but rather to Copenhagen I. He wants to have in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008, already the agreement to go to 50% reduction of emissions, and during 2009 the negotiations for the intermediary steps with the consideration of different responsibilities for different stages of development, taken in full account.

***

We brought up the question about the timetable from now to December 2009, with the intermediary stop at Poznan in December 2008.

We explained that the US elections in November 2008 will have produced a new President-elect, but no practical change in the US representation -  what-so-ever - at the Poznan meeting. Simply - the US has only one President at one time. This will make it impossible to deal with the US in order to come up with the Poznan  decision, that is needed in order to reach an agreement that Mr.Rasmussen expects at the Copenhagen meeting in 2009.

Mr. Rasmussen answered that he is already in contact with both US Presidential campaigns, and both said that they will be ready with their plans when they take over on January 20, 2009. But this is also no solution - this because of the fact that a US negotiator will have to be approved by Congress - and it is hardly possible of having such an approval before March to the earliest. Really, as cabinet positions will have to be approved first - let me say that this will not happen before April.

With Poznan having become a dud, negotiations April - November 2009, can hardly be expected at turning Copenhagen of being more then a Poznan II, rather then a Kyoto II or Copenhagen I.

***

The Prime Minister is optimistic nevertheless and expects the EU to push for renewable energy and energy savings, and lead by example. He also puts his hope for Europe’s energy in the construction of pipelines from Central Asia that bypass Russia.

Furthermore, as it is true that climate change is with us for a long time - and it only got worse in the last two century because of the man-caused emissions, nevertheless, it is the confluence of that reason, with the present political reason, the fact that huge amounts of money are transferred to unstable regimes in payment for the energy, is strengthening our resolve to take action now. We must now brake our addiction to oil.

The Prime Minister also told us of a “Troica meeting” with the UN Secretary-General: Indonesia, Poland, Denmark - or the organizers of the Bali (2007), Poznan (2008) , and Copenhagen (2009) meetings, which just happened, a day earlier, at this reunion at the UN.

So, there was already a promise of 50% by 2050 / as per 1990, that was put on the table in Bali, and then backed by the G8 meeting in Japan.These answers to questions from the floor got then further amplified in the meeting with the four members of the Press that participated at the follow up session. And this is what I call now the Roadmap:

The year 2009 will involve Heads of State.

(a) In February - March 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will hold a Heads-of-State Meeting at the UN in order to start the process rolling.

(b) In July 2009, probably in Rome, there will be a meeting of the G8 ++ - that is the major evolving countries - probably 5 of them if not more. This to reach an agreement that can then be brought to all Heads-of-State in a September Session of the UN.

(c) thus an energy/climate change UN High-Level September meeting at the UN headquarters in New York City.

(d) The December 2009 Copenhagen meeting.

Further, we wanted to know what the Prime Minister thinks about a US that will be spending now $1.5 trillion on the Wall Street Bailout - so where will the money come for doing the right things needed in regard to climate change? But the fighting optimist believes that really this is not a question of money, but political will.

Again, I felt compelled to wish good luck and to mention that we are all with him and hope he can pull it through.

Last comment for this first report is that I watched in amazement how the Prime Minister was accosted at the Columbia Forum reception by an Iranian young lady student, who for perhaps 15 minutes was trying him out on those famous cartoons, and how he tried to explain to her the workings of a democracy and the fact that freedom of speech, the press, religion, mean that one religion cannot be imposed on others, and that the government has no right to intervene in a  democracy, even though this student seemed not to want to accept this reality. Columbia University must really have succeeded in bringing on board all sorts of students - and we wish the school luck also, in the attempt to forge well behaved citizens even with hard to reach individuals that surely must come from the leading families of political strata of some of the most repulsive regimes. Finally, another student, waiting in line to talk to the Prime Minister, felt compelled to say - “let’s go back to energy questions.”  A different student, without offering a question,  thanked the Prime Minister for his strong stands.

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Sovereign funds AS VEHICLE to FINANCE the global economy.

Consideration should be given to the creation of an international system wherein sovereign funds (and/or those of affiliates) spent outside their native countries are restricted to only lending to public and private business enterprises subject to an international regulation, control, and oversight regime and subordinate to those of the nations where the loans are made.

This would:
(1) Provide additional liquidity and capital to the international financial system, maintain markets, and reduce the risk of regional and/or worldwide recession;
(2) Overcome the valid concerns ( economic, financial, security, political, etc.) and fear of sovereign funds buying up a country’s manufacturing, and service companies, agricultural enterprises, natural resources, banks, financial institutions, and technology and knowhow (industrial, military, scientific, nuclear, etc.) and engaging in economic aggression.
(3) Reduce the risk of protectionism and strife.

To protect and preserve the capital of sovereign fund banks, their off shore loans could be secured by the credit of the borrower and/or the nation, state, or municipal government where the borrowing enterprise is located, possibly as part of economic/job development financing programs.
This approach would satisfy the concerns and requirements of all parties, supply the capitol the global economy needs to function equitably and efficiently, and encourage greater sovereign fund domestic investment to improve the educational, infrastructure, and living standards at home.

This could be accomplished through:
(1) U.N. regulations prohibiting any member nation from allowing sovereign funds (or their affiliates), either directly or indirectly, to acquire any kind of asset in their country – only lend;
(2) individual countries collectively enacting standardized legislation to prohibit sovereign funds (or their affiliates) from acquiring or purchasing stock, bonds, or equity, either directly or indirectly, in the manufacturing, mining, agriculture, or service enterprises, technology, research, intellectual and real property, patents or copyrights in their country and set lending guidelines;
(3) the U.N. requiring all of its members to comply with all international patent and copyright laws; and
(4) the establishment (or empowerment) of an international oversight and regulatory banking commission, like the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, European Trade Commission, or OECD to: (a) govern sovereign fund foreign lending, (b) set uniform regulations and standards for international bank and hedge fund reserve, transparency, disclosure, credit rating, and due diligence, etc. and (c) prohibit any interference or influence by sovereign funds (or their affiliates), either directly or indirectly, in the governments or politics of any country other than their own.

Private banks, financial institutions or consultants could assist sovereign funds in arranging and servicing said foreign loans on a fee basis.

Harry L. Langer           Tel: 212-517-5942     E-mail:  harrylanger at hllanger.com

 Obama and McCaine - Wake Up - It Is Not For You To Save The World Anymore - Bush Already Buried It.

‘Laissez-faire’ capitalism is ‘finished,’ says France. Germany talks of a “multi-polar” world {that we assume will have its center-point in Asia}.
ELITSA VUCHEVA, the EUobserver, September 26, 2008.

Both France and Germany on Thursday (25 September) said the current financial crisis would leave important marks on the world economy, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy declaring that the under-regulated system we once knew is now “finished,” and German finance minister Peer Steinbruck saying the crisis marks the beginning of a multi-polar world, where the US is no longer a superpower.

“The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished,” says France’s president.
Speaking to an audience of some 4,000 supporters in Toulon, France, Mr Sarkozy said the financial turmoil had highlighted the need to re-invent capitalism with a strong dose of morality, as well as to put in place a better regulatory system.

“The idea of the all-powerful market that must not be constrained by any rules, by any political intervention, was mad. The idea that markets were always right was mad,” Mr Sarkozy said.

“The present crisis must incite us to refound capitalism on the basis of ethics and work … Self-regulation as a way of solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished,” he added.

He accused “this system that allows the ones responsible for a disaster to leave with a golden parachute” of having “increased inequality, demoralised the middle classes and fed [market] speculation.”

***

A European response:

The French president also criticised “the logic of short-term financial profit” and said risks were hidden “to obtain ever more exorbitant profits” – something which, he said, was not the true face of capitalism.

“The market economy is a regulated market … in the service of all. It is not the law of the jungle; it is not exorbitant profits for a few and sacrifices for all the others. The market economy is competition that lowers prices … that benefits all consumers.”

The speech by Mr Sarkozy, who is also the EU’s current president-in-office, echoes similar statements he made earlier this week, when he called for an international meeting to discuss the crisis before the end of the year.

On Thursday, he also called on Europe to “reflect on its capacity to act in case of an emergency, to re-consider its rules, its principles,” while learning the lessons from what is happening worldwide.

Mr Sarkozy said: “For all Europeans, it is understood that the response to the crisis should be a European one.”

“In my capacity of president of the Union, I will propose initiatives in that respect at the next European Council [15 October],” he added.

‘The world will never be the same again’

Meanwhile, German finance minister Peer Steinbruck criticised the US for failing to act in the wake of the crisis and said it would now lose its status of “superpower.”

“It is a discussion that we have had for a long time in Europe, that the completely unregulated parts of the international financial market must be more closely monitored and that we must try to reach an agreement on common regulations,” he said during a visit to the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, according to Forbes.

 http://www.forward.com/articles/14121/
Tue. Sep 02, 2008

While Barack Obama has struggled to capture the Jewish vote, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi — a fact that has gone largely unnoticed.

Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side, are first cousins once removed. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson) and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were broth